Rassie

Rassie’s track bike build story. (Originally posted on the NESBA forum)

This story is not supposed to be used as a guide to do any mechanical work on any motorcycle and any advice offered may be hazardous to your health and property. Be forewarned. Now read on and enjoy. It is a little long since it was written over a couple of months in stages as the project progressed so bookmark it and come back often. Also comments are welcome.

Last year I decided to build myself a track bike. I wanted a V-twin since I like the way they make power and besides my road bike is an SV1000S which I like a lot and at least the Harley guys will wave back even if it is a sport bike coz they think it is something else based on the sound it makes and since you come past so fast, by the time you have gone past and they realize it was a sport bike you are long gone and a happy camper since they waved back. Also there is a guy in South Africa (where I originally come from) that has been riding a Moto Guzzi for more than 430,000 kilometers (his name is Charley and he writes a column for Bike SA over there) so I figured a V-twin will be seriously reliable as well and therefore will work well as a track bike. Actually this is all BS and I am just getting old and wanted a slower bike that is easier to ride, so there the cat is out of the bag. Besides my previous ZX600R and my more recent YZFR6 made me nervous when I revved them to 145000 rpm and I was scared that all that revving will result in expensive noises which since my son is going of to college soon means I will not be able to repair it, anyway you probably get the point, so I will get of the subject. But before I do one more point when riding a V-twin doing 100mph sounds like you are just cruising fast but on a 600 that revs to 40,000 rpm it sound like you are doing 200mph so people notice when you go fast especially the cops. Riding a v-twin people think it is a Harley coming down the road, and since an Harley can only do 60mph down a mineshaft with a strong wind from behind, you get the stealth effect of going fast while appearing slow, sweet.


So I ended up buying a used and crashed 1999 VTR1000F with 5k miles on it off EBay in October 2005 for $1200. Being on a 2K budget it was about all I could afford and I like Honda’s anyway. So there I was in upstate New York one chilly Friday afternoon talking to a hog farmer, complete with this rubber pants outfit, it looks like he was halfway into a very large condom that was made for a giant with two uuuhh members, if you know what I mean, nudge nudge. After I got used to the smell it turned out he is a very nice guy since he did not mentioned the fact that I chased his cow down the road when I arrived and he had to rustle it back up again, which he did very skillfully using only his Dodge truck and some hand signals and whistles which I am sure is cow language for “get the f$%k back in there before I send your *** to the butcher or get my lonely cousin over to milk you again in that funny from behind way“. After things calmed down I asked him what happened to the VTR that was now propped up against a pine tree. Apparently after a very intense and lively Sunday afternoon barbeque, more like a pig picking I reckon, which was accompanied by the consumption of many and varied, shall we say “soft drinks”, his buddy was in the process of showing everyone how to do a burnout when the front brake slipped from his hand and he went drag racing down the road and right through a horse fence, to I assume the great amusement of the other barbeque attendees. Apparently this incident was weighing heavy on his mind and reclassified motorcycle ownership for him as a dangerous habit. I guess I see the point if you cannot handle bikes and booze and you have to choose between the two to protect yourself, booze would be the obvious choice, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. I wonder if after a few “soft drinks” the hogs look more beautiful and if you have to choose…naw let’s not go there and close the kimono on that one right away. Anyway to get back to the bike.

I have since been working on getting the bike ready for the track only. Now this exercise takes place in my basement where I had created a temporary “workshop” complete with a bar fridge and specialized tools like the device you use to draw beer from a keg. Told the wife it is a vacuum pump used to bleed brakes. These tools are necessary to keep the mechanic in top shape, since I become hypoglycemic (apparently this is the far opposite of drunk or too sober so to speak) if I do not eat or drink regularly, so this is a critical piece of equipment in my workshop and since my wife is blond she understands all that perfectly. After all she does not want me to get hurt down there where I am working with dangerous tools like screw drivers, vernier calipers and sockets and such.

