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Nothing like a good farkle, right?

Right before I left Germany, I saw an F650GS set up for fire department work. I promptly fell head-over-heels in love with the Einsatzfahrzeugzubehör, the emergency vehicle accessories. These consist of a front light bar and a solo seat with a luggage bin behind it. My days of two-up are over due to both of my pillions having grown to six feet tall-plus, so why pretend any more? This is a solo bike and I love it that way. More light is always better, too.

Last month, I scored the light bar (apparently the last extant one, too), and this month, I managed to score a solo seat from ebay.nl. Several trips to the local BMW dealer netted me the luggage bin and some of the other bits needed to install it. I’m still sorting out the lock cylinder and a few other mounting bits so I can complete the install of the luggage bin to the seat and the completed assembly to the bike.

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The seat arrived with a weird padded roll on the back and some sort of mounting bracket that was unnecessary for my project. It came from a Police bike, so perhaps there was a special kind of box in the back?

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I removed the roll and then the bracket.

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Next, I test fit everything on the bike.

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I particularly like the additional tie-down hoops on the sides of the bin. Those will come in handy. Of course, they will make it impossible to get into the bin when I’m using them, but whatever. The bin can become tool storage or home to things that are necessary for trips, but not needed at a moment’s notice.

The seat measures 800mm, twenty more than the 780mm seat that I normally use, and twenty less that the Dakar seat that is plush, but drives me crazy. If needed, I’ll cut this one down or perhaps even reupholster it to a new shape. Needless to say, I’m quite excited about bringing this all together.

Last week, I posted a photo of an IKEA Lyster curtain rod end. This morning, battling an epic headache of no known origin, I remembered to take some more pics and a video to explain the whole thing. Remember, this was done at least twelve years ago (likely closer to fifteen), and that I have no shame whatsoever.

I wanted a glass doorknob for a shifter in the B5. Kind of boring, but functional. I didn’t like the shifter on the car as it was delivered. It was even more boring. I never did find a cool glass doorknob, but wandering through IKEA, I found the Lyster bit, and a short call to my dad later netted me a threaded-to-fit stainless steel adapter. This happened.

Then, because nothing entertains me like a bunch of glowing LEDs, this happened.

…and this…

Yup, I wired it into the dash dimmer properly. Unfortunately, the acrylic Lyster bits are a bit fragile and I get about a year out of each one before the base cracks off. Now, I run the rubber shifter knob out of my old Rabbit Convertible. It’s a bit more cold-weather friendly. Reverse is in the wrong place, but that is a topic for another post.

The whole shebang kept the denizens of ClubB5.com entertained for a while, because no car is sacred and this was good for April Fool’s if nothing else.

Anyway, about four or five years later, I was wandering around a Murray’s looking for something, and discovered that my utterly fabulous knob was now a thing. Battery LEDs, but a thing.

There are two times in my life when a car truly got away. Both times, I made the decision to let it go, and it was probably a good decision, whether just at the time, or for long term.

The first time was in 1995. The car was a Nugget Yellow G60 Corrado. Oh, man. I wanted that thing. I recall telling a friend at the time that “I want it, but I think it would be the end of my marriage.” Looking back, oh yeah, that would have been a bad idea. I would have either gotten one of the good G60s and spent the next ten years making it into an awesome G60 at the expense of the rest of my life, or one of the time-bomb G60s that would have also sucked the life out of me, just in a different way.

I still stop and admire those things, and almost bought a used one a few weekends ago. I’m still not sure my life would survive a G60.

The second time was different. I was shopping for a family car. I had two inviolable demands: stick shift and a 48″ wide hatch. The 48″ wide hatch was not that bad – the E-Klasse, 5er-Touring, and the Passat were all there. The Saab Aero was close. It was a funny time, because I really just wanted an Accord wagon, but those weren’t shipped over the Pacific any more. The E-Klasse was out due to the lack of proper transmission. It was down to the E39 and the B5. I thought I lusted after that G60. My desire for that E39 wasn’t even on the same scale. In my eyes, the E39 Touring was and is the be-all, end-all of cars. Peak auto. The complete package. The E39 was a completely different kind of want, because there was absolutely nothing on my list of needs and wants that it didn’t bring with. The price, though. Yeah. I consoled myself by saying that I wasn’t going to buy a car that was worth more than my house.

I bought the B5, and it has been a wonderful car, lifestyle accessory, project, whatever I wanted, it delivered. Except RWD. I’ve admitted that a Corrado would be a bad idea, but I still wish I’d sprung for that BMW. Because RWD.

Right now, there is an M-swapped E39 on CL in NYC. The M version was never available in the US, so you have to swap the M bits in from a sacrificial sedan. A coworker did this swap a couple of years ago on his 540i, and it truly is amazing. The crown on his is the EU-spec tow hitch. I think it gets about 12MPG towing a motorcycle trailer. It is as extreme as you can imagine, and he tows with it. I have trouble coming up with a more perfect sleeper. In fact, if I was going to go the E39 route (I can’t push it out of my head), I would be doing this swap eventually, too. Hint, hint.

