• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

New 630 Safari tank

I fitted my Scott damper, swapped over from my 610. No problem with the Safari tank, however to pull the tank requires removing the bars and two underside hex bolts of the post mount, AND pulling the Scott Damper. Fine over
a beer on a nice day, not so in the desert or field repair. I am looking at the forward mounting hole of the Safari
Tank, and it is very tempting to continue the slot all the way through the tip. It is solid plastic, and would allow popping the rear of the tank up and sliding it backward to remove it, after removing the bottom braces. It would certainly make life a lot easier...
 
deepcdiver said:
I fitted my Scott damper, swapped over from my 610. No problem with the Safari tank, however to pull the tank requires removing the bars and two underside hex bolts of the post mount, AND pulling the Scott Damper. Fine over
a beer on a nice day, not so in the desert or field repair. I am looking at the forward mounting hole of the Safari
Tank, and it is very tempting to continue the slot all the way through the tip. It is solid plastic, and would allow popping the rear of the tank up and sliding it backward to remove it, after removing the bottom braces. It would certainly make life a lot easier...
Click to expand...
The way the tank has to be lowered onto the two rear posts, with the front up in the air to accomodate the very slight angle of the two 'holes' in the tank....tells me that you might not be able to lift the rear of the tank without raising the front off a little bit at least.
 
blakebird said:
I'll keep an eye on mine, when the light comes on I'll take a picture of the fuel level (translucent tank). I know the light works, but I think there will be quite a bit of fuel left when it comes on. I'm keeping my eye on the trip odometer to see what sort of range I have, and will use that.
Being able to see the fuel level is probably how I'll judge remaining range though.
Click to expand...

Is there a fuel sensor of some sort with the Safari tank? I am good with a translucent tank, in fact prefer it, just wanted to make sure that I was not stuck with a perpetual yellow light if the sensor on the stock tank didn't exist with the Safari.
 
blakebird said:
The way the tank has to be lowered onto the two rear posts, with the front up in the air to accomodate the very slight angle of the two 'holes' in the tank....tells me that you might not be able to lift the rear of the tank without raising the front off a little bit at least.
Click to expand...

I'll dick with it and see, before taking a hacksaw to the front of a $750 plastic tank :)
 
Kevin2735 said:
Is there a fuel sensor of some sort with the Safari tank? I am good with a translucent tank, in fact prefer it, just wanted to make sure that I was not stuck with a perpetual yellow light if the sensor on the stock tank didn't exist with the Safari.
Click to expand...
The low fuel sensor goes with the fuel pump, not the tank. Safari doesn't have to supply anything other than the extension umbilical to reach from the fuel pump's new location to the TE's wiring harness.
 
This is 186 miles into a tank, it was filled a couple inches below the brim.

Sidestand is on a chunk of 2x4, so it's more vertical than it would be on the sidestand alone.

P1020235.jpg
 
blakebird said:
The low fuel sensor goes with the fuel pump, not the tank. Safari doesn't have to supply anything other than the extension umbilical to reach from the fuel pump's new location to the TE's wiring harness.
Click to expand...

That is good to know.... was having trouble on the 1200GSA with the fuel sensor and asked about not using it all together. Was told I would have to live with the idiot light if I did that. Starting to put pennies away for the Safari upgrade.... I think I've done enough homework. Thanks for the info!
 
Kevin2735 said:
That is good to know.... was having trouble on the 1200GSA with the fuel sensor and asked about not using it all together. Was told I would have to live with the idiot light if I did that. Starting to put pennies away for the Safari upgrade.... I think I've done enough homework. Thanks for the info!
Click to expand...
I wasn't sure how it would work - my carb'd TE 610 had a sensor at the petcock, and I sort of expected something similar.
After installing the fuel pump in the Safari tank and putting a couple gallons in to leak-check, I turned the key on and saw the low fuel light come on as the pump primed the fuel rail. Rode to the gas station and topped it off and it went out.
I'm not sure how low the tank will be when it lights up - there will probably be a fair amount of fuel left....but it won't stay lit.
The equalizer tube running between the bottom of both lobes keeps a good balance (as long as both petcocks are open).
 
