Mounting a Vista Cruise on an FJR1300

This page shows how I mounted a Vista Cruise throttle lock on my 2003 Yamaha FJR1300. The model I bought is a generic one for Yamahas, as shown in the photo below. The FJR uses a dual cable BTW.

I'm trying this modification to aleviate a problem I only seem to have on the FJR -- namely, my right wrist gets numb and I get a pain in my forearm after 200 or 300 miles. None of my other bikes cause this problem.

I tried the two small metal brackets provided in the kit, but neither seemed to work. I also tried simply using nylon cable-ties, but couldn't get a solid fit. So I decided to drill the Vista Cruise, and put a matching hole in the throttle housing. The hole I drilled is shown by the red arrow. I counter-sank it so it wouldn't protrude and interfere with the wires from my heated grip. I used a small screw from my junk parts bin.

The back of the Vista Cruise has this little lip, which prevented the Vista Cruise from fitting close to the throttle housing, so I removed it.

Here's what it looked like after I filed it flat. This side doesn't show, so I didn't worry about making it pretty.

I temporarily mounted the Vista Cruise so I could use the hole to mark where the matching hole needed to go in the throttle housing. The red arrow shows where I drilled the hole. In this location it doesn't interfere with the throttle cables.

Here's how it looks when mounted. The Gel Grips I use had too large a "hilt", which rubbed against the Vista Cruise and prevented the throttle from closing. There was also a piece of thin black plastic to reduce friction between the rubber grip and the throttle housing. It was too large too, so I cut it off with an Xacto knife, and used the smaller, thinner one provide with the Vista Cruise. I cut down the rubber hilt of the throttle grip with a pair of scissors.

Obviously, this is not the way to do it. :-) . It's hideous, and I've got to figure out how to fix it -- probably by buying another brand of grips with a smaller hilt.

The big yellowish T-shaped thing is the "key" provided to adjust the Vista Cruise so the throttle turns freely when unlocked, and locks in place when the thumb gizmo is depressed.

Here's what it looks like when "locked" with the throttle wide open. You can see the mounting screw I added, with the 3 wires from the heated grip immediately to its right

It works very well, and holds the throttle setting just where I leave it. However, a fixed setting like you get with the Vista-Cruise isn't as good as a true "cruise control" which can maintain a constant speed in spite of hills, wind, etc.

There is a disadvantage in the way I mounted it which wasn't apparent until I first tried to start the bike, which you can kinda see from the above photo. My thumb won't reach the starter button when I'm gripping the throttle. I thought this would be a serious problem, but I've quickly gotten used to using my left hand, or leaving my hand off the throttle when I start it.

An Improvement

On 1/2/03 Ed Kruskamp wrote:

In your instructions you mentioned that you had to cut the grip hilt back using scissors. I ran into the same issue with my factory grips and I came up with a method that made the grip look nearly normal when I was done.

First I used a very sharp medical scalpel to trim about 1/8" of material around the grip's hilt. While this worked pretty slick, it did look "cut". I then powered up my Dremel mototool using the cylindrical composite grinding head (made for metal) and went at it.

The tool acts like a burnisher and "rubs" the knife marks off and leaves the rubber looking dull, which matches the finish of the uncut grip. This allowed me to get rid of the cut marks and any other "uglies" without too much work.