Getting a Grip on These Bike Thingys

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I'd gotten a package from Cruiser Customising with a bunch of pretty shiny bike thingys for me to play with. One was the mirrors and that was the first thing that I put on the bike, I did it first because I figured it would be the easiest to do ... hahahahaha!! They went on before the trip to Canberra, and at Geurie (bout 25km) I had to stop and get out the wrench to tighten one of them. I had been afraid to tightened them too much when I first put them on, I soon learned that they need to be tight or the minute you get over 60km/h they start to wobble round.

Well after that seemingly simple task ended up being a bit of an ongoing job I was a little worried about putting on the grips.

One of the big warnings on the instruction leaflet that came with them was about not gluing up your throttle. I could see this becoming a worry. So I put it off. Then this week I have some time off work. I'd been planning to paint the kitchen, something I've been going to do for about a year or so but never gotten around to cause the ceiling is just so big, but then I hurt my shoulder and to tell the truth I just couldn't be bothered painting the ceiling this week anyway. I put on my new grips instead!!

New mirror with the old grip.

I Youtubed an instruction thingy which stated that it could be done in under 8 minutes, yeah right they've never dealt with me before.

After psyching myself up for a while I went out to the bike armed with a screwdriver, WD40 and a wrench. Lets do this!! Got the end of the clutch side off without damaging anything, then stuck the screwdriver under the rubber of the old grip easy enough. Spray that WD40 and then ...

......... give it a couple of twists and that old grip just slid straight off. 

I was feeling pretty proud of myself by now, all this had taken me maybe 2 minutes ... wow. I had to go brag to Terry. He then came out while I was getting the end off the throttle side ... oops.

For some reason the chrome endy bit of the throttle side was actually glued to the throttle sleeve and when I tried to twist that endy bit off it snapped the end off the throttle sleeve. Eeek, it's only a little bit of plastic that doesn't seem to do anything except make you break something when you pull the end off the standard grip, so I just kept going with the hopes that things would continue to work.

I got the glue out ready to get this job finished!! The little tube of glue was hard as a rock, they gave me two little tubes of glue, I found the other tube and it was hard too. This wasn't looking too promising. What is this stuff, they keep calling it superglue on the youtube thingy, but it didn't look like it was straight out superglue. Just as Terry proudly placed the superglue he'd managed to find in our kitchen draw, onto the bench, I decided not to use superglue. It was still soft and everything. I was having visions of trying to get a grip back off because it had only gone on halfway cause the superglue had dried before I could get it all the way on the bar. Nope I wasn't going to go blindly here, I turned to the Internet.

I found nothing that said what glue to use anywhere, oh comeon this has to be a basic fact that lots of people need to know!! Right, I was feeling a bit stumped when I couldn't find my answer with Google, Google has never failed me before. Then I had a flash of inspiration ... I would call the bike shop!! I called them and they told me to use grip glue, they have tons of it, I could come down and get a tube wheneva I liked. Me and Gizmo jumped into the car (she likes visiting the bike shop cause it's somewhere that lets her in) and went got glue!!

So now for the scary part, I put glue on the bar and slid the grip on. I was worried that the glue would be pushed along the bar when I pushed the grip on and then pool near the switch housing, not such an issue with the clutch side but on the throttle side... I don't know why I worried, it didn't do anything bad. And I put the throttle side on without a hic-up and the throttle even still moves and everything. Looks awesome too.