Now to continue the story of my track bike build, when I wheeled the VTR of the trailer I noticed what appeared to be gazillions of small specs all over the thing. After fiddling around for my glasses (which were on my head by the way) I noticed that it was covered in tiny spiders. What ensued can only be described as “Fear factor Season 4” as of all God’s creations spiders are the ones He and I do not agree on. My wife came running out the house to my horrified cries only to walk away in disgust mumbling something about a big sissy or was that a big *****, not quite sure. Anyway a can of insect killer later the bike looked like someone had attacked it with a fire extinguisher, at least the spiders were all history. Just so you all know this stuff does not come off easily and I spent the next 3 hours cleaning the stuff off the bike.

Finally after I had the bike cleaned I was ready to start removing broken bits and parts. The process I use to make sure I remember where everything goes is to take a digital picture of every step and then later on print them out in the same sequence so I know how to put it all together again. I removed the fairings, seat, radiators (which by the way and as you know sit on the sides which in my mind is a plot by Honda to sell more parts since they get whacked even if the bike just tips over), hoses, handlebars, forks, exhausts, wheels, brakes, battery, air box, etc. I am sure you get the point, a lot of stuff. I made sure to take a picture every step of the way. The next step was to clean every part so it can be inspected properly so I can make a list of stuff I have to get on eBay. Now eBay shopping that is something else but I will save that story for another day.

To make a long story short a couple of weeks and several hundred dollars later I was ready to start assembly. Now to put things in perspective I am not the only person who has access to my digital camera. Yep you guessed it, somehow all my pictures disappeared into cyberspace, replaced by pictures of zit faced teenagers, wearing their underclothes over their over clothes and stuck in weird poses making stupid faces while holding two cats and a dog. Well this did not deter me one bit and I started to put everything back together on memory alone. Did I mention that I am in my mid forties and have noticed the onset of symptoms related to Alzheimer’s. Anyhow I started getting a little concerned when I ran into an issue getting the front exhaust to fit in front of the left fork tube. I was even more concerned that the radiator mounts now seemed to favor the radiators mounted where the headlight used to be, while I remember them being on the side of the bike for sure. Also I could not understand why I now had to feed the intake stacks/tubes from the air box to the carbs over the top of the air box. Anyway what sent me over the hill was the front wheel that would now only fit right if mounted on the outside of the right fork leg looking like a single sided fork. I finally realized that I will need a shop manual, so off to eBay I went. Ten bucks later and 3 days of waiting I finally had the shop manual and about another 3 hours of work I had the bike put back together properly with the wheel mounted between the forks and radiators sitting on the sides. Very happy with my efforts I decided I liked the look of the carb tubes running over the top of the air box, looked very futuristic and super custom, so I left them like that for now.

Next I started the fork rebuild to install the new Racetech fork springs I bought of eBay. They were actually for a Ducati but I figured both the VTR and the Duc are v-twins so they should fit no problem. Fortunately I now had the shop manual so no need for pictures. The instructions said that there may be a need for cutting the spacers that go on top of the springs. Sounded like a challenge to me so there I went stripping down the forks and getting oil all over everything since the manual says you have to pump the oil out of the system. It says nothing about spraying oil all over the place. Took me 3 hours to clean up.

Well at least I now have the forks stripped and cleaned. In go the new seals and it is so easy I do not even have to look at the shop manual. Like I said everything went together like a charm, I should have recognized the warning signs right there. Soon as I removed the jack from underneath the bike the shocks compressed all the way down and the bike was sitting on it’s belly. Turns out I used the old springs with the new bushings, which were now cut too short. Luckily for me I had some old exhaust pipe in the garage that was about the same size and after some measuring and cutting the bike now stands up nice and level, now I only have to figure out why the damping works on the down stroke only, seems like a small problem which I will deal with later. Maybe using the maple syrup in stead of fork oil has something to do with it. Hey I know what you are thinking but when I poured the stuff in it looked like it had the same consistency. Besides after the issue with pumping the oil out of the system I could not stand the smell and the taste of regular fork oil anymore. Finally the bike is back on it’s wheels. Those intake pipes running over the air box are giving me an idea for a RAM air system…..time out to think it over a bit.

