Mwahahaha!!!! It leeeves!!! My creation, it LIVES!!!

I finally got the brake spacers from the fabricator yesterday, and of course, it rained last night. No garage, no workie. So I got up this morning and waited long enough for the grinder to officially not be a nuisance (after 0900 on a military base, one can assume the neighbors are up, even on a weekend). Pulled the calipers, finished grinding the clearance on the inside and bolted everything back up. Bled the brakes, filled the radiators, checked the tires, and I was off! I probably looked kinda funny weaving back and forth between 5 and 35mph in full leathers, stopping and starting for no apparent reason... but I don't care.

Initial impressions:

With the decreased triple-clamp offset, it has more trail than before, even with the forks being 6mm shorter. It turns in about the same as stock, we'll see how the mid-corner line-adjustment behavior is at some point in the future.

Down-angle on the clip-ons is pretty steep, but not at all uncomfortable. Since they're set underneath the upper triple, and that triple is a 954 'gull-wing' (steps down from steering head to forks), the reach is further forward and down than before. Not sure yet how that will fare on longer rides yet, but with the lack of fairing I think I'll have enough wind to lean against. Grip position does make it easier to get leaned off the side now though.

My cafe fairing isn't exactly straight. It's close enough you can't tell unless you're standing over the front end, but still isn't dead on. Oh well.

The bar-end mirrors offer a good view behind and to the sides. Long distance visibility to the rear isn't as good as the stock mirrors, but then again they were useless when I was in the throttle since they vibrated so badly.

I missed my modified exhaust. Didn't realize how much so until I rode with them installed again. I think it'll take one more shortish ride to get the bbq paint cured completely.

Came back to the house, waited on the mid-day showers to pass and the roads to dry out, then headed back out w/ the camera for some video and pictures:

Flyby video with high quality audio Check it out!





I think the bbq paint (high temp stuff) on the cans turned out pretty well. The plan is to do the chin fairing and tank in truck bedliner, but that’ll be some time after we get moved. At this point, I’m just glad to be back on the road again. Biggest issue I had by far in the whole setup was getting the brakes to line up and play nice. The picture below shows where I had to separate the brake caliper halves and grind them so they’d clear the rotor edge (small arrow), and where the 4mm spacer sits which gets the caliper aligned relative to the plane of the rotor.


Having gone from 296mm rotors with small VTR brake pads (albeit EBC HH pads...) to 320mm rotors with much larger stock 954 pads, there is already a marked improvement. There was a little surface rust on the rotors which I used the stock pads to eliminate. Now that the rust issue is gone, I'll install and bed-in the EBC HH 954 pads. Mad, mad stoppies yo.

And lastly, here's a cockpit view:


The lower bolt holding the gauges on worked its way out since the backing nut is attached under the bracket a little funny... I'll have to get a new one and some loc-tite, but no worries. I do need to figure out a better way to secure the top of the headlight. I used the 'locating cones' that stick out from the back of the headlight housing into the rubber grommets on the fairing stay: cut the ends off and they're hollow--- insert appropriately sized screw and they will hold the top of the headlight in place. Until you set a wheelie down a little hard... and then the headlight starts pointing downward. Oops. I think some strategically placed zip-ties will solve the problem. We'll see. More to follow...