just got 230L

[KD5PFF]

Any pics of your setup? I'm planning some camping trips once I get my 230L as well.

Here are some pics of the mount with the bag on it. As I do more stuff to the bike ill post the pics here. (Ignore the broken tail piece… that’s what happens when you let someone who’s never ridden, ride!) My edge 2 is in the mail…

Currently I have;

Added a hardline tach (not sure of accuracy yet…)

Added a GPS RAM mount

Added a general purpose mount for radios, cell phones etc.

I am also going to add a 14T front sprocket just for street use

I am going to change out the front fender for a black one, and I am adding an edge 2 tail light kit.

I modified the exhaust to open up the last baffle. If you’ve ever taken the end cap off then you’ve seen the spark arrestor that plugs up the bottom hole of the last baffle. By removing the spark arrestor you allow the exhaust to flow through both holes then out the tail pipe. It looks stock but sounds a bit more throaty (not sure how to describe that sound) but it’s not too loud at all. I like the stock quite sound but I just wanted a touch more. By adding a screen back over the inside tail pipe I now still have a spark arrestor. Tada. I’m not sure that this will do anything to its performance but I’m happy the way it is, for now. 3500 miles + 10/70/20 dirt/highway/street. I love this thing!

http://picasaweb.google.com/alex.jech/CRF230LMods#

[JJHACK]

XR's only bolts right up, no problems sounds great and changes the slow response to nearly instand throttle response now. I would not go back to stock ...... No way!

[jesus freek]

Here are some pics of the mount with the bag on it. As I do more stuff to the bike ill post the pics here. (Ignore the broken tail piece… that’s what happens when you let someone who’s never ridden, ride!) My edge 2 is in the mail…

Currently I have;

Added a hardline tach (not sure of accuracy yet…)

Added a GPS RAM mount

Added a general purpose mount for radios, cell phones etc.

I am also going to add a 14T front sprocket just for street use

I am going to change out the front fender for a black one, and I am adding an edge 2 tail light kit.

I modified the exhaust to open up the last baffle. If you’ve ever taken the end cap off then you’ve seen the spark arrestor that plugs up the bottom hole of the last baffle. By removing the spark arrestor you allow the exhaust to flow through both holes then out the tail pipe. It looks stock but sounds a bit more throaty (not sure how to describe that sound) but it’s not too loud at all. I like the stock quite sound but I just wanted a touch more. By adding a screen back over the inside tail pipe I now still have a spark arrestor. Tada. I’m not sure that this will do anything to its performance but I’m happy the way it is, for now. 3500 miles + 10/70/20 dirt/highway/street. I love this thing!

http://picasaweb.google.com/alex.jech/CRF230LMods#

Nice job on the rack,I dig it. I have been looking at tail bags but havent settled on one yet. I did the EO powercore tip,with jets and it sounds awesome. You will love the EDGE2. I have it on mine. I got mine from Wheeling cycle supply and Forest over there helped me out. With the light it also came with turnsignal brackets. I had to drill them out for my cheap DK signals to fit. adding a multipurpose mount for gps/phone etc will you have to swap out stators. Future add ons for me will be heated grips, driving and or off road lights 14t and some sort of rear rack/tailbag.IMG]http://i461.photobucket.com/albums/qq334/01jesusfreek/lights2.jpg[/img]

[jesus freek]

Lets try this again

[SDD74]

KD5PFF- what part of oklahoma do you live in. I am just across the Red River in Bonham Tx.

[SDD74]

JCKID- chedk out JEFFFOXSR's pics of his bike in the cold weather riding thread. he has a 230F ds that he put a trunk on. It looks like it would hold a lot of gear.

[jesus freek]

JCKID- chedk out JEFFFOXSR's pics of his bike in the cold weather riding thread. he has a 230F ds that he put a trunk on. It looks like it would hold a lot of gear.

Honda has a trunk similar I believe it is called the metropolitan or cosmopolitan oh well one of the 2. It is advertised on powersports.honda .com under scooters then accesseries also DK has an emgo box that comes with universal mounting 79.95. I seem to recal on ebay someone selling the rack for the 230l and advertising that the honda box would fit. Perfect for those of uss that commute on the 230L:thumbsup:

[KD5PFF]

SDD74 – I live in Tulsa…

I also purchased my edge2 from wheeling cycle supply… It is supposed to be in today, so ill get it bolted up tonight and put some pics online.

Jesus freak – Were you asking if you will need to swap out stators? Very nice pic by the way. Im ready to get mine bolted on…

A side note about multipurpose cell phone etc mounts… they are only good if you secure your devices too them... I found this out the hard way this morning on my cold commute to work… I guess at lunch I need to go check the road for the remnants of my phone. It’s a good thing I got the full insurance for it…

I forgot to mention that I also added a 12v accessory jack to the bike. It sits up under the rear wheel fender. I will have to change its location once I swap out the taillight but I was pretty impressed with how noise free our bikes are. I haven’t done the math, but from my rough estimate I think we can easily pull an amp off the battery and generator without causing any problems. And that is more than enough to charge a gps, cell phone, radio etc.

[jesus freek]

Yeah I did ask about the stator maybe I missed spoke.I would love to have a radio,gps,additional driving lights but am concerned I would drain the battery.I like the idea of a 12v acc.jack. Mine used to be noise free,not no more. Good luck with the EDGE2. I was looking at those mounts through a couple of catalogs and they can be pretty pricey. I am far from being mechanicly inclined so it took me about 3 1/2 hours for the dismantling and replacing the turn signals and brake lights. Believe me it was a huge accomplishment!!!! Looking foreward to the pics.

