Affordable Motorcycle Mods: Upgrades That Won’t Break the Bank

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit. Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. In today's episode, I'll be looking at ways to modify your motorcycle to be your own. While there are a ton of upgrades that can leave your wallet much lighter, I want to focus on the mods you can do to your bike that won't break the bank. They're cheap enough to do that often these should be the first mods you do to your bike. I want to start with really the cheapest way to modify your bike that you can, which is essentially the ones that are zero cost whatsoever. And this is to adjust your bike. So many people forget about this. Your bike has a ton of adjustments you can make without having to buy new parts. And a lot of us, we get so excited. We get a new bike and we just think,"Oh, I got to go and buy something and that's how I'm going to modify it to make it my own." Well, there's a lot of adjustability just built into these and many times this adjustment is enough to make a change for the better. So let's start with the handlebars. Now, a lot of riders will look at a handlebar and they'll say, "Oh, I want to get a different handlebar. Because that'll make it have a different reach than I have today." And while that is true, you can also just rotate the handlebars in the clamps to adjust their position. And sometimes just a little bit is all you actually need. So rotating them back usually lowers the grips and moves them closer to the rider. And this could be good if you're a shorter rider. While if you rotate them forward, usually this raises the grips and moves them a little further away from the rider. And this is often good for a taller rider. Again, it's not a huge amount of adjustment that we're talking about here. A few degrees either direction actually can make a big to make it more comfortable for you. And the goal really is to find a neutral position. And this couple of degrees difference can make the difference between a bike that makes you feel exhausted and tired all the time from just a very short run to one that fits and that you can just for hours on end. So let's look at the hand levers. Just like the handlebars, the levers can be adjusted, too. If you loosen the clamp and rotate them on the bar, this can change the angle of the lever relative to your hand position on the grip. Now, if you did rotate your handlebars like we just spoke about, you may need to adjust your hand levers after you've moved the handlebars as their relative position will change. If you think of it, if we rotate the handlebars, well, the levers are rotating with the handlebars because their position is relative to that. And that may no longer match with how your hands are going to be held onto the bars. So you may need to just loosen up those clamps and rotate those hand levers up or down to make them adjust specifically for you. Now, some levers even allow you to adjust how far the lever is from the bar. And I like to adjust this so that my inner two fingers can hold the lever with my outer two fingers still on the grip. And I should be able to fully pull the lever to disengage the clutch or activate the front brake, leaving my outer fingers on the grip. And this maximizes your hold on the and minimizes the chance that you're going to grab a fistful of break since you can really only use one or two fingers. Now, some levers also allow you to control the engagement this is usually on a cable-actuated lever, but some other levers can give you a little bit of control even without it being cable-actuated. And this can be used to really increase or decrease the point at which the front brake begins to engage or the clutch begins to disengage. And this works very well if you choose to have those two fingers always on the approach. So the lever is fully activated before it hits those fingers. So if you think about it you're squeezing those levers, well, you want them to fully engage, let's say on the brake and be fully locked up before it starts to crush your other two fingers. And if you have that set, you've got the full movement that you need just in that two fingers of movement. Now, if we look down at the foot controls, your gearshift lever is attached on a spline and the position on that spline can usually be adjusted. This can move the pedal up or as needed for your foot. It's just like what we did with the handlebar. You can rotate that lever up and down. Now, some riders use thick boots, which can make getting under that lever a little difficult. So, moving it up a spline or two is often enough to allow you to get your foot underneath to be able to do those upshifts. Now, some bikes have heel and toe shifters, so you don't need to get a foot under, but adjusting them to get to what is really more comfortable for you to avoid massive movement can help. And on some bikes, the toe lever and the heel lever can be adjusted independently, allowing you to really tune it to exactly what you would feel Similarly, on the foot brake, you can often adjust its position. Unlike a gearshift, you can only operate in one direction. you. And many riders like to have their foot in a neutral position and still be above the lever, so that they simply rotate their foot forward to apply the brake. Some riders prefer having to lift their foot up and over the pedal so you can adjust it to your own preference. Now, many seats, especially on European