jedrek750

Nice firestorm...

quillinsmat

Right USD forks. I didn't see that before. Still it's good news that the fender doesn't hit. I know I wanted to be lazy but there's still at least five months before riding season. What's an hour or two more invested in my favorite toy.

quillinsmat

Did some more work on the bike tonight. I plumbed in the oil cooler with some hose splices, I ended up buying some heavy duty push-lok ones, It looks kinda cheesy with the hose clamps but i can always do the stainless lines later. Once i make sure this set up will work for me.

I also mounted the headlight and turn signals, next step is hacking apart the wiring harness i suppose. or maybe collapsing the forks, we'll see how i feel when the time comes

jerryh

Bike is looking clean!

Hawkrider

When you bottom the forks and fabricate brackets, leave about 1/4" of extra space. When braking, the forks (even non-stock forks) will bend back a little bit. They are designed to do that, and they stay in the elastic range so it's not permanent.

NHSH

Erno, how about the rear end? I may have asked you that before on a different thread... can't remember, is this from a Kawi?
Awesome looking bike mate, good catch

erno

Are you talking about swingarm?If so its a JMC from the UK.
Tail is a (Mario) special,similar to a R1


cheers

NHSH

Yes, the swingarm indeed also good to know about the tail as well
Thanks for the info mate.

Cheers

quillinsmat

So I've been slacking in the update department, but i have been working on the bike. I was being a wimp though and when it was really cold outside i took a long hiatus.
I fabbed up two different radiator set ups because i poked a hole in the first one when i was drilling a mounting hole. I did the pair valve removal and made my own front block off plate to make room for the cooling set up. I ended up moving the fork tubes all the way down in the triple clamps to get as much clearance as possible between the fender and the rad. And i bought a couple of KOSO guages.

Now i'm working on shortening the wiring harness and getting the new pieces to jive with the old harness. I've got two wire turn signals and i'm not sure how to make them work with the three wire set in the harness, and the computer fans i got for the rad have four wires and the original fan has two plus the temp sensor. Does anyone have any experience with this that could maybe help me out?

P.S.
sorry my pics are a little out of date, thats the old rad set up the new one is the right hand side rad with some homemade brackets like the ones on the suzi rad and the same fans. I'll try to get some more up to date pics on here soon

CrickiKaze

What dimension are the radiator you are working with, may have to borrow your idea?

quillinsmat

I'm not sure what the dimensions of the radiators are but the first one was an sv1000 rad that i had to notch out four rows. It was a super cheap chinese knock off though and i wasn't able to tig weld the tubes shut cause it was too thin. I ended up using some epoxy(metal magic) to make caps instead. the epoxy did seal but since i poked a hole in the rad with a drill bit when i was drilling mounting holes, i never did get a chance to run it up to temperature and see if epoxy was really a viable option.
After i screwed up the first rad i didn't want to pay for another one, cause i'm pretty cheap, I used the right hand side rad from the firestorm and it looks like its going to work better anyway. I can still turn lock to lock and i have it mounted high enough that the bottom of the valve cover is lower than my rad. I did have to remove the front pair valve hose to make room for the fans and it is TIGHT in there now but nothing is rubbing. I'm also going to use the extra hose outlet as a place to mount the KOSO water temp guage so i didn't have to get it blocked off.
The firestorm rad is smaller than the SV rad so the cooling is obviously not going to be as good. i have an 8 row oil cooler from a zx7 and i'm hoping that it will make enough of a difference.

Here are a couple more pics of the new rad set up and some of the wiring work i've been doing. I have no idea what to do with the un-used wires now that i have different guages. Are the neutral switch and side stand swtich going to stop me from running if i dont put a resistor in there or something?

erno

Looking good there mate ,keep it up

quillinsmat

I got to work on the bike today a bit. I finished installing the sensor for my new speedo
I'll have to zip tie the little aluminum bracket to the fork to stop it from vibrating too much, but i've got new rotors coming tomorrow so i'll just wait till i swap those out.
Then i mounted and wired the temp sensor in the unused outlet on the rad.
This is when i got a little distracted. I started looking at all the unused wires for the dummy lights. I had read on other forums for other bikes that if you don't want to use the kickstand light or the neutral light or whatever that you have to put a resistor or something in there or the bike won't run. I also thought that since the VTR is carbureted it probably doesn't have a whole lot going on in the computer department for things like that. At any rate i decided that i kinda like dummy lights anyway, so i thought that since i wasn't using the factory gauges anymore i could probably steal the lights out of there! And holy crap there are plugs there too that I could steal and make it look like its kinda sorta supposed to be there. This is what I came up with in the end


when i cut it down to size i got rid of the screw holes that hold the front cover on, so i used some construction adhesive i had in the shop and i glued the parts together, then i made the mounting bracket and glued that to the back. After it all cures a bit i'll seal it up with some silicone and paint it. I don't know if the adhesive is going to hold super well but its pretty good stuff when you're gluing boards and styrofoam and stuff.