I got it all figured and sketched out so time to start working on the RAM air system. A short trip to Pep Boys has produced some flexible plastic tubing that are similar in size to the intake tubes on the carbs. After some clever routing and drilling with a hole saw to route the pipes through the frame and the fairing I now have a perfectly good looking, and may I say nicely done, RAM air system. The holes are not in front of the fairing as is the normal practice but on the sides near the radiators. I figured if the radiators can get a boost of air there so can the carbs. Man I cannot wait to get this thing out on the track….

This morning I got up and decided to tackle the brakes. I had bought some Stainless steel brake lines of eBay and have been dying to install them. Today was the day. After careful removal of the brake calipers and the lever I had the whole thing off the bike. Now the manual only talks about disassembling this stuff while on the bike so I had to improvise. I figured if I pumped the brakes without the pads in then all the fluid will just run out where the cylinders go into the calipers and with the cylinders out I can inspect them properly to make sure the seals are all good. After the second or was it the third pump the cylinders shot out of the calipers and sprayed brake fluid all over everything. Took me 3 hours to clean up and remove the dent from the tank that was made by the flying cylinder, live and learn. So I replaced the old lines with the new lines using the new fresh washers as prescribed by the manufacturer and torqued everything to specifications. (my definition of “torque to spec” is to tighten the bolt until it strips and then go one quarter turn back) Next I proceeded to install everything on the bike. I could not understand why things did not want to line up. However if I turned the fork tubes around that the calipers sit in the front of the forks like on the old bikes they fit nicely and everything lined up right. I reckoned it should be OK and a quick check revealed that the wheel still fit and lined up so I figured just leave it that way and be different, should be good for some interesting discussions at the track and since the wheel now sat a little more forward it should be more stable at speed. Next I started bleeding the brakes. First I tried using my Mity Vac system, this creates a vacuum that is supposed to suck the fluid through so it shortens the time it takes to bleed and makes it a one man job. Well this did not work as advertised since it sucked the fluid in faster than I could refill the reservoir and ended up sucking air in all the time. So I figured why not work it the other way around. Let the thing blow the brake fluid in and create pressure so when I open the bleeding screw down below it will force the fluid in. Sounds like a solid strategy to me. So I pour the brake fluid into the Mity Vac pump until it is full and then used one of the reducer nozzles supplied with the kit to insert it into the hole in the brake master cylinder reservoir and proceeded to pump that puppy up. I watched the pressure carefully and when it got to about 60psi I reckoned it would be ample to force the fluid through. So I release the bleeding screw and the next thing it blows the bleeding tube right of the screw and squirts the brake fluid straight up onto the ceiling and then it splattered all over everything, took me 3 hours to clean up, live an learn. By now the brake fluid had also all but destroyed my in process paint job as well, will probably take another 3 hours to fix, but I will worry about that later. So based on this experience I would not recommend using a Mity Vac to bleed your brakes. After that I decided to use the services of my very enthusiastic teenage son and teenagers as you all know make a point of not cooperating when asked. So after coaxing him down into the basement with the promise of compensation in the form of expensive computer parts and after having to carefully instruct him to pull the lever back all the way and hold it firm about 111 times, (you would think he’d get it after the first time) the brakes were now bled right and the lever is nice and firm. My son commented that the brake calipers now sitting in front of the forks look really sweet, old school and custom fabricated, I like them like that too. Next I will start working on the installation of the DynoJet kit….