bikes, have a range of adjustment in height. BMW in particular is well known for having this option on their ADV bikes. And lowering the seat can help shorter riders, while taller riders might want to have that seat in the higher position to relax the knee angles. So, you can look and see if your bike has this. If it's already there, you can take advantage of it and really tune the bike exactly to you. Likewise, some of the pegs that are on some bikes, especially on ADV bikes, come with removable rubber inserts in the pegs. And these are great for road use and can isolate some of the vibration, but they don't give as much grip when you're riding off pavement. So, removing that rubber insert exposes the spikes on the underlying peg, which can give you better grip when you're riding off road. And of course, then when you get back on road, you can just put those rubber inserts back onto the pegs. And now you have a nice, vibration damped peg for when you're riding along. Now, another adjustment that tends to be a little bit more common specifically to the BMW GS line is they have a built-in adjustment to change the brake lever. to change its height without tools. There's a little spring that holds a second brake pedal that can be moved over the regular one. And this increases the height such that when you're standing off-road, you can still easily reach the pedal. this is a nice adjustment to have just built into the bike. And therefore, even when you're just riding along, you might have it with the second pedal out of the way. But now you get an off-road, you simply put it down. And then when you're standing, you've got that easier reach for that brake. So, that covers a lot of the mods that you can do to your bike that are zero cost. These are things you can just adjust directly on your own. There's some flexibility on most motorcycles that allow you to do this. But now I'm going to shift into a few of the, I'll say, cheaper mods that you can do to your bike that will really, again, help make this a little bit more your own. But without breaking the bank. So, let's talk about seats. This is usually one of the biggest complaints of riders when they get a new motorcycle is they say the seat is terrible. Usually, it's that they feel the seat is too hard. And really, what they're talking about is that the seat is uncomfortable for longer rides. I think there's a few ways in which you can do adjustments to make your seat feel more comfortable. But without having to rely on the expense of buying a whole new seat. purchasing a seat is definitely an option, but it is a more costly expense and we want to look at what are some of the cheap mods that we can do. Well, the first one I talk about is actually it's what you're wearing. So, one of the beautiful things about riding and riding gear in general is that there's so many different options that are out there. And one that's really great to do is to get some riding shorts. Now riding shorts are shorts that you wear underneath your riding pants, they'll bit of foam padding underneath. And this is just going to provide a little bit of cushioning for and adjust how bike will feel because you're giving that little bit of relief underneath your butt. There's several brands that put this together. One that I used many many years ago when I first started riding is LD Comfort. They're still around. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. The one that I've actually been using for the past several years is MotoSkiveez. What I like with MotoSkiveez as opposed to the LD Comfort is that they actually have different shapes for different types of bikes. Because as sit on let's say a cruiser versus a sport bike versus an adventure bike. Your positioning on the bike and the angle that you're sitting on the bike will be different, and therefore the pressure points will be different. And they make actually different models for each type of bike. All of them tend to be reasonable prices and it's a great way to add a comfort to your and the great thing about these too is it'll also absorb a little bit of sweat. You'll get rid of that... You know people talk after a long while of riding because there's so much heat and so much friction that's going on between your seat and your butt. is going to help absorb that and make you feel a lot more comfortable for a long ride. But what about beyond what you're wearing in terms of clothing or undergarments? you can actually put on a sheepskin. Now this was one of the original mods for your seat. Sheepskins are a relatively lower cost option to modify your seat for They're breathable, they're weatherproof, they're all natural and they can help keep your seat a bit cooler in the heat of summer over a bit more cushioning to avoid some of the hot spots that you might feel otherwise just by the pressure from sitting on your seat. And I'm sure you've been seeing a ton of the ads for these. They're really pushing it all over the internet today, but the mesh seat covers. And what these are is they're sort of a 3D style material that actually is not just a flat material, it actually has some vertical space to it that compresses in a specific pattern. This weave allows for a lot of airflow, and it can also allow water to flow through it. And what these will do is they're generally designed to be form fitting to your specific seat, so you'll get one that's for your seat. Now these do slightly raise you up to give a little bit of cushioning, but