quillinsmat

So I got everything finished finally! All the wiring works and is tucked away as much as I could with no fairing. The computer fans work when I ground them out, but I haven't had a chance to run it up to temp (more on that later). The new gauges work as well as I can tell so far. I spun the wheel and the speed went up and the rpm went up when I started it. I collapsed the front forks with everything installed and the fender just barely touched the new radiator so I'm happy with that. I did run it for a minute or two and nothing was leaking. This is where the bad news starts though. While I was bleeding the air out of the coolant system with the bike running I heard a ticking/knocking sound coming from the motor. I revved it a little to make sure I wasn't imagining the noise then shut it off.
I started checking over everything and found that there was no oil in the sight glass. I had to add almost a litre before I could see it again.
I've been talking with the millwrights and mechanics at work my plan before trying to start it again is to drain some oil through a screen to see if there are bearing parts on there. If that checks out I'll spin the motor over with a drill on the crankshaft and no plugs in it to pump oil through the system. Then try again I guess. It didn't sound to me like chains slapping and it follows the rpm so I don't think it's the ccts. Not too mention they only have about 3000km on them.
Anyway that's my update for today. I'll try to get some more pictures uploaded tonight

quillinsmat

hey i finally got around to the pictures of the bike all put together, and i finally figured out the photo hosting biz so here you go.


these are my old rotors complete with cracks from being an idiot and not cleaning out my gixxer calipers before i installed them.

these are the new EBC rotors mounted to the wheel

this is the whole mess mounted back on the bike partway through the soul crushing experience of bleeding the front brakes. there is very little i hate as much as bleeding brake lines.

this is the previously loved ZX7 oil cooler mounted and plumbed.

my new guages, all working and stuff

face shot

super tedious wiring job that didn't turn out as pretty as i wanted, i may need to revisit this next winter. at least it all works

the tight clearances between the fans and valve cover, gonna suck to try and do timing now.

quillinsmat

so i kinda suck at this regular update thing but i have been working on the bike, and i have some progress to report. . . IT RUNS! oh my god it finally runs again. I definitely over reacted about the ticking noise i was hearing too. there are no leaks, the fans come on at about 100*C and do a pretty damn good job off cooling off the system, the tach isn't quite set up right yet. i think its set for a 4 cyl 2 stroke instead of a 2 cyl 4 stroke, cause it says i'm idling at about 3000 rpm, i'll have to investigate that later
I ended up taking the carbs off and cleaning them, and re-adjusting the pilot screws to 2 1/4 turns out. In the process i decided to order some of the sweet thumb screws made by Jack Flash to make adjustments easier in the future. I know i'll have to take everything apart again to install them but w/e thats what rainy days are for right.
This time i tried to use the little thing that came in the dynojet kit to adjust them while they were installed on the bike but that just wasn't happening so i did this to it



and tried to use this to get it in there




it didn't work (is it ever tight in there) but it was kinda fun to make. I got ahead of myself there a little. while i was tearing things apart i read on here about balancing carbs and decided i would make the vacuum lines to attach a manometer.




i took the little brass nipple thing for running the petcock diaphragm out of the rear cylinder so that the honda guys could see what i was talking about. fast forward, parts are on order and i'm putting the little brass thing back in with my nut driver, i got it snug and thought "just a little more so i'm sure it seals" and then this happened




so i called honda and doubled my order. what else can you do.

I also built this sweet manometer using some plans i found somewhere on the forum, it works like a hot damn, it maybe cost $5 in tubes and rubber caps, $10 if you count the beer.



another side bar, i found some auto CCTS on ebay for a dollar so i bought them to turn the housings into manual ones, thanks again mike from penticton.



and then all taken apart



So now the good news is over, while i was waiting on the vacuum parts i went to replace the left front turn signal bulb cause one of the filaments was gone. i changed the bulb turned on the blinker, it blinked maybe three times and quit. now it won't blink on either side( the other side was fine before). i took my test light to it and i'm getting power to the marker light wires but not to the intermittent turn signal light wires. and the back signals aren't blinking anymore either. does this sound like a buggered turn signal relay?