there are catalogs and websites full of parts for your bike with risers and
custom levers and seats of different sizes and Heights and configurations all
to make that bike custom to you having that bike properly fitted does make a
difference in performance control and comfort I'm going to show you how to
properly fit your bike adventure bikes are configured for the street when they
come from the dealer so we need to set them up so we can use them off-road and
on the street and when I set them up I always start right at the foundation a
bike setup for the street will put the shift lever equal to the top of the foot
peg the problem with the adventure bike is we have large off-road boots that are
difficult to get underneath the lever so the first thing we need to do is adjust
this up so we can get underneath it when we're standing and then when we're
riding we need to downshift so we can just tap the top of the lever there's
two basic configurations this one here set on splines and there's a pinch bolt
right at the bottom so I'm gonna remove that pinch bolt shift the lever up one
spline and that'll give us just enough height once I have this off I'm just
gonna shift it just so slightly this way once it goes back on ... means that now from
this position it's much easier for me to get underneath it and I can still get up
on top of the lever this is the halfway point between off-road and on-road don't
forget to put your pinch bolt back in this is a very common fine-tune
adjustment these nuts here or Jam nuts one is going to be a standard thread one
will be a reverse to adjust the lever here simply turn this adjuster
raise it to the position that fits you on the other side of the bike you'll
seldom find adjustments for the rear brake but if you do you want to raise
that lever so it's the same height as the top of your foot peg if you're not
able to adjust the actual lever you may be able to find an aftermarket component
that puts a step or raises the height of the brake pedal to be the same height as
the top of the foot peg so this bike has a two step so I can catch one edge for
the road and I can catch the higher step when I'm offroad . While the handlebars are
set up ideal for the street my shoulders are relaxed my elbows are down and I
have this natural downward slant to the handlebars so my wrists are nice and
relaxed the problem with this for adventure riding is when I stand up and
forward on the bike now I've got a kink in my wrist and my shoulders end up in
front of the handlebars which means I don't have a good relaxed position
offroad so we need to make an adjustment rotating these handlebars just far
enough forward to get them in front of my shoulders typically the handlebars
have four bolts that clamp them down and hold them in position what we ended up
doing is loosening up two or four of those well rotate the handlebars forward
so your hands don't end up angled so much that they're they're twisted you're
looking until they just kind of level off when you're standing the handlebars
should be just slightly forward of your shoulders when sitting the handlebars
will be a slightly farther reach which is still feel pretty natural on the
wrist angle once you find that position tighten those bolts back down
the next step is getting the levers at the right angle in an ideal situation
when your hands on the handlebars and you extend your fingers out they should
land directly on top of the lever in this case because I rotated the
handlebars up I get a very significant kink in my wrist and it bends down for
offroad when you're standing position and you
extend those fingers they'll also end up on top of the levers
to set this properly you split the difference
just like the handlebars this is set up with a pinch bolt setup loosen up the
pinch bolt rotate the controls and you from a sitting position you should be
able to reach out and just have the very slight angle on the hand to test that
it's correct stand up and you should also end up with a slight bend at the
wrist from the standing position if it ends up very kinked in either direction
split the difference between the two once you find the ideal position lock it
back down setting the engagement zone properly means that you can disengage
the clutch completely when you pull it in with two fingers and it pinches up
against the two fingers around the handlebars when we're riding off-road we
want to be using two fingers on the clutch two fingers around the bars so if
we hit a root or a log or some kind of movement on the road it can't jump out
of our hands that's why we're not using four fingers as soon as you start to
ease that clutch into the engagement area it should come coming to engagement
right as it comes off the fingers so you don't want to have a lot of travel
before that clutch starts to engage this bike has an adjustable lever and all you
have to do is spin this lever to the number that you like so that the
engagement zone is set in the correct position you'll do the same thing with
the brake you'll want to set that adjustments that you can use full brakes
with just two fingers the final adjustments going to be free play on the
throttle from the factory they put roughly ten to fifteen millimeters of
free play which means there's movement in that throttle before it actually
engages power you want to dial all of that out so that
has as close to zero as possible this throttle has zero free point
there's no movement before powering gauges they all have a fine-tune
adjustment up near the throttle itself somewhere and you'll dial that out until
the free plays out it's important to make sure that it's not gonna bind
before you go ride have the motorcycle running in neutral and turn the
handlebars all the way left and all the way to the right to make sure it doesn't
rev if the bike starts to rev you need to put more FreePlay back into the
throttle like I said you want to get as close to zero as possible but not where
it revs when the handlebars turn the purpose of having zero FreePlay means
that you have fine motor control when you're off road and you're not trying to
take slack out and guess when you're gonna have power you're not gonna run
out of power before it hits all the way to the stop it only takes a few minutes
to get your bike set upright and if you've never done this before just make
marks so if you don't like what you did you can go right back to where it was
set up however sometimes the factory settings don't give you enough
adjustment to optimise it for you if you're over 6 foot maybe you'll need
risers you can play around with those if you're maybe a little short of stature
or the bikes a little too tall then you might be able just to either put shorter
shocks on it or just drop the preload on both sides to drop your actual total
ride height that could be helpful there's seats you can change so you can
put a taller seat on that way it takes less energy to move from a sitting
position to a standing position or put a lower seat on it just so you can reach
the ground when your bike is ergonomically adjusted it'll be more
comfortable and you'll be in better control