the big thing, and this is, I think, why a lot of people turn to these as options, because butt is not directly on the seat and you have a little bit of that you can get airflow going in, which is going to give some cooling. It's going to keep some of those literal hot spots from happening, also if it happens to be raining, the water will actually just smooth all the way through the weave and fall through. It's not, you're not sitting in a puddle, and therefore, your butt will feel quite a bit drier than it would otherwise. So they're a really cool option to give you a little bit more comfort for when you're riding for an extended but also to help if you're in all sorts of weather. Now, the last seat mod that I'll say is an an Airhawk is a inflatable and add-on to go on top of your seat and they have you basically riding on a cushion of air. The air can move between each chamber, so as you move around on your seat, you can kind of get a little bit of this movement in there and it kind of feels like you're These are my go-to for long-distance rides and the beauty of this, and this is why I like this modification of these seat add-ons as opposed let's say, a replacement seat or something. the Airhawk is so easy to put on or take off of my bike. I can use the same Airhawk on multiple bikes. So, I buy it once and now I've added that comfort in for multiple bikes. So, from low-cost mod this is what I really like about the Airhawk, is it's really designed to be able to be put on and taken off very, very quickly. So, it's great for when you just need a little bit more cushioning for when you're doing those really long trips. So, next, let's talk about handlebar risers. Now, we talked about how you can adjust your handlebar before, and rotating the bar forward can usually give a little bit more height, as opposed to rotating it backwards, whereas it will reduce the height. But sometimes, if you're a bit taller, you may want even more height still, and sometimes, as little as an inch on the riser can make a dramatic difference in how your handlebars feel. Now, many bikes have enough slack in the cables that they can support about a one-inch added underneath the handlebar. And some bikes, because they have a lot of slack in the cables, may even allow you to add in a 2- to 3-inch riser without any other changes. But, in most cases, you really do want to check the stretch and the availability of cables on your bike before you go and order one of these risers, to make sure that you're going to get one that's going to be able to easily for your specific bike. And really critical when you're doing your measurement, look at your bike at all movements through the handlebars. So, where it may look like it's perfectly fine for a 3-inch riser when you're just holding the handlebars perfectly straight, well, get them turned to one side or the other, and you may find that those cables become a lot more taut, and it won't support a 2- to 3-inch riser anymore. So, really measure it at the extremes to see how much available space you have before you make any sort of a handlebar riser purchase. Now, of course, you can get longer cables for your bike, but these are an added expense. They may not be something that's off the shelf, so you may need to do some customization. So, it is a little bit more it as to whether this is possible. And in some cases, especially if you have a ride-by-wire, getting a longer physical cable there starts to become a lot more problematic of what is available Now, changing your foot pegs is another reasonably cheap mod that you can change how your bike feels and even how it looks. Now, some foot pegs or even foot boards can raise or lower your foot position to change the ergonomics. Some might also move the pegs slightly forward or aft to further tweak those ergonomics, so you can really customize your positioning. Now, you're not going to move it two feet forward, so be realistic of how much of a change is going to happen. We're talking about, hey, maybe an inch or two inches here or there. Now, if you happen to doing this on most bikes, this can be installed generally with a single bolt. Sometimes there's two bolts, but it's generally, it's usually one single bolt, making it relatively quick and easy for anyone to just do on their own. Now, there are more complex setups, which reposition the pegs way forward or aft and require different linkages for your brakes and for shifting, but those will be much more costly and difficult to install. I'm talking about those specific models. I'm talking about the very You're just putting on a different foot peg onto your Now, if you ride ADV, this is one area where we really often are more interested in changing the pegs actually to change our performance with the bike. So if you have, let's say, an ADV bike where your bike came with pegs that were only rubber, or the spikes on them were fairly small, they didn't give a lot of grip, well, a new set of foot pegs can have taller spikes, which is going to give you more grip in those off-road conditions. They can be wider to give you more leverage for steering the bike through the pegs. They can be a little wider front back to give you, again, a little bit more of a platform put your foot onto and have more comfort. If you had a very tiny peg, that can be a little uncomfortable for longer periods of riding, especially if you're standing on the pegs. So this is really why I say it's for ADV bikes in particular. We