maxwin

Oulton Update. So judging by the comments not a lot of love for Alpinestars lol, but to be honest I bought those before I knew I would start racing and only because they looked good. Knowing what I know now I wouldn't buy them again, my next purchase would be a set of Scott's probably with my race number on them Here is a GIF of the crash from all the pics I got of it... And a few pics of the crash developing, I remember deciding to eject when the bike started to slide, having high sided before I no longer feel the need to try to hero save it I've had the leathers repaired for now as funds are a little tight, I'm running the SRAD with the GSX at Cadwell in a few weeks time and the setup cost for the SRAD has cleaned me out! Repairs have been a bit of a bodge up, just enough to get back out again. Donington write up to follow...

I have removed loads of these on my 750ET engines with the following method... The little stud gets screwed into the crank and then I fill that void with grease (to give uniform pressure) screw in the larger stud to the flywheel bit and tighten it with an impact wrench. Thread sizes are in the picture...

Well... The thrills and spills of my second outing to Oulton Park. Qualifying went really well, put in a new personal best and got pole position for race 1. All the parts of the track where I had felt slow last time I had improved this time round, felt like it was all coming together... Race 1 start, I was over taken by the #2 Moriwaki Kawasaki of Nick Allison off the line but managed to sneak around the outside of him in turn one, I led the race for 5 of the 6 laps with a healthy 14 second lead on 2nd place, also set a new personal best and a club record of 2:00:653. Unfortunately I didn't know I was in for a comfortable win so kept pressing on and High sided out of Lodge corner at a respectable 54mph There was a lot of tumbling and no sliding so I feel like I've taken a ride in a giant washing machine on full spin, but thankfully nothing broken. The left forearm of my leathers split which has left me with a bit of gravel rash. Bike almost went over as the top of the tank and fork tops have been damaged but luckily it failed to flip and slid on the left side. Didn't put any oil down either which is always nice. The biggest disappointment apart from missing out on a fist place cap is that the GoPro didn't record! Spares are on order, have Donnington on the 13th and 14th so need to get busy. Track day on Friday at Cadwell to try out the new 600SRAD so that will be my getting back on the horse outing I'll post some pics soon of the damage and the repairs.

The play is normal but that sound definitely sounds like the starter is being driven, strip it off and check the starter clutch.

Wanted to get the gear shift sorted before next weekends return to Oulton, the current set up was cobbled together from an old SRAD lever and linkage and never worked particularly well... I decided to have the new one pivot on the foot peg and better line up the linkage, also the old rod eyes have loads of play in them. Roughed out a design on some 10mm ally plate and carved it out on the mill... Bored out the bearing hole on the lathe... neatened up the rough edges... and as I hate polishing I used the mill to skim a few thou off... and all fitted up nicely, much less backlash and the operation is loads easier. Toe spigot is just an 8mm bolt with some self fusing rubber tape

@johnr Provided you don't take the spring beyond it's plastic limit, peak fork pressure will be the same weather pressurised or not. I use a high pre pressurisation because I run the oil so low, it's the only way I can get a good range of fork movement and no bottoming out with these skinny forks. I use GSXR1100SD 37mm forks with the anti drive blanked off, and its for a racing application so probably not suitable for the road.

As promised here is a short race report and vid of race 2 at Oulton park last Saturday. I've never been to Oulton Park before so binge watched as many youtube clips as I could stomach to help prepare me for the longest and arguably most complicated track in the UK. Due to work commitments I couldn't make the test day on Friday so had to learn fast on Saturday, did plenty of grass tracking on the practise and also did a bit on race 1 too ;). Club/Class: Formula Prostocks Racing / FP2 Post Classics Event Organiser: North Gloucester Road Racing Club After collecting my thoughts over lunchtime and talking through the problem areas with my dad I felt ready to put it together and have a crack at a reasonable race result. Finishing 12th on race 1 put me 12th on the grid of 32, not a great position as its on the inside line, on race start everyone seems to flock to the inside and get all bunched up (you can pass a lot of people by hanging out wide). After a reasonable start, I stuffed poor Andreas Jelden on his FZ into the first chicane (out braked myself). Couldn't get Druids corner right at all, always scrubbed off way to much speed, this was exasperated after the high speed weave on lap 3 around the Water Tower. Cascades was another area where I felt slow, need to build a bit more confidence down the hill around Denton's. Andreas managed to out brake me into Hislop's chicane on the last lap so I settled for 6th overall, back on the 22nd of April with Earlystocks and feeling quietly confident for a top 3 Enjoy the vid, I certainly enjoyed making it!

When I bought my new front springs I filled the oil to what was recommended and it was way to much, from memory the sheet said 150mm from the top but I now run 300mm (just enough to cover the YSS cartridge) with 34psi of air pressure to get the best performance, I also tried racing without my fork brace this year... not even noticed its gone

@Gammaboy I'll take some pictures today, but short story is I brazed on some extensions (bit crappy atm) so the whole thing has been lifted 25mm. Chain fowled inside the chain guard so there was a small alteration there too.

