Well, I got the Gorilla Cycle Alarm and the DDM HID 35W 6000k Kit for Christmas this year. I was going to install them after the new year and do a full write up with pictures for each step on them separately. But we had a death in the family the day after Christmas and I needed something to take my mind off everything. So I spent about 5 hours in all in the garage installing both and not even thinking about doing a write up. But I thought since they're in now I can at least write something about the install.
Gorilla Cycle Alarm:
I got the Basic Cycle Alarm without the 2 way paging system. The nice thing is you can upgrade to that system easily by buying the upgraded transmitter and the remote. Installation was pretty much straight forward. Finding a place to install the alarm wasn't extremely easy since I knew I was also going to have multiple boxes to mount on the frame for the HID kit. I won't mention exactly where I installed it (so people don't get bright ideas about how to disarm easily. I'll just say the instructions give a few good locations and I chose one of them. The key is to route the wires neatly from the alarm unit to the battery, then find a good place to mount the LED indicator light. You can mount this pretty much anywhere you want as they give you a long cable. Depending on where you mount the unit will determine how much cable you have to route if you want to mount it on the dash for instance. They mention that it's critical you use a 8mm drill bit because the LED fits with an interference fit. I didn't really like that idea. So I drilled it as close to 8mm as I could (not having that perfect size drill bit) and used ShoeGoo (a flexible rubber-like adhesive that peals right off when you want to take it off but holds extremely well) and basically glued it in from the back side of the panel I mounted it on.
Next thing to do is to make sure your blue antenna wire is as straight as possible and hopefully not touching any bare metal. (Not that there should be any on the bike anyways.) Just don't wrap it around existing wiring or the frame rail. That will shorten the range dramatically if it'll even work.
The last step was to mount the tilt sensor. This was a little tricky. You have to mount it in a place so that when the bike is leaning on the side stand, the sensor is perfectly level horizontally. This is critical. If the sensor is mounted tilted to either direction, it will not set off the alarm when you stand the bike up. The shock sensor might go off that's built in the unit. But the tilt will not be what set it off. I tested it by very smoothly standing the bike up with the alarm armed and it did not go off. I stood it up quickly with the sensor still mounted at a slight angle and it went off from the shock sensor. Once I mounted it perfectly level, it'll go off now when you get the bike about half way stood up, or if you sit on the bike even leaning on the side stand. And it's very sensitive to shock. I bumped into the back seat walking around the bike this morning forgetting I'd armed it and it went off.
DDM Tuning HID Kit:
OK, first off the instructions suck! This being a generic product not specifially designed for the FZ6R, you'll have to figure out a lot of things like how to take the head light assembly off the bike etc... on your own. Plus this kit has some very long cables that don't need to be long at all for a bike. So you'll be bundling and zip tying cables all over the place to get them out of the way and such.
First thing to do is pull ALL the plastic off the bike. Fairings, fake ram air intakes, mirrors, inner fairing covers, everything. When you go to take the front fairing off, you can just unbolt the 4 main bolts holding the headlight assembly onto the bike. You don't have to take the fairing off the headlight unless you want to. After you unplug the headlight from the main plug, and can take the assembly to a work bench, you have to get the weather proof boot off. Pain in the ass!!! Once you get that off you'll see the small wire clip that's used to hold the bulb in place. Make sure you remember the orientation of that spring. I only goes one way. I had to use the manual that Chris did for us a while back to figure out as I was stupid and didn't pay attention. Once you get that out you have to put the weather proof cover over the new bulb. Bigger Pain In The ASS!!! :eyebrow: I ended up using a very small amount of dish soap to make it slip over. If you do that from the start instead of spending 20 minutes and many 4 letter words that would make my bible thumping neighbors drop to their knees and prey like I did, you should be fine. Make sure to keep the covers on the new bulb while doing this. You don't want to even touch the bulb with your skin let alone possibly break it while monkeying around with the rubber cover. Once that's on it's time to install the bulb. Take the cover off the bulb and slide it in place just like the stock one and put the wire spring back in place and secure it with the small phillips head screw. Then follow the wiring diagram to figure out what plugs into what. You will have one extra plug, don't worry about it, just tie it up and out of the way somewhere. Then from there it's a matter of mounting the ballast and routing the other cables and such to keep them hidden but not interfering with body work or the steering. It took me three different tries before I could get everything nice and neat. I would try to describe my routing but it wouldn't make since. And in all honesty I don't feel like tearing the body work off my bike again right now to take pics for you. Next time I have the ambition to do so, I will take pics for you all. The problem is you not only have all the wiring in the front of the bike where all the ballast plug in etc... but you have to run power cables to the battery. It might get a little frustrating for some, but after years of racing RC Cars and having to bundle up and zip tie wiring to make things look nice and clean, it wasn't that big of a deal to me. Just remember zip ties are your best friend.