[KD5PFF]

The stock alternator provides about 9 amps at 13 volts when the engine is running at about 5000 RPM, according to the service manual. Below is a list of device usage, measured in amps that I calculated from the user manual and then as I measured directly off my bikes battery (not running). I didn’t separate out all the wiring so the headlight measurement includes the tail light and the meter lights. The difference in the brake and tail lights is due to the led edge2 taillight and brake kit vs. the stock tail and brake light.

Item Calculated Actual

Headlight 4.6/4.2 5.3/4.6

Turn signals 1.76 each 3.6

Brake light 2.1 .1

Tail light .5

Meter light .26

Neutral ind. .26 .14

High Beam ind .13

Turn ind. .26

If you turned on your blinker, high beam, put the bike in neutral and had the brakes on while rev’ing it at 5 grand you would be pulling about 10 amps (stock) and about 9 amps measured. The stock battery according to the service manual is a 6 amp hour. Simply by shaving around 2 amps off the stock tail light and brake light you can safely consume that power through a 12v accessory jack. If you were to switch to LED blinkers you could then pull more current. I’m willing to bet that you could safely draw up to 5 amps off the system without hurting anything. I am using a 5 amp fuse on my accessory outlet.

Sorry for the long rant, ill wrap it up… I wouldn’t worry about trying to find a larger alternator… And as long as the engine is running you won’t drain the battery. However if you have all this stuff on with the engine off you have just under and hour before will have to push start your bike.

Please double check my calculations and numbers... and feel free to ask any questions.

Do not hold me responsible for any of this… This is my personal thoughts and what I did/do. Anything you do base on what I say, is done at your own risk?

[KD5PFF]

Ok, the formatting on my table of values didn’t work at all… sorry about that… ill try again…

Item Calculated Actual

Headlight 4.6/4.2 5.3/4.6

Turn signals 1.76 each 3.6

Brake light 2.1 .1

Tail light .5

Meter light .26

Neutral ind. .26 .14

High Beam ind .13

Turn ind. .26

[KD5PFF]

Man that’s useless. Just pm me if you cant understand that… SORRY!

[JJHACK]

What meter did you use for the calculations? Not a critical question, just curious. What's your electrical background. Not many folks I know would have been able to calculate and measure these things with typical home owner tools. I'm a EE and have some rather good stuff here to do this with. However just looking at the numbers these look to be very well done.

The key which you nailed is that you would have to be running a lot of stuff at one time and low RPM to cause any significant problems. Using a GPS off of the aux 12v socket is almost no current draw. You could even charge your cell phone without a problem.

I would like some huge dual Baja Lights on the front, that would require some additional engineering. I'm horrified I will hit a deer at night in the rural area I live in. I wish for locomotive head lights to get more distance/warning they are there. Probably not gonna happen with the 230L but I've not given up yet. I may be able to reduce some amp draw with LEDs and then use two 55 watt headlights one with a seperate switch. A battery meter mounted someplace would be nice as well to monitor status.

Good post!

[bobbyward]

well do you venture out of tulsa ?

my wife has a 230 l also and we ride our bikes up north into the tall grass praire stuff, it has close to 2000 miles already, hoping h.o.t has my new rear rack in soon that has been on back order for ever, want to ride out north some time might let me know as we usually ride 50-75 miles and sometimes farther, even been to siloam and back !

[KD5PFF]

JJHack – I use a super cheap harbor freight multi-meter. It is identical to a fluke as far as I can tell and it was around $20. Best thing I’ve bought in a while! I have a BS in ME, and I am an electronic/Robotic junkie. This is my first motorcycle so I don’t know much about them, but electronics and current draw don’t change much?. As far a baja lights go, I would look into some small surefire type flashlights. You could rig a mount for the bike and they will light up anything you want. There are also cheaper options for those types of lights. Your right though, it will be tricky to if you want to wire into the bikes power, however you could always stick with separate batteries. That’s the kind of thing you don’t need to run all the time, just when you’re running from the deer! What about a few 5 watt LEDs that are modulated… Not sure what the duty cycle would have to be so that you wouldn’t notice, but that always saves power.

[KD5PFF]

Bobbyward – I venture out of Tulsa all the time! The last ride I did was the Talamina drive. That was a 500 mile round trip by the time we were done. After that trip, I can’t stand reading posts from people that have never ridden an L and claim that it isn’t capable or can’t be driven on the road! Ok, my rant is over. I usually ride with a few guys, one also rides an L and the others ride typical cruisers.

Yeah next time we plan to head out Ill give you some heads up. It’s always fun to ride with more people. I have been thinking about riding down to broken bow, Oklahoma to an area that has old logging roads. I go backpacking out there in December every year and I think it would be awesome to take the bikes in on those roads. I’m not yet sure if that’s legal, but I am looking into it.

[JJHACK]

There are some nice HID mountain bike lights as well with about 3 hour run time. No where near the distance I wanted but I will have to keep scouting around. With the rear carry rack on my bike I could easily connect a second battery just for the night rides?

[KD5PFF]

What’s the word on the 14t front sprocket? I’ve read that some people like it and some don’t. Are we sure that the F sprocket will fit the L? Also where’s the best place to order one? I figure it its cheap why not try it?! A concern I have is that the stock sprocket has the rubber piece that I’m guessing prevents chain slap, the others don’t. Is this bad?

[bobbyward]

i used a f on mine, the rubber with just a few miles was already falling off ! the rubber appears to just be bonded on and poorly at that , i liked gearing it up, i felt it made the bike run better ............................

[bobbyward]

i want to ride down that way but have not had that much time for a trip that long, i have a drz 400 and it runs faster but i think the honda might be easier on the body, just not as fast .............