FATTKAW: Made some $$ and got some Givi love

All I have to say is recently I really love E-bay. Right after my ride up to the Trans Wisconsin Adventure taster I noticed my front rotor was toast. It became grooved out from running Galfer pads and went under sized after 4K miles. So I made a offer on e-bay to a salvage yard selling a used rotor for 150 bucks. I offered 35 bucks with shipping and they accepted and I went :0. Rotor showed up and was perfect. Then I found three Garmin Streepilot 2820 with bad digitizers and dropped a offer of 100 bucks shipped (was listed at $235) and they took it. Man I'm killing it at this point.
So why buy three broken units? One I'll keep and the other two will go back on E-bay repaired and I'll get some money to save for my new Givi box. What I did was also buy three streetpilot 2610's and put those digitizers into the 2820's. The 2610's were cheap, nobody really bids on these and you can get them for as low as a dollar plus shipping. It worked out well since one of my 2820 units sold in four minuets with the buy it now button and the other after a little bidding war for a total of $225. Not bad for my cost of 48 bucks each. One other little thing was the unit I kept was never registered with Garmin and I got a free map update.

So cash in the bank I wanted a upgrade from my fake Givi box to the real deal and to the E55.

Baby in the box but don't worry he's buckled in. Charlie was actually trying to clip it before I did it for him.

This box is very HUGE when compared to the 360 knock-off and I worried about how strange it might look. The nice thing is I really can lock two helmets in it and babys too. No I wouldn't do that! The 360 box would hold two but I would have to lay them on their sides. That's not a big deal but I damaged a ARAI shield by scratching it up against my tollway sensor and shields are expensive.
I went all out and bought the top model with the brake lights and remote opener. I don't ever dump this much cash on bike accessory but I can always mount this to my next bike.

Let me just say GIVI instruction suck. You spend a lot of money and I was left guessing how I needed to remove the plastic to accept the power bung for the box. I winged it and a sharp razor did a good job.

The plug or bung, whatever you want to call it is not keyed for any direction to drop in. You have to eyeball it to your box and push it in. Also the plug does not have any barb or retainer to keep it in place beside the tension of the hole size. Just be careful not to go crazy with cleaning up the hole.

Bung down and snug.

I'm not digging the sharp bend of the wires that they will have to go to be routed and wired under the seat but it will work. After working on cars for the last 20 years I have seen many failures with wiring and this is where it will usually happen.

On the bike loosen the front rack bolts a few turn. No need to take them out but just enough to relax the rack.

Take out all four 8mm hex bolts and drop in the four spacers supplied.

Now on the adapter plate tighten the rear Allen bolts first since they are beveled.

The front plate bolt holes are slotted and are next to be torqued down.

Wiring will run under the lock plate and under to tool kit box area. I used a 1/2 inch hole saw. It's that big because on the harness, Givi put a inline fuse holder in and this is the smallest hole it will fit through.

Plate on and bolted down.

Dress plate on and looking good.

Wiring looped forward and as relaxed as much as I could get it.

The bend off of the bung looks like it will be OK but we will see how it holds up. Wiring was very simple with positive (white) and negative (black) straight to the battery and blue to the brake light.

Givi supplies one of these cheap wire taps for the brake light and I don't suggest it. Soldier in the wire and use a good heat shrink. These taps will give you a bad connection after some weather gets in it.