Sliders.

                Among the things I have bought for my bike I would say that the SpeedyMoto under body frame sliders are the most important because they help to keep my frame and engine intact in case of a crash. The way that the frame sliders work is that they attach to the frame of the bike and stay right against the fairings so the incase of a crash the impact will be delivered evenly to the plastic instead of the frame because the sliders hold the plastics taught. Normally the fairings would just break instantly in a crash but with the sliders holding them in place it allows them to take the majority of the impact. The instillation of these frame sliders was fairly simple but did require some creative thinking. To start off I had to remove the left and right fairings. After they were off I had to remove the rod the holds the engine to the frame. To do so I had to hold the one end in place with a socket wrench and turn the other side with the same size socket wrench. Well, turns out I had two socket wrenches but only one of the correct size, so I looked around the garage for a few minutes, found a drill bit that look like it would fit into the one end of the rod and locked it in place with a pair of pliers. This worked perfectly and after a minute of spinning I had the nut off the right side of the rod. Next I had to take the rod out of the frame and it got about three fourths of the way there before it was abruptly stopped. After assessing the situation I realized that with the rod out of the right side of the frame the weight shifted and made it so the holes on the left side no longer lined up. Thinking about a solution to this problem for a few minutes, I pulled the car jack out of the trunk or my car, got my dad to help me balance the bike and lifted the bike a few millimeters to free the rod. Then we quickly put in the new rod while the bike was still on the jack and then lowered the bike back to the ground. With the new rod in the frame and engine I attached the rubber sliders the each end of the rod and secured them into place. With the sliders now in place the next thing to do was to put the fairing back on. Everything went back together perfectly and the new frame sliders were hardly noticeable. After this little project I had spent $130 and an hour of my free time but my bike is now much more secure on the streets since the frame and engine are now protected. 

Fairings.

New Rod, left side.

New rod, right side.

With slider, right side.

With slider, left side. 

Dainese Jacket

                After I bought my 848 I realized that I also have to buy some riding gear to go with my bike. With my previous bikes I didn’t see s necessity in a leather jacket, boots or gloves. Now that I have such a powerful bike with 130hp attached to my right wrist I felt the need to start gearing up for my own good. The biggest worry I had was my torso, so I decided to invest in a leather jacket first. Luckily, one of my dad’s friends let me borrow his old leather jacket to use until I bought one. Picking out a leather jacket was a lot more work than I expected because there are so many different brands and types. First I had to pick which brand I wanted to buy from. There are many different brands but the two that seemed ideal to me were Alpinestars and Dainese. After reading many reviews about each brand I decided to go with Dainese. Now I had to pick the type of jacket I wanted, there are touring jackets, summer jackets, rain jackets, racing jackets, multipurpose jackets and textile jackets. After a good bit of research, I decided that I wanted a racing leather jacket because they offered the most protection and look the best style wise to me. Now there were even more subdivisions, there were racing jackets with titanium inserts, some with carbon inserts, some fully perforated, some partly perforated, some non-perforated, some with aerodynamic speed humps and the list literally goes on and on depending on how much money you have. I decided for me I wanted a racing jacket with composite protectors at the elbows, titanium inserts at the shoulders and a slot for a back protector.   The jacket from Dainese that had all of the features and was appealing to me just so happened to be called the “Racing” jacket, who would’ve guessed that? After buying the leather jacket, I was $600 poorer. Once I got the jacket in the mail I immediately took it out of the box and tried it on, fit like a glove. The leather was so smooth and flexible, the composite elbow protectors were confidently sturdy and comfortable and the titanium inserts on the shoulders were top notch and added to the appeal of the jacket. The inside of the jacket had a very nice sanitary liner that is designed to keep cool air in when it’s hot and warm air in when it’s cold. The jacket itself was a deep black with red accents across the arms and read Dainese across the front in white, making it very appealing to me. A nice feature of the jacket is that it has a zipper the goes the circumference of the waist that allows you to attach a pair of Dainese leather pants to the jacket, making it a two piece leather racing suit. Everything on the jacket from the stitching to the coloring to the tags was top notch and worth every penny I paid for it.