Givi Bonneville Rack Fitting

I went with the Givi SR226 luggage rack in th end for the T100. £165 new inc delivery from ‘nativeviking’ on ebay. Took a couple of days to arrive, well packed, looks great and well made.

Downside was having to loose the official grab rail, which is gorgeous.

This should be an easy task, but god was it a bitch… I doubt the rail had ever been removed so that’s basically 8 years of corrosion. Took a hell of lot of elbow grease to get the 4 back bolts below out.

At the front, the two side bars looked like they both behind the rear shocks. Assumed I could remove the shocks and they’d just come off.. No. Turns out they are bolted right into the frame on the inside by an allen key bolt, with about 1 cm gap between the bolt and the rear mudguard. WFT? After some attempts to get to the bolt - not possible - I realised the only way was to remove the mudguard. Which was almost impossible. It’s held on with 4 little torx/star bolts (you can see two in the middle about), but one was so worn it took about half an hour with a succession of pliers and screwdrivers and help from my neighbour to get it off. Seriously, this was over an hour to remove 6 bolts!

Below shows the left bolt hole from the inside once the mudguard and rack were both off. You can see a semicircle cut into the plastic bit the battery sits in, which the bolt was also jammed against.

The new rack went on super easy. This time it bolts on the outside of the shocks. Thanks god. Only downside was the existing shock bolts were too short so had to switch for some slightly ugly ones that came with the rack. Will hopefully replace at some point. Was worried the whole thing would be a bit modern and industrial looking, but IMO it looks great.

Google Maps for Navigation

I’ve been using google maps (on Android) for a while now on two bikes. It’s basically pretty good and I cant see myself shelling out on a dedicated GPS, but has a lot of nasty pain points I'm working my way thorugh… Current setup is a Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.2.

Pros: Syncs with desktop/browser version (via My Places in older versions and the profile/person icon in the new one), so you can basically plan a route or just look places up one lunch at work and then pick them up instantly on the bike. Pretty decent turn by turn navigation. Can have music etc. playing and it will mute that temporarily to play the guidance voice when needed. Can turn the screen off and still have the voice guidance in-ear.

Cons: Maps absolutely burns through phone battery. In London, Google have plenty of little details wrong: it thinks you can use some bus/taxi only lanes, often it thinks you *can’t* turn right on unusual circular roads (e.g. Aldwich), it even suggested u-turning on a bridge once, which would be crazy on any bridge, but this one has a fence down the middle! And finally the touch screen… I need to get some damn capacitive gloves (or create them: future project)

After testing with WiFi, 3G, sound and screen each on vs off, it looks like it’s the screen that kills the battery. You can use maps with the screen on, and sound and wifi off, for about 2 hours before the phone totally dies. With screen off and sound on via headphones, it will do basically a full day’s riding. Makes me thing that a great feature would be if it had a mode where the screen just turns off on motorways etc and just comes on by itself when you need to make turnings.

I’ve got a fairly decent phone/GPS holder (was a present, not sure the brand) which is more or less waterproof (taped zip, but water would probably seep in between the two zips in super heavy rain). Not being able to use gloves is a constant pain. Mostly because there seems to be some button combination that I often trigger by accident which opens up the mail app and tries to send a diagnostic email to Google! Fairly sure it’s something like holding down the volume/power buttons on the side for ages, or maybe its just shaking it loads… but whatever, it basically means at some point you can be happily following a route and then the screen is completely covered by a big "which app should send this email" pop up which you cant get rid of until you stop and take a glove off. Same goes for when the low power message pops up. Really annoying. Worst thing I found recently was when I’d set an alarm and forgotten about it. Basically maps is put to background while the alarm flashes and sounds… and never stops. On a motorway that is pretty damn annoying. Seriously, there is no alarm time-out at all!

I'm now picking between rides where I need the screen vs rides where I want audio/battery and sticking the phone in a jacket pocket with one wired earpiece. Works fine but not idea.

So, looks like I need to rig up: power supply for the phone (just done, post to follow); capacitive gloves; bluetooth headset for audio.