• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!

TR650 luggage options

RidingDonkeys said:
I'm operating from afar, and speculating using photos, but that Caribou rack may be a great start to something a lot better. The achilles heel of the factory rack, other than being plastic, is that it it extends rearward far past the mounting points. At the point that you are mounting weight, there is no support from underneath. This puts a lost of stress on the mounting points too, causing splits in multiple locations. Here is RuggedExposure's recent damage photo:
IMG_20130509_083427_327_zps4ff36460.jpg



For those of us who are never going to carry a passenger, this Caribou plate be able to bolt directly to the factory mounting points with just some added spacers for clearance over the seat. This would also move the load further forward for better balance. Thoughts?
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Link to the Caribou rack you are referring to?
 
What I'm suggesting is removing the plastic rack, and then using spacers to mount the Caribou rack in its place. It would be higher, and cover the back seat. However, for those of us who won't carry a passenger, this would put the weight in a better position. It would be a cheap fix too.
 
RidingDonkeys said:
What I'm suggesting is removing the plastic rack, and then using spacers to mount the Caribou rack in its place. It would be higher, and cover the back seat. However, for those of us who won't carry a passenger, this would put the weight in a better position. It would be a cheap fix too.
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I've been struggling with that in the last couple of days, and cannot figure out how to do that and still be able to remove the seat...
 
I did indeed mount mine to allow seat removal.

Will definitely be looking to replace the rack with a more durable aftermarket product.

So far, no issues with general road commuting but will remove the case for any off-road duties.

JM.
 
Finally dug out the Dowco Iron Rider Overnight Bag that I've used successfully on lots of other bikes to see if it mates up okay with the TR650 rack. Looks good to me. By no means intended for heavy loads, but plenty of capacity and strength for tools, compressor, jacket, hat, snacks, maps, etc. The bag itself is extremely sturdy, rigid bottom and semi-rigid everywhere else. On the Tiger, I actually used it as an anchor point for lots of other gear.IMG_2685.JPGIMG_2686.JPGIMG_2687.JPGIMG_2688.JPG
 
viridicyana said:
Finally dug out the Dowco Iron Rider Overnight Bag that I've used successfully on lots of other bikes to see if it mates up okay with the TR650 rack. Looks good to me. By no means intended for heavy loads, but plenty of capacity and strength for tools, compressor, jacket, hat, snacks, maps, etc. The bag itself is extremely sturdy, rigid bottom and semi-rigid everywhere else. On the Tiger, I actually used it as an anchor point for lots of other gear.View attachment 26584View attachment 26585View attachment 26586View attachment 26587
Click to expand...

Good fit!
 
Yesterday my cell rang, it was Bryon at Bills Motorcycles Plus letting me know my brmoto rack and wolfman expedition bags were in. I had him toss them at the UPS man who dropped them off at my place today. Install was painless, I spent about an hour total, took a bunch of pictures, mounted them without the rear rack and then with the rear rack. I'll be leaving the rear rack on, without it I think I'd melt the webbing that goes across the seat at some point. My camera is having issues, and while I have about 50 photos with it I can't read them with my computer. So we get cell phone shots for now.

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Notice the lift in the above photo, the rack goes above the siderack mount and spacers.

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Fender failure fix ****************************************

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With zero miles on them I'm really excited. These are my first soft saddle bags. I watched the wolfman videos a bunch of times before finally pulling the trigger. Setup is pretty intuitive. I'm an off road amateur, so having a dirt nap worthy setup is great. The components, hardware and documentation are all great quality. My only remaining curiosity is what it will do to my mileage. $490ish for the whole setup, Bill's got an extra set in for stock, or you can get them from brmoto.com. Each of the sides weighs 3lbs 10 oz, the hw is 10 oz, the cross is 1lb. Total for the setup without bags is just under nine lbs, the wolfman expedition bags are 5lbs 10 oz.

I'll post an update when I get some miles on them. Really looking forward to what Berg comes up with for the rear top rack.
 
Krussel, that post may have just convinced me to pull the trigger on Berg's racks instead of waiting on Happy Trails.

Can you tell me what the diameter of the tubing on the loop is? I have a set of Ortlieb QLR2's and need to make sure they will attach.
 
Dang, that 3/4" tubing is a killer for me. The QLR2's only work up to 16mm (5/8") tubing. Looks like I'm waiting on Happy Trails after all.
 
RidingDonkeys said:
Krussel, that post may have just convinced me to pull the trigger on Berg's racks instead of waiting on Happy Trails.

Can you tell me what the diameter of the tubing on the loop is? I have a set of Ortlieb QLR2's and need to make sure they will attach.
Click to expand...

I got impatient waiting for the Happy-Trail racks too, so I modified my KLR 650 Happy-Trail racks so I can now use my KLR 650 panniers or soft luggage. It adapts easy, no welds required using bar stock available from any hardware store. It was going to be just a temporary setup, but it works so well and I like it so much, I am going to keep it instead of selling the racks with my KLR.. You can see how it looks on the ride report I posted here http://www.cafehusky.com/threads/no...50-where-ya-gonna-go.28364/page-3#post-310725
 
RidingDonkeys said:
TE250Guy, can you post some photos showing how you did the mod?
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Here are a couple of photos. I probably should do a complete write-up, but the photos are pretty straightforward and tell the story.

Adapting KLR 650 Pannier Racks to TR 650​

Since I have a KLR 650 and stuff from it, and Happy-Trail's racks have not been released yet, I adapted the HT racks I had to my Terra. It requires no welding and some readily available at Lowes, Home Depot, etc strapping or bar stock or whatever the right word. I used 1/8" and 3/16". The metal straps can be easily bent in a vice with the help of a large crescent wrench and a hammer to do the twisting and bending. Though I mounted the HT SU rack, any of the KLR racks will fit using the same adaptors.

The rack mounts at three attach points and in addition to providing a rack, also dramatically stiffens and strengthens both the rear TR 650 rack and the rear fender. It is strong enough to lift the bike, though I won't. Here is what the finished Installation looks like:


Note that the LH and RH side are not symmetrical at the muffler hanger bracket. I have some excess material on the adaptor below where I bolted in so I can lower the rack, but I like it the way it is. It provides ample clearance between the adaptor and the muffler and heat shield. My legs are well away from the pannier and do not hit it if I waddle along with both of my legs touching the ground. Also note that I uses a spacer where the rack attaches to the muffler hanger adaptor to minimize any flex. I want it to flex or even bend in a crash to absorb the loads and not be a sharp impact at the attachments to the Terra. The non-structural spacer is just a short piece of PVC pipe.

Here are some details:








Hope this helps.
 
RidingDonkeys said:
Dang, that 3/4" tubing is a killer for me. The QLR2's only work up to 16mm (5/8") tubing. Looks like I'm waiting on Happy Trails after all.
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I believe you stated somewhere that you already have a QLR2 bag - have you tried putting something that is 3/4" in diameter in those hooks?
 
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