want to have a larger platform to be standing on, so it's more comfortable, especially if you're riding standing up for miles on Now there is another option too, which I had actually on my last GS, and this is called PivotPegz. Now, these have many of the same capabilities as a regular upgraded peg would have. They're going to have taller spikes, they're going to be a wider platform. So you get all those benefits out of them already, but they have one other trick up their sleeve. Whenever you're climbing or descending a hill on a bike, you change your body position forward or back to lean. Now with normal pegs, since they're fixed relative to the bike, you end up gripping either the front edge or the rear edge on hills. So your foot is kind of only riding on that one edge, and you don't have as much grip as you would have otherwise, because you're having to lean forward or Well, what the PivotPegz do is they allow it to rotate a few degrees either way, which allows your foot to maintain full grip onto the peg as you're riding, even if you're leaning forward or leaning back. So it is really a cool capability. If you're finding that this is a problem for you on your bike where you're riding in a lot of hilly conditions and you're finding you're hitting onto those edges a lot and it's becoming painful because it puts all that pressure on a single PivotPegz are a great option as an upgrade. And again, not super expensive to put onto your bike. So let's shift into some of the foot and hand controls. Now, shifters on many bikes are very small pieces off of the lever, which limits your contact with them. They're designed to not look like these massive things sitting on the bike, but larger shifters are a common upgrade that can make it easier to work with. But sometimes too much is too much. And if it's too wide, well, now you've got to move your foot way out of the way to slide it and then get it out underneath it. So just be cognizant of what is the balancing that is right for you. Now on ADV bikes, some of the aftermarket offers some of those brake pedals that have two heights to provide something similar to what comes on stock on some of the BMW GS models. And if your bike doesn't have adjustable hand levers, there's several aftermarket options that do, and you can even choose from shorter levers. So if you want to do the two finger control without worrying about it hitting your other fingers when it's actuated, you can find those type of levers as well. So that sort of wraps up our ergonomic modifications. And the beauty of all these mods is that there are so many of them to choose from to really customize your bike to you, to really make it comfortable for you and not have to spend a huge fortune on all these massive, massive upgrades. Now, beyond ergonomics, which is what we really focused on, there's a couple of other I ll still call them 'cheap' or 'free' mods that you can do to your bike to really change how the bike feels as you re riding it. Now, the first one, and this is perhaps the ultimate cheap mod on modern bikes, is rider modes. If you remember from a Rider Aids episode, we talked about how rider modes allow you to have one bike act like a few different bikes. It could be more docile for when you're riding in the rain, it could be its standard road mode, or you can put it into sport mode and give it a little bit more twitchy feeling. Well, one button push in your bike can feel very different than before. Now, some riders will oftentimes leave their bike on a single setting and that s it. But I d encourage you to play with them and see if one setting might work better for you in some situations rather than others. Like for example, on my R18, I tend to ride my R18 in a spirited manner on back roads. I like the fact that that bike can handle far better than most cruisers. so I usually have it and they call it, their sport mode is called Rock on the R18. But for when I do get onto the highway and I don't need it to be quite as twitchy, I'm usually trying blend in with traffic a little bit more. I don't really need that heavy aggressiveness. I'll put it into roll, which is sort of their road mode on the R18 for when I'm going onto the highway. So I'll use a different riding mode for the type of road that I'm using. And this is the beauty of it, is that I can really adjust the bike as I need. now the sort of cheap mod and again cheap in a relative sense here that I'll talk about is Tires. Now tires are a wear item on your bike. Most bikes will need new tires every 6 to 10,000 miles. There are some long wear hard tires on some cruisers that will last a little bit longer. But if you look at the vast majority of bikes that are out there, they're going to be in that 6 to 10,000 mile range. Sport bikes will usually be less than that, but 6 to 10 is kind of the sweet spot in the middle for most motorcycles. So the bottom line is you're going to replace your tires at some point anyway. So when you do, why not look, not just at replacing the tire with the same model, what if there's something else? Do you want something that's maybe a little bit softer that can give you a little bit more grip, albeit with a little bit of reduced longevity, although modern tire chemistry is actually really improving this and they're giving oftentimes more grip with the same longevity, which is really cool. or do you want tires that work better for off pavement on your ADV? A lot of ADV bikes come with, for