• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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

I had two of the fuel bottle holders already - attached them to my E-12's.

I picked up two more this morning when I got the Expeditions... can carry an additional four liters of fuel now.
Should be close to 300 mile range on a steady paced trip like the Haul Rd.
 
Packed and ready to go camping in Wyoming this weekend... all dirt route from about Berthoud north, working our way thru Red Feather Lakes area, then west of Walden and up.
Wanted to put a T63 up front, but decided I'd just wear these tires out. If I took a half worn front off I'd never put it back on.


P1040257_zpsca1a0c1b.jpg
 
Back in Mid February I posted this here. Yesterday I was walking down my driveway and I spotted something on the ground. It was a small rubber stopper. I checked the RHS exhaust and sure enough the rubber stopper which holds the heat shield was gone. It had failed at the point where it sits in the exhaust bracket, and the mushroom head of the stopper had sheared off pretty cleanly. I haven't had any luggage or anything else touching the heat shields on this bike for ages, and the RHS stopper lasted about 4000km longer than the LHS. My fix on the LHS was pretty good so I'll duplicate it after work today for the RHS.

Learned something new about the bike which anyone else thinking about strapping luggage like the Giant Loop bags on might like to know.
I went away for the weekend. 350km trip away and another 350km back. After the trip out, the bag worked great. Halfway home on the return leg I found that the heat shield on the left side had melted into the exhaust pipe.

IMAG0518.jpg


I figured it wasn't going to get any worse, gave the bag a minor adjustment on that side, and headed home.

The heat shields on the exhaust are held on by two torx screws at the top, and a rubber stopper at the front, on the side, to hold the heat shield away from the pipe.

IMAG0525.jpg



IMAG0524.jpg



Here's the cause. The rubber stopper has gone missing. This allowed the shield to bend more than usual and hit the pipe and melt. Looks like an alternative solution to the rubber stopper is required here.
IMAG0522.jpg
 
Not sure where to post this...
Anyone using a Nomad rear rack with the BRMoto side racks? I'm wondering if they work together.
 
Same for me as well. Still not sure about side racks, but BRMoto's would be my choice.
I have the Nomad rack, i'm sure it's the first iteration of it for the TR. Supposedly later revisions had different
were slightly different, and probably fit better than the original, at least mine.

Just noticed your avatar, I have a picture of myself as a kid on my XR75. Very similar picture
 
It seems that people really like the BR Moto side racks, but I was wondering why more people don't go with the TCI Outack Rack System? If I buy BR Moto racks, then I need to spend an extra $68 for the Happy Trails Pannier kit to mount hard bags, right? It looks like almost any rack system and pelican cases are within about $100 of the factory racks and panniers, I think.. Am I accurate with any of this? Do any of the aftermarket rear racks work with the factory system? Thanks in advance for the advice.
 
It seems that people really like the BR Moto side racks, but I was wondering why more people don't go with the TCI Outack Rack System? If I buy BR Moto racks, then I need to spend an extra $68 for the Happy Trails Pannier kit to mount hard bags, right? It looks like almost any rack system and pelican cases are within about $100 of the factory racks and panniers, I think.. Am I accurate with any of this? Do any of the aftermarket rear racks work with the factory system? Thanks in advance for the advice.


Maybe it is a timing thing? BR Moto was the first to the punch in making racks. TCI was a bit late to the game. I think TCI makes a great product, and I'm more than happy with their racks. The one piece design makes for an extraordinarily strong system. I've strapped a 55lb ruck to my tail rack for the daily commute (60+ miles) several times without any issues.
 
It seems that people really like the BR Moto side racks, but I was wondering why more people don't go with the TCI Outack Rack System? If I buy BR Moto racks, then I need to spend an extra $68 for the Happy Trails Pannier kit to mount hard bags, right? It looks like almost any rack system and pelican cases are within about $100 of the factory racks and panniers, I think.. Am I accurate with any of this? Do any of the aftermarket rear racks work with the factory system? Thanks in advance for the advice.


For me, I'd only be using side racks as a support for a "rackless" system, like the Giant Loop Siskiyou, Adventure Spec Magadans, Enduristan Monsoon, or something like that. The exhausts stick out quite a bit, so I'm not sure that rackless bags will work without melting. When I say rackless, I'm taking about the kind that use the passenger seat as a support, and they usually attach somewhere around the passenger pegs.
 
For me, I'd only be using side racks as a support for a "rackless" system, like the Giant Loop Siskiyou, Adventure Spec Magadans, Enduristan Monsoon, or something like that. The exhausts stick out quite a bit, so I'm not sure that rackless bags will work without melting. When I say rackless, I'm taking about the kind that use the passenger seat as a support, and they usually attach somewhere around the passenger pegs.



The pillion seat on the TR650 is pretty wide. I have a Giant Loop Great Basin bag. I also have pannier racks for my soft luggage. The Giant Loop bag is a snug fit on the rear without racks.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-_Q7SEc0pT0o/URsqpiKuZqI/AAAAAAAAIa8/HnaMfMDTAVg/s903/IMAG0508.jpg
With racks on, it won't even fit, or it has to be mounted so far forward that I have nowhere to sit. I did have a melting incident with the Giant Loop bag, but not due to the exhaust being too wide, but due to failure of the rubber stoppers keeping the plastic heat shields away from the exhaust. Go back 8 posts in this thread to see the cause. Almost every Terra i've inspected is missing at least one of these rubber bumpers. Fixed with a couple of 4x30mm bolts and locknuts.
 
I'm with RD on this. Bought the TCI rack and could not be any more happy. I have put my TCI rack through hell, had to bend the sides back out a few times and it is still solid. ( maybe not exactly straight but solid). Oh, and it really protects the cans from get off's in the rock.
 
It seems that people really like the BR Moto side racks, but I was wondering why more people don't go with the TCI Outack Rack System? If I buy BR Moto racks, then I need to spend an extra $68 for the Happy Trails Pannier kit to mount hard bags, right? It looks like almost any rack system and pelican cases are within about $100 of the factory racks and panniers, I think.. Am I accurate with any of this? Do any of the aftermarket rear racks work with the factory system? Thanks in advance for the advice.


Can you even buy BR Moto racks now? I know for sure that his operation is shut down.
 
Their website is still up... I haven't tried to contact them, though. I'm actually hoping I don't need to buy side racks.
 
He retired I think. Stovebolt (inmate on ADV) a friend of mine did all of the welding for BR. BR decided to shut down and Stovey had to find other work. I'm pretty sure that if he has anything left it's just the hoops. But call him and you might get lucky.
 
Wow, it's looking like the options to accessorize these bikes might end up getting smaller and smaller. It's seeking like the factory hard bags might be my best best if I want top loading hard cases - that is if they are available, and I can part with a decent chunk of change..
 
Update: I called Hall's (same town I live in), and they said they don't have any of the hard bag kits, and the warehouse shows none, and not sure there will actually be any more. Bill's in Oregon said he has 2 sets left, but getting them to Illinois from Oregon will cost a bit. Don't know what to do..????
 
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