I hope that will help anyone who's thinking about or has just bought either of these products. Again, sorry I didn't do what I meant to do and give you guys a good detailed write up. Just have a lot of other things happening right now and that was the last thing on my mind at the time.
Gorilla Cycle Alarm:
I got the Basic Cycle Alarm without the 2 way paging system. The nice thing is you can upgrade to that system easily by buying the upgraded transmitter and the remote. Installation was pretty much straight forward. Finding a place to install the alarm wasn't extremely easy since I knew I was also going to have multiple boxes to mount on the frame for the HID kit. I won't mention exactly where I installed it (so people don't get bright ideas about how to disarm easily. I'll just say the instructions give a few good locations and I chose one of them. The key is to route the wires neatly from the alarm unit to the battery, then find a good place to mount the LED indicator light. You can mount this pretty much anywhere you want as they give you a long cable. Depending on where you mount the unit will determine how much cable you have to route if you want to mount it on the dash for instance. They mention that it's critical you use a 8mm drill bit because the LED fits with an interference fit. I didn't really like that idea. So I drilled it as close to 8mm as I could (not having that perfect size drill bit) and used ShoeGoo (a flexible rubber-like adhesive that peals right off when you want to take it off but holds extremely well) and basically glued it in from the back side of the panel I mounted it on.
Next thing to do is to make sure your blue antenna wire is as straight as possible and hopefully not touching any bare metal. (Not that there should be any on the bike anyways.) Just don't wrap it around existing wiring or the frame rail. That will shorten the range dramatically if it'll even work.
The last step was to mount the tilt sensor. This was a little tricky. You have to mount it in a place so that when the bike is leaning on the side stand, the sensor is perfectly level horizontally. This is critical. If the sensor is mounted tilted to either direction, it will not set off the alarm when you stand the bike up. The shock sensor might go off that's built in the unit. But the tilt will not be what set it off. I tested it by very smoothly standing the bike up with the alarm armed and it did not go off. I stood it up quickly with the sensor still mounted at a slight angle and it went off from the shock sensor. Once I mounted it perfectly level, it'll go off now when you get the bike about half way stood up, or if you sit on the bike even leaning on the side stand. And it's very sensitive to shock. I bumped into the back seat walking around the bike this morning forgetting I'd armed it and it went off.
DDM Tuning HID Kit:
OK, first off the instructions suck! This being a generic product not specifially designed for the FZ6R, you'll have to figure out a lot of things like how to take the head light assembly off the bike etc... on your own. Plus this kit has some very long cables that don't need to be long at all for a bike. So you'll be bundling and zip tying cables all over the place to get them out of the way and such.
First thing to do is pull ALL the plastic off the bike. Fairings, fake ram air intakes, mirrors, inner fairing covers, everything. When you go to take the front fairing off, you can just unbolt the 4 main bolts holding the headlight assembly onto the bike. You don't have to take the fairing off the headlight unless you want to. After you unplug the headlight from the main plug, and can take the assembly to a work bench, you have to get the weather proof boot off. Pain in the ass!!! Once you get that off you'll see the small wire clip that's used to hold the bulb in place. Make sure you remember the orientation of that spring. I only goes one way. I had to use the manual that Chris did for us a while back to figure out as I was stupid and didn't pay attention. Once you get that out you have to put the weather proof cover over the new bulb. Bigger Pain In The ASS!!! :eyebrow: I ended up using a very small amount of dish soap to make it slip over. If you do that from the start instead of spending 20 minutes and many 4 letter words that would make my bible thumping neighbors drop to their knees and prey like I did, you should be fine. Make sure to keep the covers on the new bulb while doing this. You don't want to even touch the bulb with your skin let alone possibly break it while monkeying around with the rubber cover. Once that's on it's time to install the bulb. Take the cover off the bulb and slide it in place just like the stock one and put the wire spring back in place and secure it with the small phillips head screw. Then follow the wiring diagram to figure out what plugs into what. You will have one extra plug, don't worry about it, just tie it up and out of the way somewhere. Then from there it's a matter of mounting the ballast and routing the other cables and such to keep them hidden but not interfering with body work or the steering. It took me three different tries before I could get everything nice and neat. I would try to describe my routing but it wouldn't make since. And in all honesty I don't feel like tearing the body work off my bike again right now to take pics for you. Next time I have the ambition to do so, I will take pics for you all. The problem is you not only have all the wiring in the front of the bike where all the ballast plug in etc... but you have to run power cables to the battery. It might get a little frustrating for some, but after years of racing RC Cars and having to bundle up and zip tie wiring to make things look nice and clean, it wasn't that big of a deal to me. Just remember zip ties are your best friend.
I hope that will help anyone who's thinking about or has just bought either of these products. Again, sorry I didn't do what I meant to do and give you guys a good detailed write up. Just have a lot of other things happening right now and that was the last thing on my mind at the time.
