Customize: Nip N Tuck

You can customize many bikes to fit you by doing the following:

Change out your seat:  
You don't have to live with the seat that comes with your bike!  It's so important to have a comfortable seat to better enjoy the ride.  Sometimes, too, the design of the seat adds height to the bike overall so you may need a lower profile seat.  Dig these seat manufacturers:

Danny Gray - my bro!!
Corbin
Mustang
LePera
Extreme
Alligator Bob - exotic stuff
Cycle Saddles - used stuff too
Travelcade/Saddleman

and here are some pads that you can place on your existing seat for added comfort:

Butt Buffer

Bunz-Ez

Saddlemen Gel Pads

Or customize your seat by making it into a gel seat!  Check out how Tom Monroe did this.

Change or adjust your handlebars:
By simply rotating the handlebars at a more comfortable position, you can experience a great difference.  You may also want to change out your handlebars all together.  Say your bike came with drag bars or straight bars and you're interested in something that swoops back towards you.  There are lots of handlebar styles to choose from.  I personally love apehangers which are the super tall handlebars.  I feel, as a vertically challenge chick, I get better leverage when moving my bike around manually in NYC.  Also, I find them extremely comfortable for riding short or long distances, plus they look cool.  Oh, but if your apehangers are too high of a reach, you'll get slapped with a vehicle violation ticket. : (

Install a lowering kit:
A motorcycle lowering kit will lower your suspension so that you're closer to the ground and this decreases your ground clearance so be mindful of this.  There are many kits to choose from relative to the type of bike that you ride.  So if you want that classic low rider look, or you're inseam challenged and you want to flat-foot your ride instead of tippy-toe, go to any one of the motorcycle parts and accessory resources listed below and search for a lowering kit to suit your bike style.

Trim your windshield:
Sometimes having all shield in front of you without the ability to peer over it in a rain downpour can be a hazard.  If you've got a great shield and you just need to trim it.  See more info about this by Motorcycle Cruiser.

Change or adjust your hand or foot controls:
Move those suckers around or change them out completely.  No need to suffer poor foot reach or hand reach.  Also change out your clutch for an e-z clutch if that mutha is too tight to operate.  However, if you've got a mutha cc in engine torque, best to keep with a tight clutch because all that power needs to be corralled.

Here are some great articles on the subject:

http://motorcyclecruiser.com/streetsurvival/JustAdjust/

And then if you pop on over to White Horse Press you can buy all kinds of books about custominzing, too.

Hey and if you want to go all out and customize the style of your bike, here are some motorcycle parts and accessory resources:

Dennis Kirk

J&P Cycles

Biker's Choice Tucker Rocky/Power Sport Rider

Custom Chrome

Competition Accessories

J.C.Whitney

Forget that and get yourself a hot custom ride!  Here are some fabulous custom motorcycle manufacturers (and there are alot more to come...)

Here's a link to some race bike and sport touring manufacturers and related companies.

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