[chargedmr2]

I bought my used 21 Grizzly XT-R last fall, and so far I love it. I plan to use it for basic trail riding in the mountains of Eastern WA and North Idaho (and a little in MT as well), but I also plan to use it for mulit-day backcountry outings. I'm fortunate to have one of the largest contiguous wilderness areas in the lower 48 nearby (not to mention almost endless national forest) and I'm planning a 400 mile loop around the Frank-Church River of No Return (hopefully I do return) and Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness areas.

Anyhow, I've been gearing up my Grizzly for these kind of multi-day backcountry rides and figured I post some of that here.

Although riding in remote national forest areas is the fun part, I needed the Grizz to be street legal since parts of my riding require road use when getting from one area to the next. Before I post what I've been up to, here's the Grizz in stock form (Elka Stage 4's came with it). Excuse the boxes, we recently moved:

More to come...

 

[chargedmr2]

For the street legal kit, I went with the one from Tusk:

It's nothing special, but seems to do the trick. In WA, we need blinkers, horn, mirror, and the on road registration (which requires an inspection to see that the aforementioned parts are installed). Other members on this forum were helpful for getting this all figured out.

Installing the kit took a bit of work, but wasn't hard to do. Just required some patience and stripping the plastics off for routing the wire harness (you could probably get by without removing the rear fenders, but I went ahead and did anyway):

I ran the wire harness along side the factory wire harness and used the same removable zip ties:

 

[chargedmr2]

After the wire harness was all in place, I put the plastics back on and figured out where I wanted the blinkers. For the rear, I went with a location that was tucked closer in toward the centerline of the bike. This made routing and securing the wires a little easier as opposed to locating the blinkers further out along the rear fenders:

Installed:

As you can see, the wires didn't have to travel too far after leaving the rear storage area and making their way to the blinker:

More to come later...

 

[RedRocket]

you could probably get by without removing the rear fenders, but I went ahead and did anyway

If it's the first Grizzly you've owned, at some point it is always better to just pull off the plastics and fully take a look anyway. You'll quickly see where everything is and already know how to get to things in the event you ever need some sort of field repair on your, or someone else's Grizzly/Kodiak. Consider leaving the plastics off for a night, have a couple of beers and gawk at its nakedness

 

[chargedmr2]

Red, I did just that. I'm a tinkerer and like understanding how things work, etc. I've still got a long way to go with getting familiar with the Grizzly, since it is my first one. But it was nice seeing what's under the plastics. I'm also getting pretty familiar with what's under the front "hood" since I've now done a bit of wiring. For other accessories...more on that later.

 

[chargedmr2]

A little more on the wiring for the rear blinkers. On the exhaust side, I added some additional insulation to keep the wires from getting too hot. It may not have been necessary, but a little insurance, I guess:

Before the added insulation:

After:

 

[chargedmr2]

And here's where I located the fronts. The Tusk kit came with a cheap drill bit, which I planned to toss straight in the trash, but I decided to give it a cautious try. It actually worked perfectly, so if you get this kit...it's good to go. I'm a little picky with my tools, and I typically toss out the cheap stuff like this and use my own.

All done:

 

[chargedmr2]

The switch that comes with the Tusk kit mounts on the handlebars. My main complaint is that it doesn't appear at all waterproof or water resistant. It also crowds the handlebars. I'll have to move things a little more and make a custom bracket for the winch switch so things fit a little better.

 

[chargedmr2]

While I was at it, I figured I'd add some blinker indicators as well. They are not part of the kit. I found them on Amazon for a few bucks and wired them in myself. This step is definitely not necessary, but I figured why not:

I added some shrink wrap, some waterproof connectors, drilled some more holes and put them in:

 

[chargedmr2]

I didn't really care for the mirror that came with the Tusk kit so I splurged on a nicer one. Had to drill and tap the handlebar end, but it worked fine:

 

[chargedmr2]

After that was all done, I took it in for the mandatory state inspection for getting it registered for on road use. Local shop in town does inspections and nice lady came out, noted the blinkers and mirror, asked me to hit the horn, and that was that. She filled out the paperwork and five minutes later I was out of there. Much easier than I had expected. Didn't even have to unload the Grizz.