Funny you should ask @Jelly... Update time Firstly, I decided to try dialling the cams as I've been told that this can give a few bhp's for very little investment (money that is, it's very time consuming), and it turns out it was good advice. I set the valve adjusters as per the book with a feeler gauge and then got out the DTI made a degree wheel and measured all the valve opening durations, to my surprise the duration was out by about 15 degrees either side of spec so the valves were open too long. After a day of dialling I'm pleased to say the performance has greatly improved, especially on start up and idle, and no more fuel mist blowing out of the bell mouths. Next up I purchased a set of Gazi hyper X shocks for the rear, compared to the Koni emulsion tube ones I had before there is no contest. The rear of the bike is so planted now even when cranked right over, I would highly recommend them though they are a little pricey at 600 quid but still way cheaper than Ohlins or Nitron. To combat ground clearance I decided to make new engine brackets and raised the engine 25mm, so it now sits jammed up under the tank, only draw back is that I need to remove the tank to get the plugs out which is only a 2 minute job to be fair. Wheels have been changed for 17" GSXR400 ones, I'm running a 110 front and a 140 rear. I changed to Dunlop Alpha 13 SP tyres which are effing amazing much better than the Avon AM series tyres that I had before. The bike feels light and nimble and can be flicked left and right very quickly without any wobble or uncertainty. Solved the fuel surge problem and at the same time lost 10kg on the bikes starting weight by filling the tank with fuel tank foam, bought a job lot of off cuts off Eblag for 18 quid, money well spent lol. Before I would have to start the race with a brimmed tank or it would surge big time under the heavy braking by the end, now instead of 20 litres I can get around with a mere 7 Some action pics. Lodge Corner at Oulton Park last Saturday... Esses at Mallory Last Sunday... Devil's elbow at Mallory Park... Another Devil's elbow, you can clearly see I fitted the OSS stickers upside down... maybe time for some winged ones Managed a first place at Mallory which I was well happy with, I'll upload the videos to youtube at the weekend. On the to do list is an oil cooler as Pete has said above, the power seems to fade by the end of a race and the bike idles like an old diesel The swingarm is going to get beefed up, I'll tig weld some 30x10 flat to the top and bottom to make it more rigid. On full speed bends with wide open throttle there is a bit of weave developing so hopefully this will cure that. Also going to fab up a new gear lever and linkage as the current one has loads of play and I've missed a few gears lately, which is unacceptable! Thanks for reading, more to come.

Mini Update... So I recieved my stickers, thanks alot btw, however I seem to have managed to stick them on upside down though it doesn't seem to matter in this image getting me knee down at Shaws hairpin! I have had a few problems with the front end which I've now solved (will go into detail in a later post) that coursed the crank case to ground hard enough to throw me off. Bike all fixed up and had a full weekend racing at Cadwell with British Historic, managed to beat my personal best with a 1:53.1, still room for improvement. Here is a video of the second race, speedo overlay was generated from the gps lap timer I have on the bike more to follow!

@Pete750ET Hi Pete, sorry I missed your post above, you planning on making a return or can I keep the #230 Been getting some tuition from Nigel Lawrence Good job getting his bike back btw

The 750 ES does have an oil cooler if I'm right, but not the ET. I'll stick with the 750 for now, more power means more tires and the cost of racing is high enough as it is

@Gammaboy you are correct, no oil cooler. I have been toying with the idae but its not a straight forward bolt on on yhe 750, need to mess about with the filter cover. I have been checking the engine temp at meetings, never gets over 100 degrees. But when I start increasing compression and have more aggressive timing I think it will be a must.

I do have some realestate on the belly pan, how do I get a couple?

Update time! For a while I've been threatening to make another more aesthetic seat unit for the bike and I finally got round to it. Started off with some Cellotex insulation to rough out the shape, made a few last minute changes... next up was to lay clay onto the foam and craft the final shape... Then a couple of day of arsing about with fibre glass and resin and da da! I must say I feeling quite smug with the result While I was glassing I also made the bell mouths for the carbs I designed an age ago, I wasn't expecting much but they leaned out the higher rev range enough to put a bigger main in! The scrutineers have been getting less tolerant of baking trays being used as oil catch trays, at Donnington I was told that they would bounce it at the next meeting. I purchased a belly pan from Mid Norfolk Mouldings that the racing Bandits use, the frame on the early bandit is similar to the GSX so I figured it would be a good fit. I welded some tabs onto the frame and used 6 Dzus fasteners to secure it in place, slapped some vinyls on and boom! Now the bad news ); Last Friday I went to an MSV track day at Cadwell just to get back into the swing ready for Sundays race at Mallory when on the sighting laps the old girl ate yet another big end bearing Not to be defeated I spent Saturday swapping out for an old running engine I had laying around, despite having a serious perspiration problem it runs pretty well... Out with the new and in with the old It was all well worth all the effort and ear ache though as the Mallory meeting was a lot of fun, here are a few shots from the day... Chillin in the paddock 3rd place at Shaws Hairpin, which I was pretty chuffed with. James Fishers monster CBX in front. And for all those who got this far here are the videos of the two races Race 1, damp and quite slippy around Gerard's Race 2, bone dry! Thanks for reading, always a work in progress so more to come

