1098 Mod: Installing Speeymoto Rearsets

Installing the Speedymoto Rearsets on the 1098S

With the rain rolling in, Sunday seemed like a great day to install the new Speedymoto Rearsets, that I picked up from Desmoworks, on the 1098S .

When you open the Speedymoto box, the very first thing you see is a set of instructions - This gave me great confidence to wrench myself - And after reading the included instructions through and through several times, I thought what the hell, what do I have to lose? Everything seemed relatively simple - unscrew this, put on that, torque to this - but perhaps all of that was a rather naive assumption, as somehow in the space between the reading and the first wrenching, the installation of the rearsets got a heck of a lot more complicated than I had anticipated.

Originally I had thought to myself how hard can swapping out two pegs you put your feet on be?

As it turns out, not as simple as one thinks…

What I had so cleverly ignored was the linkage — both the shifting and the braking — neither of which replicated the pieces they replaced nor was as simple as you’d think to install — Granted, I’m the first to admit I’m a rider and a not a mechanic.

However, even with a few hiccups here and there, tonight I find a beautiful satisfaction in the wrenching — There’s truly something magnificent when you put new parts on your own bike. All the bolts might fall off tomorrow, but for right now I keep thinking about the twisting and turning of the bits done with my own hands and it seems so much more meaningful and so much more profound, as if the machine and I have become even closer, if that were possible, thanks to the hardening of a little bit of loctite.