Waited about 8 weeks and my license plate finally came in. Of course, the Grizzly doesn't have a spot for plates, so I had to make one. Nothing that can't be solved with some bolts, standoffs, and a little aluminum bar stock:

 

[reogem]

Nice work!

 

[Grizz2011]

Nice job. I too used the Tusk street legal kit from RMATV for my Honda 2004 CRF250X dirtbike Have considered doing my 2011 Grizzly too.

 

[chargedmr2]

Thanks guys. The kit is reasonable priced and does the trick. Our town recently legalized ATVs for on road use (any road with speed limit of 35 or less), so maybe the kit will get more use than I was originally thinking.

 

[chargedmr2]

Based on the great advice in this forum, after the street legal business was all taken care of, I ordered the Heat Demon heated grips, thumb warmer, and seat pad. I went with the Heat Demon quad controller version which has two auxiliary outputs for additional heating accessories. The grips and thumb warmer are accessories 1 and 2 (controlled separately from each other) and the seat pad is number 3. So, I've got room for one more heated accessory, but don't have any plans to use it. But, if you want to have a heated seat pad, you need the quad controller (as opposed to the slightly less expensive dual controller).

Installation of the grips and thumb warmer is pretty straightforward and is well covered on the forum end elsewhere online. Just cut the old grips off, slide the new ones on and tighten the socket cap screw that holds the grips in place. Run some wiring and connect everything up. More on the wiring in a bit. I didn't really get a decent picture of them installed, but here they are anyway:

 

[chargedmr2]

There isn't as much info about the Heat Demon seat pad as compared to the grips. For the installation, you need to first remove your existing seat cover (obviously!). This will take some time since there are quite a few staples holding it on:

You will need to pry the staples up slightly and then pull each one with a pair of pliers. I found that a sharp chisel worked well for the prying part. The edge can be carefully worked under the staples, and one side can then be lifted up. They are in pretty tight, so again, this takes some patience. When you're all done you will have a pile that looks something like this:

Once the cover is off, you will want to carefully locate where the heated pad will be stuck onto the seat. The pad itself is adhesive backed, so once placed it will stay put:

The seat cover is fairly wide and not perfectly shaped for our Grizzly seats. It would be ideal for the pad not to break over the top surface of the seat and down the sides, as it does toward the front. You could move the seat pad back further, but in order to clear the edges, it's just too far back. It would heat a rear passenger, but your own ass would be ice cold.

It's too late for me, but I did come up with an alternative way that I could have done this to avoid this issue. It's not super easy to see in the picture above, but the wire exits the heating pad at front center. The wire then heads down through the seat (more on that in a minute) and out the underside. After I had already drilled the hole and adhered the pad to the seat, I discovered that you can actually cut this pad to shape. But, the cutting has to be done at the rear of the pad (opposite side from where the wire comes out) to prevent cutting the element in a way that will kill it. So, had I known that, I could have rotated it 180 degrees, cut the pad to be more narrow and shaped similarly to the seat, scooted it up a little more, and all without it breaking over the top surface and down the sides.

Anyhow, more on passing the wire through the seat. I did this with a large Philips screw driver and a hand drill. The drill is only for putting a hole through the hard plastic on the underside of the seat. Don't bother trying to drill through the cushion. The screwdriver is best for that part. From the top side, carefully force the screwdriver down through the cushion and toward the exit hole you drilled in the underside of the seat. Starting from the topside guarantees that the hole is right where you need it so the pad ends up where you planned. If you work from the bottom side, you might not end up with the hole exactly where you wanted it.