First I took of the damn fine looking air box with the seriously racing looking ram air system off the bike. Had to fiddle with the custom ram air tubes to get them out and noticed that where they pass through the frame the metal looks a bit thin, but hey Honda’s are seriously mondo “strong like bull” and besides it is a v-twin, so I think it will be OK. Maybe I can get my friend Bill to take a look and perhaps weld some supports onto the frame around the area. Bill can weld like you will not believe. I am sure he can weld aluminum foil together without holing it. This guy is so good they still have to invent the thing that he cannot weld back together again, seriously, but that is another story. Anyway back to the jet kit. With the “damn fine” looking air box and ram air system off I started working on the carbs. I noticed that the throttle cables were on the wrong way around, man that was a good catch since the way it was connected, wide open throttle would have been totally shut and vice versa, actually that could be used to scare your fellow track day riders. Just imagine you are coming up on turn one at Beaverun (Incidentally that is where I go 3 times a year with Nesba to lap sweet Beaver if you catch my drift) and suddenly you see the guy on your inside on the VTR whacking the throttle open just as he slams on the brakes and then shutting of as he enters the turn, could be hard to get used to though. Anyway good catch none the less. So with the cables disconnected and the screws loosened around the intake tubes I start to pull on the carbs to get them off. They seem to be stuck so I really yank on them and the next thing they come flying off and hit me in the nose, with gasoline flying everywhere. I stumble back and put my foot in the bucket of fork oil left over from the fork rebuild, slip and fall over backwards onto the now strategically placed left over piece of exhaust pipe, the one I used to make the spacers for the forks. Now right at this moment the wife comes walking in the door and there I am sitting with a bleeding nose, the smell of gasoline everywhere, my foot in a bucket and a piece of pipe halfway up my ***. Anyway it took me 3 hours to clean up and another 3 to convince my wife that I was not sniffing gasoline and I was not practicing sadomasochism either. Very embarrassing moment that.

Now with the carbs off I decided that I can do the swapping of the jets and the needles upstairs in the kitchen where the lighting is better and to be honest the business with the exhaust pipe has left me a little, shall we say fragile, I mean really the damn pipe did not even call or send flowers or anything so I was not comfortable being near it until I got over it. Anyway back to the carbs. So armed with a pair of those magnifying goggles, similar to the ones you see the surgeons use on the medical discovery channel, while performing delicate breast implant surgery, which by the way I saw by accident one day when channel surfing, not like I am watching that stuff all the time or anything like that. So armed with the instructions from DynoJet I started the process of replacing the jets and the needles. I tell you what there are a lot of fiddly bits inside a carb and since I had the shop manual I reckoned I can just as well strip the whole thing while I am busy and give it a once over. I mean you cannot be too careful with a track bike and it is better if everything is checked out properly. So I took apart the two carbs carefully unscrewing every little screw until there was nothing left on the metal carb housing. I carefully adjusted the float levels by adding weights with duct tape to the float bowls. I used a reamer, which I got from my buddy Denny who is a dentist, (it is a stainless burred needle uses for doing root canals). to clean out the crap in all the small holes in the carb housing and jets. Hell I was even able to enlarge some of the holes with it since I figured the bigger the holes the better my damn fine looking ram air system will work right? I applied these same principles to the main jets I got with the DynoJet kit and while I was at it I figured I can use my knife sharpening oil stone to sharpen those needles a little as well. It may even improve the throttle response, making it sharper and all that. When I was done I could not figure out why I had 3 small little screws and 2 parts left that resemble jets with holes drilled sideways into them. I also could not find them in the shop manual either so I figured it must be the stuff left over from the DynoJet kit or something.

The other night while watching some drag racing on TV I got this really wild idea to increase the horsepower on my bike even more. I was watching all these cars with these turbo chargers or super charger and NOS and all that stuff when I had a brilliant idea. Why not use an electric motor to force air into your carbs like a turbo charger. How come no one has ever thought about this before. Immediately my brain started working in overdrive and the next thing you know both my wife and daughter were looking for their blow driers which had been smuggled downstairs into the basement. I carefully looked them over and noticed that both worked with little transformers that convert the power down to 12v, bingo just what I needed. Now if you remember previously I made this really sweet damn fine looking RAM air intake system for my bike. Now if I could mount the blow driers one on each side of the intake tubes with a Y junction and then run some wiring to the driers from the battery plus add an “on and off” switch I could have the potential for a damn fine electric powered Turbo system. Man am I excited, how come no one has thought of this before, as they say in the Guinness commercials “brilliant”.