The one on CL has a grey interior. That is one of those things that you are either into or NOT. There is little middle ground on grey. I love grey interiors. Grey interiors are kind of the rare spec.

The price of the car on CL is not bad, and I can afford it. But… I am not going to buy it. I thought about it for quite a while last night, and it came down to the fact that there is nothing left to do to the car. I’m a creative person. I realized that I’d rather do that swap myself and make it my car. Buying a completed one would not be the same as building it. And I like to play with cars way too much to buy a finished one.

I also thought about what I really want next, and what I could do with $24K. $24K would buy me a brand new ND. Two decent NCs. Three decent NBs. Four decent NAs. Four, count them, F.O.U.R decent NAs. Or, one decent NA and a bunch of mod money, and still have money in the bank to pay for gobs of track time. That’s not even a decision any more. Fancy car that I won’t play with and won’t track, or decent car that I can screw around with endlessly and track the crap out of? Not even close.

I’m putting my E39 thing back in the box for a while. I also realized that an E36/5 would probably be more my style, and I love me some Kompakt. Mmmmm, Kammback! We get the cast iron block 2.8s over here. That swap is one I would like to do. I bet it would get more than 12MPG towing, too.

I gave Sean MacDonald over at Lanesplitter a bunch of crap after he went all gooey on a pair of gloves from Racer, an Austrian brand with distribution in the US. He challenged me to actually try the gloves, so I did. After a few emails with the distributor in the US, a great guy named Lee, I ordered a few pair of gloves to try out.

The problem is that I have stupidly long fingers. Not long in the normal sense that I would need size Large gloves, but stupidly long in the sense that I actually only own one pair of glove that really fits, and they were off a clearance rack of gloves that no one else fit into. Length-wise, a men’s 10 or 10.5 is usually the trick. Of course, then I end up with a super wide glove with really bulky fingers. It’s not a good thing, and I generally accept stuffing my fingers into a 9 and hoping I can take breaks.

The gloves from the clearance rack are summer gloves and at first, I thought they were too big. Then I rode with them. Huge revelation. Before that, I’d never worn gloves that fit properly. You know how they say to buy gear you’ll wear? Day after day, I kept putting those $14.99 clearance-rack Speed and Strength gloves on. Ugly, dorky, but damn do they actually fit.

The Racer Traveller DXL (ladies extra large) gloves actually fit pretty well, too. They are bigger in the palm than I need, but not nearly to the extent a men’s glove is, and are long enough that my fingers and thumbs don’t get jammed up. It’s also not a summer glove. Not a proper winter one, but better than any other glove I have that fits when it comes to weather. It’s waterproof and the lining is soft. It has hard knuckle protection, also a step up from anything else I own (that fits). The whole fit thing is a huge issue – joint pain is nothing to mess with and jamming your fingers can lead to cartilage damage. I don’t want to go there.

I’ll be riding with them tomorrow and beyond. I’m pretty stoked.

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A quick peek at using the lane splitting (or lane sharing) technique to avoid an emergency braking situation and all of the risk it entails.

It’s important to look for the extra space that can open up. Every survival reaction begins with the reduction in visual room, per Keith Code. Looking ahead and seeing the space open up means better, smoother reactions, and more safety. Always.

I get it, TDIgate is a big deal. We have an affected TDI. But truthfully, cars that aren’t EPA-compliant have always existed, and more than a few made it into the US with nary an issue. Here’s the story of the other EPA-non-complaint Volkswagen we have owned.

It was time to buy a second car – we’d both scored good jobs in opposite directions from the house, and one car wasn’t going to work. The old Integra was still running great. I was sure I’d wiped all of those dirty EU thoughts out of my spouse’s head, but he wanted a Golf. Ok, Golf it was. We must have test drove fifteen of them. It was the third generation Golf, not really the high point of the Golf franchise, so I was really disappointed. Soggy suspension, flat seats, plastic everywhere. And that autotragic. Yuck. Every single one of them was a disappointment. Then, one day, we drove a dark green five-door. It was different.

Side note: There was a Nugget Yellow G60 on the lot, too. I was actually in love, but was pretty confident that it would mean the end of my marriage. I didn’t even know anything about G60s back then. Ah, I still dream about that thing….. Black leather interior…. 5MT…. But I digress.

The green five-door was stiffer. It was quicker off the line. The autotragic was less tragic and almost magic. It was super close ratio, very odd in the US. Everything about the car was far closer to what I expected from Volkswagen than any of the other Golfs we drove. Ok, I’ll accept it. But I hemmed and hawed about that yellow G60…. And signed on the Golf.

It was easy to speak well of the car. It delivered like my ’88 Integra did. Everything worked, and what didn’t was repaired or replaced by the dealer. All was well.

