What i didn`t like and wanted replaced / What i can recommend :
- The Hepco & Becker crashbars. Too close to the back brake liquid reservoir, exhaust manifold cover and outside of the tank - not so strong crashes will push the crashbars against these 3 parts of the bike and always bend them. Also too close to the inside part of the fuel tank - sometimes touched it on little surface and started annoying vibration.
Will go next year in January to my friends from
http://heavyduties.ro/home_page.html to have some custom crashbars made. They`ll be the ones to also supply the aluminium panniers and their racks and a topcase maybe.
- The central stand on my 3AJ is made by a German company called 5Stars. You can also see it in the above picture. Never found too much info about them on internet. It took a lot of off-road abuse from rocks and tree roots and is now flat, instead of having a curbature at a lean angle. This means that when i put my bike on it, it doesn`t fall on the back wheel. She stays perfectly right, little in balance and in 2 seconds she goes in front, falling from the central stand. I`ll have it curved back or i`ll ask the guys from HeavyDuties.ro to manufacture a perfect copy. So, if you have a central stand, pay attention at the abuse you send to it. Sooner or later you`ll have a bike unable to stay on its feet. When you`ll be in a forest, away from any inhabited place or any people and you want to fix a tyre puncture or waxing the chain, you`ll be swearing a lot. i cannot conceive any of my motorcycles without a center stand.
- The black plastic cover that sits under the dashboard/clocks interfered with the motorcycle front plastics (i don`t know the english word) and, from time to time, also started annoying, untraceable vibration. I bought rubber gaskets for door insulation (half cilindrical profile, impecable for the job), glued them to the cover and no vibration since then. You can spot the gasket in the 2nd picture from the 1st post.
- Being mostly lone mountain rider, always carried with me a lot of tools, air compressor, tyre tools, tubes, cables, etc. Somewhere round 5 kilos. You can see the pack on most of my "before restoration" pics. Heavy burden for the original rack that got a little bent in the process after all the offroad jumps/suspension working. I still have to figure out a way to hide all these tools on several places on the bike. The air compressor will be taken out from the plastic cover and i want to place it inside the original tools box of the motorcycle, the tubes will be placed in custom triangle textile bags attached to the new crashbars or to the front fender, i`ll try to buy some hex keys made from metal flatband for the wheels big screws and mount them directly to the swing arm and front suspension. As for the rest of the tools, cables, etc i think an aluminium box welded on the bashplate will do just fine.
- The front windscreen is a pita for a 187 cm rider like me. I always wanted to change it.
Uselessly spent 70 euros for a touring windscreen from German company called MRA. Waisted money on a useless, intelligence lacking part. Don`t buy it if your height exceeds 1.75m. MRA has this philosophy of bending down the windscreens (yes, not up) in order to direct the airflow exactly in the upper part of your lid (forehead / top of the head area). If i`d be 1.75 it would be perfect, but i`m 1.87 and the airflow hits the helmet in the eyes/ears area and the noise is... no comment. Smaller noise than the original windscreen, but still makes me sworn thinking of the lost money on this product (return policy is not that simple when buying from Germany through little Romanian ghost companies). I`ll maybe go for the windshield sold by the English guys at
if i`ll have a 100 % confirmation it`s ok for me. Other choices - make one by myself fr-om a very big scooter windshield i have in my garage or go to an old guy in Serbia`s capital, Belgrade, that i`ve heard of he makes custom windshields. As i said - pita. Saw Mezo`s windshield and looked great but i think postal taxes from Australia to Romania are not the best idea. Will see.
- One of my craziest dreams about the 3AJ is taking off the left plastic cover from the bike and replace it with an additional fuel tank. I talked to a guy from my city that makes the plastics for most of the sport motorcycles that participate in national/international races and he said he can make a mould from the exterior of the plastic and start fabricate a fibre tank. He said that there are adhitives that rezist to fuel and the tank will be strong enough (he will put iron mesh inside the fibre i think). I had the same strange idea for the main tank and he said he can take the original 23 litres, put a layer of material on it, thicken it by aprox. 2 cm, pour a mould over the extended tank and start fabricate a newer fibre tank. These fibre tanks are an idea, but, i remained focused only on the left tank and, about one year ago, i discovered this italian website (ch2racing.it) and the idea of an aluminium side tank seemed more robust (just my fear of off-road crash + fire) -
http://tinyurl.com/opu7eos
- My saddle needed to be recovered. It was perfectly and cheap done by a guy in my city but because of the extra 2 layers of materials placed underneat the cover for improved comfort i now have a bigger saddle between my legs and i stay a little little stretched + i am not as down and close to the gas tank as i was before. This means that 5% i feel the bike little different. Still, this is an impression after making only the first 2000 km. Maybe as i use it will get little lower and better. So - if you put more layers on the saddle for more comfort ask the upholsterer to use less material in the first part of the saddle, the one the goes up like a beak and stays parallel with the tank.
- If you go off-road, change the original fender. When clay gets there it will break the fender along one of the molding/fabrication/tension lines. Impossible to fix as the plastic is flexible and unglueable. Tried it. Didn`t work. Bought an original second hand fender just to have it painted in the bike`s colours but i never mounted it. The lower triple clamp has already 4 threaded holes in it. You buy any cheap enduro fender, make 4 holes in it and put it up on the bike. Because it was a Yamaha WR front fender (20 euros), I needed to put some spacers for the fender not to touch the exhaust manifolds, but this is simple job - used some thicker washers and problems solved. Air also enters between the fender and the front cover / plastics and goes to the cylinder head cover.
- A lot of the stickers were done from zero by a designer from my city (the Chesterfield, the Motoforms, the Byrd logo, Yamaha red racing lines, etc).
I`ll talk to Mezzo and see how he or i can upload them on the site in order to be used by anyone who wants them, as they are in vectorial format.
Or, if any moderator can help/give a suggestion as i am quite new on this forum...
- All the metal parts of the motorcycle (except the engine and the tank) were aluminium beans blasted and powdercoated. Which i trully and undisputedly recommend. I had the chance to have a good specialist in my town. What i do not recommend - my pov: i payd big bucks for having the manifolds covered in ceramic thermorezistant powdercoated paint. It didn`t lasted at all. If i`d have had them painted with thermopaint from a cheap spray it would have been the same thing. Also have the final exhaust powdercoated with normal black paint. It also didn`t last at all. Few years ago when i spray painted the final exhaust (thermo rezistant paint) everything was ok. It`s obviously the normal paint that was not up to the task.
Both the above mentioned parts were burnt or little rusted (manifold) after 2-300 kms. I found some exhaust manufacturer in Serbia and i`ll buy the final exhaust from him, replacing the original which is way too heavy and also full of rust. For the manifold, maybe i`ll make the sacrifice and buy the stainless steel one from
http://www.kedo.de/
Also, please don`t have any happy ideas (as i had) about making a little rectangular cut into the exhaust`s body in order to remove the rust. It`s an exhaust inside an exhaust as i found out the hard way. Removed one layer and found another one 3 mm lower.
- Some people will tell you to put 15/40 sprockets combination on the chain (smaller - 102, instead of 106 i think) for bigger speed, instead of the original 15/45 as it is on my 1989 Tenere. Biggest mistake i ever did. Had this back in 2010. No torque, had to constantly chew the gearbox. If you use your 3AJ also off-road (even if they are just easy trails) never make this mistake. Alone on the saddle, squizzing the throttle as a mad man, i wasn`t able to keep the pace with another 3Aj rider that also carried passenger. He only used gas in curves on fast mountain gravel roads, while i had to change the gears on and on.
