canyon dancer.... fear of breaking clip-ons?

[PhL0aTeR]

so, im trailering my 3 day old bike back to Colorado from texas.... i trailered my Volusia down here just fine. B4 i bought the busa, i asked the salesman how they use these things... well, there wasnt much teaching, just showing, and when i put it on the trailer tonight, when i choked the CD up onto the grips, the thing was rubbing against the faring. So i slipped the CD's clip-on holder down to the ends, and put the bar ends right in the middle of the holder, so when there was pressure applied, they wouldnt choke up anymore and would be stable. Only thing now is, it looks like my clip-ons are bending. Id hate for one of em to snap while im in a mountain curve on top of raton pass and have the busa crash into the volusia, or worse, off the side of the trailer and onto the highway.

So does anyone have any pics of these stupid things in action? better yet, trailering a busa with one of these????? thanks.

PS, im headed out to dinner, and leaving at 6am texas time, 5am your time, so if ya have something to input, dont hold back. thanks in advance, see ya in the foothills!!!

[Bueller]

Buy soft straps and ratchet tiedowns and throw the canyon dancer in the trash.

[onepoorstunna]

Whats wrong with a canyon dancer?

[Bueller]

Nothing if you don't mind your throttle and grips all f-ed up, and it doesn't hold a bike nearly as secure as tiedowns to more solid attachments, like the frame and forks below suspension if at all possible. When you tighten a canyon dancer down as tight as it needs to be it is also hard on the suspension as well as hand controls.

[Spiderman]

If you have stock clip-ons, you should be fine using canyon dancers.

I would probably put them back up towards the triple and secure a t-shirt (or something else soft) around the strap if you're worried about it rubbing on the fairing. Another way of looking at it is, a slightly scratched fairing is easier to live with than a bike that's fallen into your other bike, or off the trailer. :|

Don't use ratcheting tie-downs!!! They're too easy to tighten, which means you can blow your fork seals too easily. :shock:

Along those lines, you don't need to tighten the sh!t out of your tie-downs. You want to take most of the bounce out of the forks, but it's okay to leave a *little* bit of wobble in the bike - if it's rock solid, it's too tight (IMHO) and there won't be any give when you go over bumps (and you can blow your fork seals - definitely not something you want to arrive home with on a brand new bike :no: ).

The only problem I've ever seen with canyon dancers was that they pulled the throttle grip up against the kill switch/starter housing, and caused it to bind, but this was only on race bikes (I can't recall any problems with street bikes, and I've used canyon dancers on a few of them).

Hopefully you have a trailer with rails or wheel chocks. This will prevent the front wheel from hopping if you hit a big bump. If the front wheel hops, the bike could theoretically fall over, even if it is tied down. If you don't have rails or a chock, then you have to make extremely sure that the bike is perfectly upright (not leaning to the left or right at all), and you may want to tighten the tie-downs a bit more.

Happy trailering! 8)

[rforsythe]

I've had canyon dancers do odd things to the throttle on street-stock clip ons.

We are silent-auctioning off a product called Cycle Cynch at R2SL, which I'm told are "Canyon Dancers that work". I haven't seen them yet... Too bad you didn't give us more notice, they're coming from Texas and you probably could have snagged one while you were there.

[PhL0aTeR]

well, i was much too afraid even put a soft peice of material between the canyon dancer and the faring... Ive trailered my Volusia probably over 2000 cumulative miles since ive owned it, mostly back and forth from colorado and texas, and never had any problem. Hopefully i wont have to use my trailer for the busa again... im not sure i like this setup. I will have to make sure to stop a few extra times and check everything.