Moral-Flexibility.Net

I am generally a function over form sorta fella. In the case of the CBR250, however, I have hated the appearance of the stock exhaust since day one. I am not sure what it is about it, but it just looks wrong to me. Now, this was not a priority change as it was purely asthetic in nature – I didn’t want the bike to “roar” scaring old ladies and children as I race by, I just wanted something that didn’t look like it came off a flying saucer.

Yesterday I picked up a Hindle 14″ Supersport exhaust from the dealer and raced home (on only a few hours sleep naturally) to install it.

I think it looks amazing, unfortunately it sounds AMAZING as well. At idle, it registers 91db on the app on my phone (the stock exhaust registers 79db), a short 15 minute whip around this side of town had me enjoying the nuance of the exhaust, but my ears were ringing from the racket.

Sadly, as much as I like the appearance of this I have already emailed the dealer asking for an exhange on Hindles “Stealth” 16″ model with an insert.

I put the stock exhaust back on this morning. If it takes away from my riding pleasure I don’t care how good it looks, it’s gotta go.

Enjoyed yesterdays AMAZING weather by randomly riding East and seeing where random direction changes took me. As it turned out I drove right by my range (by accident) and it occured to me that I should have thrown a few handguns in a backpack and made it a proper outing.

Next time.

The weather is a little warmer today, but still nice. If I finish my chores soon enough then I’ll likely head out for some more exploring shortly.

This is a “drop-in” replacement for the stock horn (assuming you’re not using the combined low tone / high tone array which will likely require the use of a relay) and it took longer to remove the fairing than it did to install the new horn.

For $10 the FIAMM “Freeway Blaster” Horn is the best bang for its buck I’ve seen so far. The stock horn is a typical road runner style “meep-meep”, and I wasn’t particularly happy with it the few times I’ve had to use it.

This is a much more solid sounding horn. While it’s does seem so much louder as much as it has a lot more “oomph”.

I am looking forward to cranking away on this tomorrow, when it won’t annoy my neighbors nearly so much.

One bike modification I’d seen that seemed prudent to me was “chasis protectors” or “frame sliders”. Designed to protect the fairings if the bike falls over (moving or stationary), there is a HUGE variety of these things out there;

• Intuitive Frame Sliders
• Shogun Frame Sliders
• T-Rex Frame Sliders
• No name Frame Sliders

Not sure what makes one that different from the other, but I read every review I could find of the things and excluded a few simply because of customer service issues others had experienced.

In the end I went with Yoshimura Chasis Protectors, despite the extra cost, because the placement seemed most practical, and the reviews were favourable.

Installation took about an hour (most of that being the removal and replacement of the fairings), and the directions were precise, in English and included all the parts needed.

So far so good.

My brothers prediction when I bought my bike was that before long I would succumb to the urge to “mod” my bike up. I’ll admit that I do feel that urge a bit, and have now officially ordered the parts to make the first modification to my bike, asthetic as it may be.

HotbodiesFender Eliminator Kit – Slimming down the rear fender to a more streamlined look.

Initially I didn’t think this was something I’d be interested in, but the more I look at the big “swoop” rear fender on my bike the more I like the look of the tidied rear end, besides at $40 how can I resist?

Update: 15 Jun, 2012 – Ok, $40 turned into $80 with shipping and duty, but still after two hours of monkeying around with the tail end of the bike the deed is done. The directions included with the kit are excellent, and there is an accompanying youtube guide to installing the kit from Hotbodies Racing which, while a pain to watch in the garage for most, was a huge help figuring some of the details out.

I’d not be in a hurry to go through that process again, but I really do like the cleaned up look better.

Update: 15 August, 2012 – The biggest complaint I’ve heard from others about this kit is that after a little while the plastic “box” that the turn signal stocks mount to develops cracks and eventually the stocks break free.

My kit developed this problem within 2000km.

Hot Bodies Fender Eliminator installed on the 2012 Honda CBR250R.

Crack developing on the corner of the plastic “box”.

In an effort to fix the problem I melted horizontal channels across the corner and crack.

Then filled the channels and surrounding material with Epoxy to restore some rigidity to the “box”.

The fix pictured above is on the right hand rear corner of the “box”, I have already done this fix to the left hand rear corner which developed the same problem approximately 800km ago.