Anyway another trip to Pep Boys and I was all set with the required pipes and joins to make up the twin blower system. Firstly I made some brackets to mount the blow driers on the inside of the fairing just in front of the radiators, may cause a cooling problem but we will have to wait and see. I made some really sweet aluminum brackets for each blower and even used an old office garbage can to make some covers over the top of them since I did not want anyone else to steal my brilliant idea before I have all the worldwide patents registered. Man if this system works the way I think I am going to be rich. Any kid with a Honda Civic will be able to add a blower to his car for under $50. Hello sweet life, maybe I will be able to afford that MV Augusta I always wanted soon.

Next I started on the wiring and ran the wires from the fuse box to the handle bar mounted switch (I used the kill switch, who ever uses that anyway) and from there to the blowers. Next I made sure I had a nice strong fuse in there and flicked the switch to on. Immediately I could hear some serious blowing noises going on down there as the air was being forced into the carbs making some serious pressure down there. I decided to start the bike and then try again. So I let it warm up a little with the rear end sticking out my basement door, don’t want to gas myself just yet. Soon as the needle settled on “nice and warm” I fired up the blowers and immediately the idling speed shot up a little. Now I saw this as a positive sign. Next I started playing with the throttle a little. As I fed in more gas the revs started to climb, at first much faster than usual, and then at about 4000 rpm she started backfiring and missing and spluttering. Damn probably needs new jetting and I had just replaced those puppies last weekend.

Anyway it is at this particular point that things get really interesting. My neighbor who has now had 2 very loud open Viper Race Cans pointed at his back door for about 15 minutes decides to investigate and strolls over. To put things in perspective he is the workshop manager at a Subaru dealer and works with turbo’s all the time. He takes one look at my really very sweet blower setup and gets this really wide grin on his face. At first I reckoned he was impressed as hell but then he starts to explain why he is amused. He reckons that at best the 2 blow driers could, running at maximum only make about .5psi of pressure which is much less than what my bike can suck in at about 4000rpm. He therefore suggested that my patent is actually starving the carbs of enough air to rev above 4000 rpm hence the spluttering and backfiring.

Ah no man, so no more stinking rich, worldwide patent holder and MV Augusta owner on the cards for me. Suddenly it all started to make sense to me. I must admit I was very disappointed that I was not going to become rich and have invented the cheap turbo for the common man. Well I guess live an learn, at least it was not my teenage mutant ninja rider son that figured that one out since I would never hear the end of it.

It has been a busy couple of months as I was working to get the bike ready for my first track day which is in two weeks. The last few weekends have been spent frantically working on the cosmetics, mainly the paintwork. For those of you who have never tried this I need to point out a couple of key issues with applying paint. #1 being that the stuff is designed to go on at a certain temperature, about 70 to 80 degrees F. #2 it is designed to be painted in a well aired environment (read big exhaust fans) like outside. #3 you need protection when you work with the stuff since it is toxic, much more than lets say Acapulco Gold, Tied Stick (from Cheech & Chongs) or cigars. #4 It is damn expensive so you better not waste it. #5 You need good light coz this stuff plays tricks on your eyes especially if you are painting reflective pearl pigments like I plan to. Anyway enough lecturing.
To overcome these 5 issues I had to be a little creative. Now living up in Pennsylvania you will all know that this time of year with freezing mornings and not much hotter days is not exactly what I would call ideal conditions to paint in. So I get a six pack out of the fridge (brain oil, helps me think) and settle down to do some serious scheming. After the 2nd beer the ideas just start popping into my head. Most of them to expensive or not feasible for other reasons, mainly involving sanity and a couple of strippers but that is another story. So I am thinking I need a spray booth, that would be an enclosed space with ventilation and heat so I can regulate the temperature. After the 3rd beer I am well on my way to a solution so I venture down in the basement to pair up some materials with my ideas. In the one corner I found a camping pergola, complete with side netting. Hmm could make a good enclosed space. I also find 2 heater fans and one industrial sized regular fan, instant ventilation. I also notice 4 x 500watt spot lights that I used to paint the house a while back, good light me thinks. I call my 18 year old Acme Pizza Matic (18 year old family member that consumes vast amounts of pizza and then has to watch vast amounts of TV to recover so the process can start over again). He helps me haul all the stuff into the garage upstairs and it takes us about 10 minutes to set up the pergola in the garage. It would have helped if we took some cars out first but that is another story.

