Curing Kawasaki Concours Buzz: The Never-ending Quest

The Kawasaki Concours C10 models are notorious for buzzing at freeway speeds.  Seems like a perfect combination of de-tuning the Ninja 1000 engine, hard mounting both the engine and the exhaust to the frame, and setting up the powerband so that modern freeway speeds (with a 30 year old engine design) all conspire to put your hands to sleep in about 30 minutes.  Add in California rain grooves, and I'm lucky to make it that long!

All kinds of suggestions exist on the interwebs and the Concours Owners' Group (COG) forum, magazine and tech tips.  One of the weirder ones to me as an untrained mechanic is removing the bolts mounting the exhaust to the frame underneath the footpegs.  To be honest, the buzz is so bad in my hands I hadn't paid attention to my feet until I read that.  Next trip on the superslab, yep, now obsessing about foot buzz too!  So I get out my t-handle wrench (great purchase btw) and the right side bolt comes right off.  The heat shield on the exhause is even bent down for ease of access.  So I move over to the left side.  Of course, the problems now start multiplying.

First-nasty oil leak and grime makes doing anything on that side of the bike messy.
Second-look at the heat shield, no radiusing/indentation.  Well let's just try to get the bolt out.
Third-two turns in and the wrench is hitting the heat shield.  Switch to a different socket, no better.  Could a box end wrench fit?  Maybe, but would only turn 1/4 turn at a time and then the bolt would hit the heat shield.

So thank you yet again engineers who don't work on the bikes.  Turn T-wrench around to the 8MM side and remove heat shield and boom the bolt is out.  Then the fun of realigning the heat shield clamp (that has 88.75K miles of road grime and oil leak on it) and attaching front heat shield bolt.  2 minutes to remove exhaust bolt, 30+ minutes wrestling with heat shield removal and re-installation.  GRRRRR.

Heading out on a dinner run to test out the buzz reduction!  Have a great ride-

Dumb story to tell on myself

I'm about to pull the forks off my Sportster and take them to an indy mechanic to replace the oil seals as I just don't have the time and inclination to replace them.  I probably could do the job and enjoy doing it if I had more time and a bit more organization in Millie's Garage by now but don't so throwing the "Yuppie RUB toolkit" down on the counter (i.e. a charge card) and getting the work done.

Well, the stupid comes into play as I've been concerned on getting the fork legs back on the bike in the right sides.  So I've been thinking I should use a grease pencil and put a small L and R on the backside of the bottom tubes, right?  Or maybe right where they slide out of the clamps.  So I walk out to the bike to check out what will have to be removed (fork brace, brake piston, relocated turn signals) and spot the big base sticker that has always been on the left fork leg.  Always on the left side of every bike I've ever owned.

Yeah, it's good to be tough if your stupid.

"Mo" Vember-anyone up to doing this? Any experience/opinions of the charity?

Ok, this is barely a motorcycling or motorcycle maintenance related post, as it deals with men's health issues and the Movember fund-raising site and organization.  A few friends I ride with suffer from prostrate cancer (one very seriously) so I am thinking of participating in the Movember fundraiser this year.

Basically guys start November (now called Movember) clean shaven and grow a mustache for the month.  You can sign up as a member or team, and money raised goes to support men's health issues, primarily prostrate and testicular cancer and men's depression.  I know a few friends have done this in the past-and for those who don't normally sport a 'stache the idea is it opens conversations to raise awareness and funds.

Anyone have experience with the organization behind this group?  They post general financials on the website and appear to be legitimate if not very well-known?  Anyone have a team looking for members?