I am thinking of keeping the left petcock closed for a "reserve", but it may hold too much and be a PIA. I ran out of fuel on the 610 once on a day with strong headwind with the IMS 5 gallon tank, even leaning the bike over
a couple times I was two miles shy of Ciudad Constitucion. An old codger gave me a liter, would not take any payment, typical Mexican hospitality.
 
Bumping this to ask some questions about this tank

I noticed that the tank comes in black and red as well as the white and translucent white. Now, call me a nancy, but I really want to preserve the stock look of the bike. I love the stock graphics on the red tank, it is a beautiful machine as she is.

Would it be possible to rough up this tank and apply some sort of black paint to the bottom section (if red tank is selected, or, red to the top if black is selected) of it below the line to preserve the look of it and then slap another set of graphics on top? I have read about problems with these tanks before accepting paint and stickers and etc. Are they as seriously short lived as I hear? Even if it lasted a few months I could live with reapplying some red/black spray bomb now and then. Also noticed there are perforated stickers for some of the other safari tanks... is it really that simple? poke a few holes in the stickers?

has anyone tried getting a cloth cover made for a safari tank? at least for the top half?
maybe a fiberglass shell for the top half?
 
Anyone else have an issue with the Safari tank growing? With the tank on the rear pins, it initiall allowed me to use the stock bold and aluminum hold down collar up front. The first time I had to remove the tank though, I couldn't use the collar upon re-installation of the tank. Safari suggested emptying the tank, leaving it open for a few days, and promised that it would shrink back to size. I couldn't do that, plus it's a pain. I just cut a new washer and screwed it back down. The bolt is right up against the back of the slot though, and there is not a lot of metal remaining from the edge of the washer to the bolt hole. One must be careful to prevent the washer edge from digging into the tank side. I think I will try bending a stainless washer so that the edge rides up along the face of the tank, instead of cutting it off flat. Does this make sense to everyone?

Since the tank has grown a bit, the forks now come very close to contacting it when in full lock. No problem, but the gap is paper thin. Glad I didn't elect to file down the fork stops for a little extra turning ability.

NO, I don't want to sell my tank!

I think the general consensus is that you can't really paint those tanks, although Big Dog, Mark Sampson, has painted graphics on his Safari that seem to stick just fine. Maybe it's latex paint, or? I have been meaning to ask him about that for several years now, and should have when we ran across each other in Colorado last month. One more think on the to do list. As for perforated stickers, I tried it and it didn't work well. The product I tried didn't have enough adhesion and that was the problem. I still don't know if the holes will release enough vapor to let the rest stay on. Solid stickers or "wrap" will just bubble up. Same for any paint that won't breathe. Again, latex paint might work, but it's not durable and would rub off from knee contact, or any other contact, at least in my opinion.
 
Just mounted the Safari on my TE630. I went for a shakedown ride with it today. This tank is very narrow and is as comfortable as the stock tank with regards to the riding position. I found that the reserve light came on with approximately 1.5 gallons remaining in the tank, FWIW. I think that this tank will open up a whole new world of possibilities!
I am a little disappointed that there are limited ways to dress up the appearance of the tank. My Husky now looks a bit like a Beluga Whale!
 
Kenneth Webb said:
Anyone else have an issue with the Safari tank growing? With the tank on the rear pins, it initiall allowed me to use the stock bold and aluminum hold down collar up front. The first time I had to remove the tank though, I couldn't use the collar upon re-installation of the tank. Safari suggested emptying the tank, leaving it open for a few days, and promised that it would shrink back to size. I couldn't do that, plus it's a pain. I just cut a new washer and screwed it back down. The bolt is right up against the back of the slot though, and there is not a lot of metal remaining from the edge of the washer to the bolt hole. One must be careful to prevent the washer edge from digging into the tank side. I think I will try bending a stainless washer so that the edge rides up along the face of the tank, instead of cutting it off flat. Does this make sense to everyone?

Since the tank has grown a bit, the forks now come very close to contacting it when in full lock. No problem, but the gap is paper thin. Glad I didn't elect to file down the fork stops for a little extra turning ability.
Click to expand...

Yes mine has done the exact same.
 
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