Yamaha equipped my FJR1300 with many of the doodads that make life on the road not just worth living but downright luxurious: heated grips; anti-lock brakes; cruise control; adjustable suspension; motorized windscreen. What the bike does not feature is a garage door opener, and having to step off it to open my garage using the wall-mounted keypad has been almost too much to bear. I decided to correct the problem.
My previous effort to add a garage door opener to one of my bikes was a success, and I was sure I could repeat that success with the FJR. I had been studying where I might permanently locate an opener on the FJR and, as with the accessory fuse box I installed, was determined to place it in such a way as to make it accessible to service while not impairing access to components of the bike that might one day require roadside attention. I wanted a location reasonably isolated from the weather and the heat of the engine, and, because everything beneath the dashboard packs right up next to everything else beneath the dashboard, the cavity under the seat was the obvious choice. Even after it dawned on me that the only service I am likely to give a garage door opener is to replace its battery, and I decided to omit the battery, the alternatives to a location under the seat all required stripping off the lower fairing, and, keen though I was to save the space under the seat for some other purpose, I was not so ambitious that I could convince myself to pull the plastics.
In order to do the job, I needed a standard‐issue garage door opener, a 7809 9v 1A positive voltage regulator, a momentary switch, an ABS project box, and some spare nuts and bolts. Oh, and some wire.
To salve my conscience for spoiling the high‐effort solution of tearing apart the bike to fit the box under the fairing, I elected to reduce the profile of the box to consume as little of the underseat volume as possible. Using my Dremel and measuring from the top of the cover element, I removed about ½" from its sides, then cut the top panel from the detached portion. Discarding the strip of freed material, I used JB Weld to reattach the top to the now‐trimmed cover element, then sanded and painted the cured material.
The garage door opener surrendered its circuit board, then disappeared into the trash. To provide my own switch for activating the opener from the seat of the bike, I soldered two leads to the back of the circuit board, one to each side of the OEM switch. Because the leads to the remote battery terminal were bound to break loose as I manipulated the board, I clipped them off and soldered replacement leads to the back of the circuit board. I prepared a ring terminal to use to ground the voltage regulator by soldering to it the running end of the new, negative lead from the board, and a second lead from that ring terminal to attach later to the fuse box. I soldered a blade connector to the running end of the new, positive terminal wire and connected it to the 9v side of the voltage regulator. Finally, I soldered a lead to another blade connector and connected that to the 12v side of the voltage regulator.
I affixed the circuit board and voltage regulator to the project box with bolts driven from the back of the box, using plastic shims to isolate the board. The ring terminal for ground was mounted in contact with the voltage regulator tab, which is rigged for ground. Four wires were bundled to exit the box via an opening I created with my Dremel: the still‐free lead of the two I had soldered to the ring terminal for ground; the two leads to attach to the momentary switch to activate the opener; and the lead from the 12v side of the voltage regulator. I used a rubber grommet around the bundle to provide a weather barrier where it penetrated the box and a four‐pin Molex connector from my parts bin to tidy up the ends of the leads.
With the opener in place under the seat, I connected the positive and negative leads to the fuse box and ran the leads for the switch beneath the gas tank, then snaked them up the left handlebar. There was just enough spare volume within the left control housing to fit a small momentary switch, to which those leads were attached. This all means not only will I no longer have to park the bike to open the garage door, but I can now get the door moving while I am still half a block from home, which, timed correctly, means I do not even have to slow down.