After you have the hole taken care of, remove the screw driver, and now go to the underside and force it back through the hole you already established. Tape your wire to the screw driver (use plenty of tape) and fish it back through, like this:

The seat pad also comes with what looks to be 1/4 adhesive backed foam padding. Cut it to shape as needed and place it over the heat pad:

Ok, all that was the easy part. Putting the seat cover back on, IMHO, is the harder part. Don't bother with a manual spring action hand stapler. The plastic is too hard, and it will not set the staples. Ask me how I know😉

Instead, use a pneumatic stapler (you can get a decent one on Amazon pretty cheap). They work really well and make this job MUCH easier. 89Sandman (on this forum) gave me some good advice for installing the seat cover. You want to secure a few staples at the center of the backside, then a few at the center of the front side. Then work back and forth down the sides. It takes some practice and I had to pull several staples to realign and get things right.

I went with w RoxSpeed cover rather than putting the OEM one back on, but there is no reason you can't reapply the OEM cover.

Here it is after patiently putting 100 or so staples back in (the rear rack is off the bike in this picture since I was working on some custom rack mounts at the time--they are almost done so more on that later, too):

 

[chargedmr2]

After the Heat Demon gear was installed, I decided to look into adding a small fuse panel near the battery so that I could run all electrical accessories to that, rather than straight to the battery. A fuse panel also makes it convenient for setting up everything on a relay, so you don't have to worry about battery drain or leaving something on. I'll post about that install later, but here's the one I used. I'm really happy with it so far:

 

[TiccyTac]

You might already have this planned, but I do 400-500 mile trips, carrying camp with me, and the most helpful things I've found are just a decent-sized box for gear, and a big can of gas.

I generally use small, light camping equipment, so I can easily fit equipment, food, and gear for two people in my rear box. I'm currently using this one, but I've recently downsized camping gear even further, and I'm considering putting the rear seat back on, and getting a front box for gear and equipment equipment.

Some people go all-out on the gear that they bring, I'm kind of the opposite. I get up at first light, break camp, and ride all frickin' day long, until the sun's going/gone down, then I just want to eat a quick dinner and get my tired butt to sleep. If I have a tent, sleeping pad and bag, my stove, some food, and my rain gear, I'm pretty well set.

 

[chargedmr2]

Sounds like you've had some good trips. Where do you do your long rides at?

Yeah, I've got the whole storage side of things figured out, just haven't gotten it all done/installed yet. I've got a box for the rear and plans for a smaller box on the front. I'll add some of that info to this thread later, since I'm building quick release mounts for all my storage. Also have plans for 6 gallons of gas and 2-3 gallons of water. I've got to come up with a good list of the necessities, including whatever tools I might need out on the trail. I'm planning to do some of my trips solo, so I'll need to plan pretty well. For the really long trips--I probably wouldn't do those solo. I don't plan to go all out on the camping side of things, just the necessities there. Definitely adding a nice tent and sleeping pad to the list--I'm getting too old to sleep on the ground without some nice padding. I once did an overnight, off-trail hiking trip with nothing but food, water, clothing, and a tarp. Those days are over for me, though😂

 

[chargedmr2]

A little more on the fuse block install. I wired it up so that when the ignition is switched on, the 50amp relay is triggered and then power is sent to the fuse block. Like I mentioned earlier, this keeps accessories from being able to draw on the battery when the ignition is switched off, and might prevent accidental battery drainage--not something I want to happen on overnight trips. It's got plenty of spare room in the panel for future accessories, though I don't know what those might be yet (other than some additional lighting).

There really isn't much room under the front panel, but I squeezed the fuse panel into the front left of the compartment:

There was just enough room in that location for the plastics to fit back on without contacting the fuse panel. It also worked well for the wiring, relay, and two main fuses between the battery and the fuse block. Here it is all wired up:

And while I didn't mention it earlier, I mounted the horn from the street legal kit here: