Gorilla Cycle Alarm/DDM HID upgrades

[JonKerr]

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!!! 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.

[dart1963]

Planning on HID sometime next year, just a question on the long wires.... could you not cut the excess, or did you already have them routed and it would have been more hassle?
Knowing this now, I'll definitely do some test fits and cut to length. I have access to waterproof heatshrink (sure it can be bought through some online electronics shops as well), I'll just have to make sure I bring home my good soldering iron and heat gun from work that weekend.
And...
Why do you have to run cables to the battery, I believe I read somewhere our headlight is fused at 15 amps, the DDM HID say they use 6amps turn on and around 3.5 running.

[JonKerr]

Yes you could splice the cables. And if I hadn't already been so frustrated with everything else going on, I probably would have done that. Although most of the cables have a corrugated covering over them and have multiple wires within that cable. Could have potentially made more of a mess of the wiring. As far as the battery connection, I thought the same thing. I tried it without the battery connected and got nothing. No power to the light at all. The battery cables go from the ballast to the battery and the connections for the bulb come from the ballast. So maybe it's just to power the ballast.

[cbzdel]

Originally Posted by dart1963

Why do you have to run cables to the battery, I believe I read somewhere our headlight is fused at 15 amps, the DDM HID say they use 6amps turn on and around 3.5 running.

personally I would rather not risk it, when a kit is included to omit the stock wiring, why take a chance at all. I had a Mazda3 which the headlights stock where 60 watts or maybe it was 55? either way people were installing 35watt HID kits without the relay harness and people were frying the wiring of their band new cars!

that being said I know its possible, so I wont risk it.

[MikeN02]

Any pictures?
Just got a Gorilla Two Way for my birthday and was doing to install it myself instead of bringing it to the shop which will charge me an extra $100.

GORILLA CYCLE ALARM W/ 2 WAY PAGER YZF CBR GSXR HARLEY : eBay Motors (item 280290034561 end time Feb-22-10 05:40:51 PST)

Was this made for the FZ6R too? If not... gotta contact the seller.

[JonKerr]

Motorcycle alarms aren't really model specific. They just tag their auctions with the most common bikes searched for so their auction comes up whenever someone searches for that model.

As for pictures, I may be paranoid, but I'm not going to give away the mounting location on a public forum of the only real theft deterrent I have. Sorry.

[MikeN02]

Originally Posted by JonKerr

Motorcycle alarms aren't really model specific. They just tag their auctions with the most common bikes searched for so their auction comes up whenever someone searches for that model.

As for pictures, I may be paranoid, but I'm not going to give away the mounting location on a public forum of the only real theft deterrent I have. Sorry.

Yeah I read that part. Just some pictures of how to install the thing like removing plastics to access the battery, what plugs go in where. I'm kind of a visual learning person, hence I have to remember landmarks when riding to an address.

[MikeN02]

Battery is under the rider's seat. Have to take off the two bolts, a plastic piece, a battery strap and another plastic piece to get to it.

Overall the alarm is easy to install yes, except I got the gorilla 7017 with two way paging. Had a hard time finding a place to mount the tilt sensor, and the touch sensitivity isn't that great. It doesn't work for the whole bike just mainly that one area where you installed the alarm box.

[Uno979]

Question on the Gorilla 7007 Ultra-Compact Cycle Alarm. Once it is set off how long will it alarm until it turns itself off? IE if I were out of town..

[JonKerr]

I have no idea and I don't have the book for it anymore. I'd imagine it'd be like most alarms and go for 5-10 minutes. I did come out of the gym one night and the alarm had gone off. (It tells you by beeping 4 times when you disarm it instead of the normal 2) I'd only been in there for about 45 minutes so I know it's less than that.

The thing is so extremely sensitive. I had it go off the other day when a Harley pulled up and parked next to it.