| Project FJR1300 Completed | | Print | |
| Written by Kenn Stamp | |||||||
| Thursday, 27 January 2011 14:09 | |||||||
  Four score and seven years ago (at least that's how it feels) a plan was hatched. A plan that would shake-up the motorcycling community. A plan that was so bold it had motorcycle industry insiders diving under their desks to escape the fall-out. What you are about to read had nothing at all to do with that plan. Two years ago, while drinking Tequila and watching a donkey show in Tijuana, we thought "she's pretty cute....I wonder if she'd come to our hotel room?". So inebriated were we that we were talking about the male donkey and not the girl. The next morning we awoke to mercifully find that the donkey apparently declined our offer of a midnight tryst. While stumbling back to bed from worshiping the holy trinity of bowl, tank, flush lever - some of us blearily looked at each other and thought "hey why don't we take an 05 FJR1300 and make it a bike that can be seriously ridden at the track?" Like most ideas that come from ingesting large amounts of fermented substances this one didn't pan out as planned. What you see before you is the culmination of two years of emails to manufacturers, calls to our local techs, and many, many hours of looking at porn on the internet.  For quite some time now the only thing we had left to do was put paint on plastic and we were finished. After one painter agreed to do the work and then had the nerve to go out of business before he could actually paint the bike, we were left in a lurch. We had a bike with all kinds of fun parts on it but it still had the stock blue paint (that was looking a little rough after almost 50k miles and 6 years). Up to the plate stepped Steve from Liquid Illusions in Sanford, FL. "I'd love to shoot some paint on that bike for you", he said. "Great" said I. And paint was applied. A 2011 Ford color was chosen for the red part while Steve thought that black metallic and silver mixed together would give the black parts some extra zing. As you can see from the pictures the black "flipped" the silver a bit after mixing and imbued the black parts with a slight gold-dust tone in certain light. I wasn't sure I liked it when I first started putting all the pieces back together but once I got it outside I fell in love with the color. Steve is a very talented painter and regularly paints cars, bikes, RC airplanes (big ones), and anything else you can think of. You can check out some of his work at his website: http://liquidillusionsoviedo.com/Liquid_Illusions/HOME.html If you are interested in a new look for your motorcycle (or whatever you want painted) give Steve a call at 321-578-1136 or email him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Remember the "hey why don't we take an 05 FJR1300 and make it a bike that can be seriously ridden at the track?" part of our original idea? Actually I believe that was our original idea in it's entirety. Well that idea was shot down by those stuffed-shirts at the tire manufacturers. "You can't run Sport-Touring tires at the track with any type of serious intent" said they. "Oh yeah?", said we. "Yeah", said they; "Because Sport-Touring tires are designed to heat-up faster than sportbike tires (to handle the increased weight) and will quickly overheat when in a track environment. This may cause uneven wear, and could cause the tires to get greasy and suddenly lose grip without warning - with possibly disastrous effects!". Bullsh*t", said I. "Poppyc*ck", said Bryan. "Actually they have a valid point" said Brad. We hate Brad. So for the moment, since the manufacturers didn't even want their tires to be seen in pictures of the FJR at the track, we are holding off on taking it to such a place. Will we ever take it to the track? Well our official 2WF office Magic 8-ball that we use to help us decide everything that we do around here says "signs point to yes" so I wouldn't rule it out. We've had a lot of fun with this project and are looking forward to the next one. Listed below are the links to the original articles about the upgrades we did to the 2005 FJR1300. Power Commander PCIII USB (New models available) Galfer SS Brake Lines EBC XC Series Rotors SuperBrace Fork Brace HyperPro Rear Shock Motovation Frame Sliders Brembo 19RCS Master Cylinder Muzzys 4-2-1 Exhaust Sargent World Sport Performance Seat Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           
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Phil McCrackin
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You can't run Sport-Touring tires at the track "Bullsh*t" and "Poppyc*ck" said I too. Last Fall I was using BT-021s at the track on my ZX 14. I'm no racer, I just like being able to ride briskly in a relatively safe environment. I thought the "shredding" on the sides of the BTs looked cool and was evidence that I was riding fast. However, "suddenly lose grip without warning" they did and down I went. Fortunately, it was without disastrous effects; but it sure could have been. It's the "without warning" part that I didn't want to believe. "I'll be able to feel it in time to back off", I told myself. Yeah, I felt it, but by then I was already sliding across the asphalt. Lesson learned. |
