Things that motorcycles don't have, but spyders do....

[PrivatePilot]

My wife's spyder needed a ball joint.

Decided that if one was going bad, chances are all 4 weren't likely far behind, so, yeah.

After having all the parts in a pile in the garage for a month now I finally got my brain sorted out enough (post concussion syndrome is kicking my ass, ugh) to be able to concentrate on a task at hand for more than 90 seconds, and at long last I got at it.

Press out, press in ball joints....fun fun.




It went reasonably smooth. The old ball joints came out with the assistance of a BFH and a socket. I put the new ones in the chest freezer for 24 hours and then used my heat gun to get the control arms nice and hot and between that and a ball joint installer the new ones went in with only minor drama for the most part. The nice thing about motorcycle vs car is...no rust.

Also ordered a BajaRon sway bar upgrade for it as well - based on seemingly everyone recommending it and waxing poetic about the results, it seems like it was one of the "must do" mods on these early gen spyders to help alleviate squirrliness in high speed corners / sweepers, and given as how corners have always been one of my wife's weaknesses from day 1 on 2 wheels, I figured this was a worthy upgrade as I want her to be comfortable on this thing and hopefully regain a lot of her lost confidence.




Turns out it's a bit of a PITA installation as you need to loosen the frunk to pivot it out of the way etc etc, but it's going together. My brain ability was exhausted after 3 or so hours today, so tomorrow will be day 4 on the project, but I should have it wrapped up. It's frustrating doing things that used to take me hours that now take days.

/end rant

 

[Wingboy]

Peculiar machine. Speaking of.... I'm sorting out a few things that came out of the bags of the Tenere i sold. I'll need to carry some of the usual stuff. Inner tubes, tire pump and a scissor jack! Ya, gotta get a compact one from PA.

 

[TwistedKestrel]

hrmm. I guess these things need alignments? Who out there is set up to do that - just BRP dealers?

 

[PrivatePilot]

hrmm. I guess these things need alignments? Who out there is set up to do that - just BRP dealers?

Yes, and yes, as I understand it, only BRP dealers can do the alignments.

That said, I'm going to go out and guess that the last alignment on this particular machine was completed when the ball joints were in good shape, so having effectively returned things to that same position again, I'm going to see if I can get away without one - nothing else was disturbed.

If I start to see weird tire wear patterns, then in it will go for an alignment.

 

[Mad Mike]

I have never worked on a Spyder, but I'm guessing it's simpler to align an ATV front suspension. I see two challenges: 1) sorting out the 10 million different expert opinions on the interweb. and 2) forcing a reset on the computer-controlled steering arrangement.

The only adjustment is toe-in, caster and camber are fixed and not adjustable. If the old alignment was good, it should be the same after changing ball joints -- the only parts that should alter alignment would be work involving the tie rods.

Even if you did need to align the suspension, toe-in is really easy to measure and adjust. Basic measuring, mechanical and math skills. And a way to reset the steering sensors in the CAN AM computer.

BRP will have some factory defaults, probably slight toe-in. Consider those to be recommendations, you can adjust to your preferences. A small amount of toe-in creates a bit of understeer that improves stability in a straight line, but makes it a bit harder to steer in corners. Aggressive riders may prefer a tiny bit of toe-out, this creates oversteer and more 'cornering on rails' feeling at the expense of straight-line stability.

 

[PrivatePilot]

2) forcing a reset on the computer-controlled steering arrangement.

Thankfully I have the hardware for that already - When we bought the machine in Quebec the cluster was displaying all in french of course from the previous owner. In any normal vehicle the language change is just a matter of going into the settings using the buttons on the dash or wherever to change it, which is what I understand is the case on the newer Spyders, but on this particular generation (and all other BRP's as well that use the same dash, which I've come to learn is a lot of them, snowmobiles and quads etc as well) you needed the dealership level BRP buds system to change it. You can change KPH/MPH, Celsius or Farenheit, and one or two other things, but you can't change the language.

I was pretty ****** to find out that one dealer I called wanted minimum 1 hour labor (plus tax) to plug in and change that language setting. So I took that $200 and put it towards the BUDS system directly and bought my own.

I did the same thing with my car when I wanted to turn off the charge cord theft alarm and it too was a dealer-only change.....I bought a GM dealer level programmer and did it myself. It's saved me more than it's cost in the time since I bought it.