Top 5 Motorcycle Life Hacks (Part 3)
Odor Hack
So for number one, we’re going to use an old odor hack called the dryer sheet. Because 20 000 kilometers down the road, my gear stinks.
I put one in each boot, I put a couple underneath the liner of my helmet, I put a few in the pockets of my jackets … and that’s it!
Now I smell like a lavender field rolling down the road. You can also get your dirty old gloves to smell like a pine forest. Your leathers could smell like an arctic breeze … whatever floats your boat.
Waterproof Side Cases
Now let’s say that it starts raining. And let’s pretend that these side cases aren’t waterproof and I’ve got a macbook with a suede cover in here that I really don’t want to get wet.
Two options! Both of which involve hacking my side case with this garbage bag.
If I don’t mind looking like a bit of a putz, I can tie my garbage bag around the entire piece of luggage. Alternately, I could put the contents of my sidecase in the garbage bag, and then put the bag of stuff back into my sidecase.
Either way, I now have a waterproof luggage solution.
D.I.Y ABS adjuster
Now , I like to ride off-road but for some unimaginable reason, the engineers at Suzuki didn’t give me adjustable ABS on the V-Strom. So when I go down a sandy hill, the back tire refuses to lock up and I either look very fast or very stupid, depending on whether I make it to the bottom.
So we’re going to hack the fuse box of my Strom. One look at the diagram tells me which fuse supplies electricity to the ABS valve. So I yank that out and I can now skid around to my heart’s content.
Of course I should tell you that tampering with the ABS is dangerous and not advisable and should never be done on public roads and it voids insurance and it’s super fun and blah blah blah…
Oh by the way, you can also wire up a switch to this fuse, so you can put a button on your dash and toggle the ABS on and off whenever you like. I’m too lazy to bother with the electronics but it would be more convenient than rooting around in my fuse box every time I go off-road.
Sun Peak Alternative
Now , my fourth motorcycle life hack helps you see on bright, sunny days.
If you use a helmet with no sun peak – like the majority of riders – then you know how much glare comes through here. Even when the sun is high in the sky, you get a lot of light coming through like this.
So grab a roll of black electrical tape and make yourself a nice sun visor. An inch in width is probably all you need, so start with one strip and then see how you like it. The idea is that you can angle your head so that the sun is always behind this black strip. And that eliminates a lot of glare.
Keeping it cool!
And finally , the fifth life hack comes straight from my hot-weather gear video.
Ice cubes! When you know you’re going on a hot ride, stick a few of these into your pockets. They’ll keep you cool and even when they melt, the evaporating water will endothermically draw heat away from your body.
It really works for staying cool and as long as your destination is more than an hour away, you should be dry by the time you arrive.
And that’s it for the third installment of motorcycle life hacks. Thank you very much for watching.