Then we took some sheet plastic and draped it around the poles inside the pergola. I then cut some holes on the opposite end and installed the heater fans on one end and the regular fan on the other end. Hey presto, spray booth with ventilation. I had to tweak the fan speed a little to ensure I have pressure inside the pergola otherwise it would suck the sides in by way of the vacuum that it creates when the exhaust fan is set to fast. I then used duct tape to mount the four spotlights in each corner. When I fired up the whole thing it looked like a brilliant plan and everything fell into place pretty nicely. Man I was stoked and started getting all the parts ready for painting. I assembled my trusty old Binks 2001 spray gun and fired up my compressor. In the mean time the heating fans were blasting nice hot air into the pergola to keep things at a working temperature which was now already up in the mid 70’s. With the parts all ready inside and the gun full of paint I donned my spray mask (to overcome #3 above) and stepped into the pergola. Now the first color I wanted was black so I start by spraying just a light tack coat of black on all the parts. Man I could not believe how well this was working. It is almost unbelievable, and that right there should have been the thing that set the alarm bells off in my head, but alas, must have been all the lacquer thinner fumes and other chemicals I was filling the booth up with that got to my brain and slowed it down. Now let me explain for those who have not figured it out or were not trained at a middle eastern desert camp name El something or other. If you take toxic flammable (the key word) gases and compress them in an area plus add heat, or worse sparks, from an open heater element, yep you guessed it.

Anyway so there I am painting away and with every cross stroke I am even more pleased with how well this whole contraption is working when one of the heater fans start making some fizzing noises (sounds like sizzifittzz) and as I turn around to look at it I realize that this thing is going to make a spark and I am in a confined space filled with flammable gasses. I would have paid to see the look on my face. The next thing I remember was seeing a flash and everything turned black. When I woke up the pergola was no longer standing over me, just the frame, the rest was plastered in pieces across everything inside the garage. Pieces of melted plastic draped over everything. One of the spotlights was still shining and focused on the door of my wife’s car that was now also black since my finger had been on the spray gun trigger and with the blast I had clenched my fist and proceeded to paint a black swath over the whole side of her gold car, as I toppled over. Anyway it took me 9 hours to clean up the garage, and 12 to get the paint polished of the car and my wife has not talked to me since, muttering something about a shallow gene pool every time she sees me. The good part is that I figured the parts from my bike looked really trick half black and half charred, the melted plastic making intricate little creases everywhere mixed in with crinkled paint, very Mad Max rat bike like, so I guess I will just use them that way, should make for some interesting conversation track side. Oh before I forget I need to add issue #6 This stuff is highly flammable as well and for future reference get the cars out of the way.

So folks to wrap up I only have to do an oil and oil filter change and I am ready for my first track day of the year. Keep a look out for me pit side, I will be the guy with the very trick looking Mad Max style VTR1000 that has the highly custom ram air through the frame system on it. Oh and I will also be wearing my new trick leathers with, get this, a wing on the back. I figured if you can have a hump that helps airflow over you that is all nice and dandy, but why not take it to the next logical level, by adding some down force, so I added a wing on my hump to push me and the bike down for added cornering ability and straight line stability. See you at Sweet Beaver next weekend…..

Radikal Rassie

Just in case you wondered below is how the bike "really" came out….

Hawkrider

Dude, that is fuggin' hilarious!!!! Bravo!! And welcome to the site. I look forward to your whitty and well written continuing saga about your bike.

captainchaos

You've got issues dude...LOL Just kidding. No seriously thanks much for the laughs-that was great and welcome aboard. Man that bike looks sweet I love the colors.

chrisgreer23

I no see pictures. Am I missing something?

Wolverine

Yes, this thread was posted in 2007. Most people don't keep their pics hotlinked for that long. He musta deleted them.... if he even still owns a hawk, which is doubtful.

RobertLever