About a year into ownership, we got the dreaded red envelope in the mail. The first of two, actually. It mentioned that the transmission in the car was not intended for the US market, instead it was a Swiss market transmission. For mountain climbing. Well, we lived on a small mountain in Philly, so no wonder we liked it. We didn’t have to exchange it, but if we wanted to, the dealer would put in the proper US-spec transmission and we would get better mileage. I laughed, because now I knew for sure that we had a close-ratio automatic as I suspected. It was a substantial upgrade over the normal 4sp box.

A few weeks later, we got the second red envelope, this one with a bit more forceful language in it: the engine was recalled. We were to take it back to the dealer for a new motor. The one we had might not pass US emissions testing, and VW could not guarantee the emission system would work in accordance with US laws. We would only get the full emissions system guarantee if we had the engine replaced, and they would do the entire powertrain for us to be safe. If for any reason, the emissions failed testing at a dealership, the car would have to have the entire powertrain replaced with a US-legal unit at no charge. That letter went into the same file. I learned that at that time, EPA could not force us to do a darn thing. Only safety recalls could be enforced.

The suspension that did not conform to whatever the FMVSS for suspension is was not recalled, although it probably should have been.

It took me several years to ferret out exactly what had happened with the car. It wasn’t until we started hearing the same line from the dealer during service visits: “Sorry Mrs H, but we have to air-freight parts from Germany. Your part numbers aren’t in the US system.” It finally clicked. I queried the parts counter and discovered the parts were indeed Swiss market. What else is wrong with this thing?

Back in the day before VW figured out that the Toyota Production System (TPS or Just-in-Time) really did work, they built cars at Puebla using the campaign model. This was the standard since the time of Henry Ford, so it’s hardly that bad of a model. It’s very efficient. Four hundred cars for the US market in silver with black interiors and 4-speed automatics mated to 2.sl0s. One hundred cars for the German market in Tornado Red with beige interiors and 5MTs mated to 1.8s. And so on. We caught a campaign-switch car, where a few powertrains and running gear assemblies were leftover from a Swiss campaign. This happens when a body is too damaged for use, the paint is bad, any number of problems that force the body off the line after the VIN is stamped on. They were mistakenly married to bodies with VINs designated for US delivery, which got proper US interiors during final assembly, making the problem nearly impossible to spot. This offset affected less than ten cars – I believe about four total.

When the transmission eventually failed (a VW thing), our good relationship with the dealer service and parts team paid off – they were able to source and obtain the exact same transmission. Of course, it took a week to air-freight it from Germany, but who’s counting?

We eventually traded the car in on our first TDI, which has its own interesting tales, too. We did not discuss the outstanding emissions recall.

And that’s the story of the other EPA non-compliant Volkswagen we owned.

So, someone tell me exactly where you go to buy motorcycle boots around here.

It’s time for me to retire another pair of Dainese touring boots, and that means a replacement pair is required. Worn soles, leaky membranes, small perforations, etc. I’ve found several pair that I’d like to try on, but the trying on part is the sticking point. I can’t find a place that either carries them or bothers stocking them. Because, you know, women’s gear isn’t a deal here in the midwest. Or anywhere in the US, as far as I can tell. Which is pretty darn lame because like most women, I want to try things on before I buy them.

I contacted the local internet shop, Sport Bike Track Gear. Great website with a lot of gear on it, but when I asked about visiting the shop, Eric explained that they “don’t really have any women’s gear” in stock at the showroom.

Revzilla suggested that I check my item numbers using their stock checker tool, and I found out that they have exactly one of the five pair I am interested in at their Philly gear boutique. Again, women’s = no stock. This extra sucks because I’ll be in Philly this weekend and I would gladly head over to drop some cash on boots and winter gloves. Maybe even a heated vest. Which they also don’t stock in the boutique. For women. I’m sensing a trend.

What’s missing here is neither place offered to bring the boots in for me by appointment. Sad, because I need boots and whoever can get my feet into them is getting a sale.

CycleGear carries the brands I want, but not the actual boots. The problem there is that I want the high-end styles with GoreTex. Too spendy for the average CG customer, maybe? Regardless, it’s still a dead end, albeit a bit closer to home over near Cleveland.

The Iron Pony is hit or miss depending on what they have bought out lately. And in this case, totally miss. Too bad, I’d enjoy the ride down to Columbus.

The rest of the gear “shops” I’ve found are internet only. Super.

To pull off actually trying on the boots side-by-side, I figure that I will need to drop upwards of $1700 on my credit card to get them all delivered to my doorstep, and then I’ll have to deal with the hassle of shipping the unwanted ones back. Presuming at least one pair is actually wanted. And whoever I order them from will get socked with a bunch of shipping costs.

I suppose I could just price shop to the bitter end and order another pair of Dainese boots that I know will fit and that I will get three years out of. Or I could just put plastic bags in my existing boots for another few months until I can snag a trip back to Germany. Over there, I can simply go downtown to the motorbike corner and *gasp* go across the street if I want to try on more than three or four pair at a time.

American retailers need to get the point – women riders will gladly buy. But they have to stock the gear first. And “available online” is not the same as stocking in store. Sorry.