Last October I bough a “fixer upper” for a winter project bike.
It was a super super good deal as it was the weekend before snow storm coming in.
I liked the idea of a heavy, shaft drive bike to ride to Alaska summer of 2025.
Heavy means, amazing wind buffeting abilities. No matter what I do to the T7/Tenere 700, it will never be as good at bucking the wind as a T1200! When I went to Canada on a t1200 and fought the wind for an entire day, I was SO glad I brought the T1200 instead of the T7!
PROBLEMS with the T1200
- shifter was bend all the way back making it very difficult to shift.
- FIX: I used knipex pliers and just bend it back, as I looked online for replacements and they were expensive.
- major cupping on front tire
- FIX: new tire
- broken handguards, junky OEM handguards are not legit
- FIX: I bought some barkbusters
- Major panel scratch
- FIX: Back ordered a side panel from RM
- Old and dying battery
- FIX: Ordered a light weight tusk pro lithium battery from RM (link below)
- Dim headlights
- FIX: Ordered and installed super bright LED lights (link below)
- AUX lights dimmer was not working and the aux lights were about as bright as my flashlight
- FIX: Ruby R4 aux lights with the super cool yellow cover for high vis during the day in town and floods out in the wilderness. (link below)
FIX: I wired it to the highbeams with a relay (details below). Has a reversed power for highbeam, meaning when you take away 12v…the high beams turn on. (link below)
- FIX: Ruby R4 aux lights with the super cool yellow cover for high vis during the day in town and floods out in the wilderness. (link below)
- No heated grips
- FIX: Installed my fav Oxford heated grips (link below)
- Leaking final drive shaft drive
- FIX: ordered a shaft drive seal and watched a couple of youtube vids, which cost about $30 + $10 for special grease
- While I had the rear wheel off, I put it on my tusk truing stand and noticed the rear wheel was CRAZY ‘off’.
- FIX: while it was off, I took the front off too and took them both to Impluse to have the wheels true’d up. They charged me $170 to mount both tires, true up both wheels and blance with dynabeads. SO SO much smoother!
- THE MOST TIME CONSUMING and frustrating issue was…the Yamaha OEM boxes. Some idiot decided a small plastic hook that you can’t replace was a good idea. I asked my friend to help me and he spent hours measuring and building a software file to have them built. I counted the cost and said, I don’t like this fragile system so I’m going to what I know(soft saddle bags). No tusk racks :(, so I had to spend 3x as much and get giant loop and outback racks 🙁
- FIX: Blackfriday sale with Giant Loop “around the world panniers”, including the outback mototek luggage rakcs. These should outlast the bike…and me. Very very few failure points
SHOPPING LIST
- SAE for usb and battery tender, goes on ALL my bikes. https://amzn.to/49LPsgl
- Bash/skid plate. givi skid plate. https://amzn.to/40216As
- Oxford heated grips https://amzn.to/3Dp048Z
- Giant Loop Bushwacker wind/rain blocking to 4x the size of normal handguards. https://amzn.to/4gHltbR
- Atlas Throttle Lock, poor mans substitute for cruise control. (WIP)
- Upgraded LED light bulb https://amzn.to/3Bz8uKp
- Ruby R4 lights https://www.rubymoto.com/products/r4
- RTW Panniers with QD back plates https://www.giantloopmoto.com/product/round-the-world-panniers/
- Tusk Wheel truing stand https://amzn.to/3VQsjnd
- Tusk Lithium Battery https://amzn.to/3Bz8VEx
- RELAY switch, do yourself a favor and order a couple of these $10 ish each. https://amzn.to/49Kkcyg
SUMMARY:
Super fun to give new life into a adventure Motorcycle that will carry me and make many amazing memories…including many trips to Alaska…every 3-4 years! I wonder if I could live without the T1200 for a couple of years and just leave it in Alaska and then fly home. Then fly up most every summer and explore Alaska. Lots of puzzles to solve and figure out, I really do enjoy restoring a bike and getting it squared away in the winter time.
True’d up wheels and new tires with the dynabeads made this 10x smoother than it was. When I first road it was very rough and I almost didn’t buy it. So glad I did, as this will be a great long range moto camping system!
NEXT is some “shake out rides” to see if I can find any other issues before a big trip.
