Background: For the practical-minded among us, one of the weak points of the new-gen Ninja is the availability of hard luggage mounting solutions. A lot of people have found clever home-made ways to hang soft bags off both generations of Ninjette, but to my knowledge there is no major-manufacturer-built, U.S.-available hard luggage mounting system out there for the '08+. In Southeast Asia, however, Givi sells an HR-4 Monorack and accessory side racks for mounting Givi hard luggage to the back of the new-model Ninja 250. They introduced these products not long after the 2008 redesign. You can look at pictures, and read about some of these things (sometimes via Google translation, if you don't speak the local languages) here:
Home-brew mount for V35s in Indonesia
HR4 review, Indonesia
Phillipines forum thread with pictures of an HR4 and V46 on the Ninjette (halfway down)
Givi Malaysia's product page for the main rack and side racks:
Givi Malaysia - HR4 product page
Givi Malaysia - SBX-401 sideracks for V35 cases
Givi Malaysia - SB-435 sideracks for smaller cases
Recently there was some discussion here and on another forum (forgot where exactly) about the availability of these products through Mr. Thitinan "Alvin" Sirisithichoke at thaimotorbox.com.
Thai Motor Box's product page for the HR4
I don't know his exact position so I will say he's "Head Givi Guy" in Bangkok; I think he runs their authorized dealership there, and he does speak English, and is willing to ship to the United States. After some e-mail communication with him, and in consideration of my near-total lack of other acceptable options, I decided to order one of these rack systems from him. Here are the facts about ordering:
- Arrangements are best made via e-mail to Alvin directly via his e-mail at the contact page:
Thai Motor Box contact page
- Final shipped price for me, from Bangkok to DFW, Texas, USA, for the Givi HR-4 rack and SBX-401 side racks, was $425.00 via Western Union. This may vary a bit due to exchange rate. Yes, it's expensive, due to shipping costs; no, it may not be worth it to you. I don't see myself buying a bigger bike with a domestically available luggage system anytime soon, and nobody has tried this solution yet that I can find, so I figured, what the heck... I'll take the plunge. I sent the money from the Western Union counter at a local grocery store and gave Alvin the Money Transfer Control Number. I think I got lucky with timing, in that my e-mail with the MTCN reached him first thing in the morning in Bangkok, because he shipped the rack within about six hours of me e-mailing him the number.
- Shipping is via Thai EMS. Alvin provided a tracking number which was updated timely and told me accurately where everything was. Transit time should normally be about a week. Unfortunately the package was shipped on Jan. 29th; if you remember the weather in the U.S. at that time, you know that a couple of days later we experienced a series of country-crossing ice and snow storms that disrupted just about every form of transport. This was the situation only a couple of days after I ordered the rack:
According to the shipping papers on the box I received, the package left Thailand, passed through Hong Kong, arrived in Chicago, and then on to DFW via, I believe, China Air Cargo. I live within shouting distance of DFW and regularly drive the airport road which runs past the cargo terminals. The day after my tracking said the package had been flown from Chicago to DFW, I drove down that road and noticed that there were two CAC 747's unloading (there is usually only one) due to the weather-induced backlog. I'm pretty sure my package was on one of those planes. Unfortunately security would frown on me stopping at the fence and asking anybody at the terminal if they could get a box off the plane for me... So I had to wait for USPS to receive the package, not deliver it, and leave me a card that told me I had to drive to post office to get it, where I finally took it over the counter from an overworked-but-friendly Asian lady who was about as tall as the box was long.
Here is the received box after unpacking. Alvin apparently just pulls the items off the shelf and sends them right to you, no muss, no fuss. The box was a little banged up but that's to be expected after being shipped across a quarter of the planet. Individual components were wrapped in Givi-logo bags and were laid loose in the box, and customs at any given point (or country) may or may not have gone through it, so things will get jumbled but there was no damage to components. Alvin did repack the SBX-401s into the HR4 box for me, so I was only waiting for one box.
Here are the parts as delivered - the HR4 rack and the SBX-401 side racks for V35s, and their respective small parts bags. I won't be installing the V35 racks right now, as I don't have V35 boxes and won't be purchasing them anytime soon. I bought the racks for future use.
Next are the "instructions". Givi is notorious for bad instructions, and keeping with tradition, these are just plain bad. Basically it's a parts diagram loosely illustrated with poor, out-of-date photographs. On the right side of the diagram page is the parts list. Unfortunately there are not many cues to help you link the list to the actual parts. Some things are obvious, like the bigger pieces, but to match up which screw type matched which number, I eventually realized that I should measure the length of each screw's threaded portion in millimeters and compare it to the "Part No." which actually describes the length of the threaded portion of the screws. Folks in the civilized world who use the Metric system may not face any confusion. There are also missing items from the instructions; the diagram doesn't show where you install #7 (the big M8 nylock nuts for the screws which secure the tail platform), and #16, the M6 nylock nuts, weren't included in the parts bag; I think they assumed that the bike's undertail screws are secured with M6 nuts that you can re-use. I had to buy those from a hardware store. I should note that Alvin did offer to answer any questions I had about installation, but I decided that I'd do my best to figure it out myself.
I eventually got the small parts sorted out in a compartmented art supply bin which I use for wrenching:
Here is a rough arrangement of how the major assemblies fit together.
Next post: Installation.