example, the Tourance tires, which are kind of a 95 five tire, 95% road, 5% dirt. They're really kind of street tires for the most part. They don't have a lot of lugs that are fairly tall. But if you do find yourself getting a little bit more off the beaten path, you might wanna look at a tire that has closer to being knobbies than it would be otherwise. And whether you go full knobbies or not, if you're gonna do a lot of off road, that makes sense. But there are a lot of middle of the road tires as well. So you can look at tires really to tune your bike to the kind of riding you actually do with it. Likewise, if you're riding on street, you might decide, hey, you know what? ride bike, let's say, but I really ride it in more of a sport touring style. Well, do I need those really expensive race bike tires for the bike, or could I get away with maybe a sport touring tire? Which is sportier than let's say a cruiser tire would be, but a little bit more longevity. So I don't have a 3,000 mile tire anymore on my sport bike. Maybe I get something that gets me that five, six, seven, 7,000 mile range. Which gives me a little bit more cost effectiveness if I'm not driving the bike all that heavy. So really look at these as another way to adjust your bike to your needs as a relatively low cost option. did want to focus on free or cheap options for this episode. So everything I've discussed is generally available for less than $400. Now, obviously some tires might be, you know, if you're getting both tires, that might be combined more than that. But in general, each item will be less than $400. However, there are a ton of mods available to tweak anything you want on your bike. From full seats to exhaust systems to different wheels or brakes or even full rally sets for your dual sport You can make your bike to fit your needs exactly as long as you are willing to cough up some more money. I will caution you on being realistic of what to expect. There are diminishing returns. For example, many riders think of an exhaust or an air filter improves performance. And while the difference could have been as much as 10% on some older bikes, most modern bikes come with some pretty good stock exhaust setups. So the difference is often maybe one or two horsepower. oftentimes you might've said, well, it wasn't just about the power. It was also about the weight. Well, in the olden days, you might've saved two, three, five kilos from a different exhaust system. Well, the difference today might be half a kilo to a kilo or like two pounds, a pound or two. Again, not a huge difference. And if you're spending over a thousand dollars on an exhaust plus installation, if you're not going to do it yourself to get that one extra horsepower, that might not be the best investment today. Even if it made sense on bikes that you bought 10 to 20 years ago. I would encourage you, even if you've been riding for a long time, don't think of it as an automatic. And if you've been riding for a long time or not, don't think of it as an exhaust, which is going to be, the best way to be able to get an exhaust, it may not be as valuable today as it was way back then. So let's wrap up. We talked about some of the actually free options that you can do to modify your bike just by adjusting some of the controls and interfaces that you have directly on your bike. Then we looked at some of the lower cost or cheaper ergonomic mods that you can do to really make your bike feel more comfortable. These included things or handlebar risers, some foot pegs, even some of the foot and hand controls. And then we started to look at some of the other cheap mods that you could do. For example, if you have a bike that has rider modes, it's a great way to change your bike with zero cost to you. You just push a button and wow, your bike feels completely different than it did before. And of course, tires are another great way really change the way your bike feels, or even if you're doing it for an economic reason to have a more longevity in your tires with the expense of less grip. If you're not riding aggressively anyway, tires are another great way to really modify your bike. And since they're a wear item, the cool thing about it, and this is what I like about them, I'll try out a new tire. And if I don't like it, guess what? The next time I get a tire, I won't get that one again. It's real easy. You just can flip through different tires. You're what? You're changing the tires anyway every, what, 6,000 to 10,000 miles? So that's what, every year, maybe two? So you're going to do it pretty quickly anyway. So one tire is not going to kill you for trying it out. And finally, I gave you a little bit of a brief overview of how you can spend an inordinate amount of money, whether you're getting a fresh seat for your bike, whether you're getting a full exhaust system, whatever it is that you wanted to do to upgrade your bike or modify your bike. But I did want to caution you that sometimes these expenses may not be as big of a difference as the cost would suggest. So this is why I'm a big fan of the free or cheap mods, because you actually more of a bang for buck. You're getting a bigger difference for not a lot of money. So my question for you is, what is your favorite cheap mod to do on your bikes? Share your thoughts through the text to show link in the show notes, or leave a voicemail at throttleandroast.com slash voicemail. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.