@steelelc Earlystocks is a great club to run with, very friendly atmosphere only one LC racing at the moment I think so get in! Update coming, my Mrs and I had our first child in June so I have had a bit of time off, but racing again at Mallory on Sunday to blow the cobwebs out

@Gammaboy The fork tops started out life as these... I cut off the wiggly bit, bored them out and tigged up the top hole. I fitted high pressure schrader valves to the tops as I had looked at pre charging but scrapped that idea. Almost forgot, I also had to turn a recess into the side for an O ring because I scrapped the original seal. @Jelly I got them on Eblag, here's the link... http://www.Eblag.co.uk/itm/400838209197?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

@Gammaboy Thanks for your input, though I may have been a bit blasé about what was involved in the rebuilding of these forks. If you bore easily please ignore the rest of this post I decided a while back that I would like to use the 37mm forks as they would be a little more rigid than the 35mm one's I had been using. Originally all I was going to do was to clean them and renew the oil and remove the anti dive, but after doing all that I realised that the springs were too soft. I looked at a set of new springs and it was when I was trying to calculate what spring I would need that the project started to snowball, I created the below spreadsheet to calculate spring, preload, and oil level. I made the springs out of old progressive ones by cutting off the tighter coils and grinding the end flat, couldn't get it to work as a progressive. The "spacer" is primarily there to direct the fluid through the anti dive mechanism, it may also act as a hydraulic bump stop. But with this set up I need neither the bump stop nor the anti dive so its to the scrap bin with it! The YSS PD Valves I have fitted control only the compression damping, as long as they are submerged in oil they work as they should. They are adjustable but only if you remove them, which is a pain. Rebound damping is controlled by a shuttle valve in the bottom of the stanchion, changing the oil weight adjusts the rebound. Through a bit of trial and error and a few tubs of different fork oil I've found that 15w fork oil is about right. Oil weight also changes the compression so I've had to adjust that several times. I carefully measured the volume of the assembled fork using distilled water and found that the oil level i needed to properly submerge the PD valve made the air pocket too small so I had to machine out the top cap to give me the extra volume for the fork to work properly. Over the last 3 race meetings I have managed to set the forks up to a point I'm pleased with, using around 125mm of the 135mm available travel and the ride isn't particularly harsh. Only thing I may do is to shorten the rebound springs just to give a little more extension on hard acceleration to cut down head shake.

Update time... So I upsized the forks to 37mm and installed some YSS cartridge emulators, did a bit of maths to work out the spring size, spacer length and oil level and must say I got it pretty close! Here's the modified guts... This one shows the tool I made for removing the damper rod, it's an M12 bolt welded to a broken 3/8's extension... Blanked off the anti dive with an ally plate and removed the pictured ally spacer to allow proper function of the fork compression... Finished article painted and stickered up I found the new set up needed a lot more steering damper than before so repositioned the damper rod by making a new bracket... And a pic of the bike as it stands currently This is a bit of on board footage of my fastest lap at Donington at the weekend, unfortunately one of the coils popped on lap 4 so ended my race Hopefully more to come

A 4.6 M6 bolt has a shear strength of about 500kg, times that by 2 bolts and your up to a tonne. The engine doesn't weigh more than 150kg's, so theres loads of room for error lol. Having said that though I always have the lift under it so it doesn't have far to fall and NEVER put my figures underneath. Will try to take a pic tomorrow.

Belated update time! Did Brands last weekend and I have spent every waking hour in the garage for the last two weeks getting it ready, so I'm a bit light on photos buts here's what I've done so far. To my horror I noticed the tank paint was bubbled, when I burst one of the bubbles it spelled of fuel Turned out to be leaking from the thing they put in to hold the badge... so I tigged a piece of 1.5mm sheet over it after giving the tank the steaming of it's life... and a few brave blow lamp tests I was respraying the tank white anyway so apart from the welding and a bit of extra filling it wasn't too bad. Next little snag was the front braces I had fitted, they were too far back and I couldn't get the engine in. Fortunately I had not fully welded them up so was a quick grind off. I'm still not finish with the frame as far as adding lugs and captive nuts so have held off of painting it, I found a great product called POR15 that gives bare metal a zinc phosphate coating. I think its for priming metals really but works well as a stop gap, desipite some fine rain over the weekend there are no signs of any rust. Anyone who has humped one of these engines around will know they are effing heavy, I have taken a different approach to putting the engine in... I madse the jig that picks up the cam tensioner holes and allows the frame to be fit around the suspended engine Next up I fitted the front and rear wheels, suspension, brakes, etc. and fabbed up a box for the electrics and catch bottle out of trusty checker plate... The little bottle on top is my temporary testing fuel tank. I roughly tuned the carbs using my A/F sensor and got the bike running quite smoothly. The following days were a frantic struggle to get finished, had help from my dad who came around most nights. But it was all worth it in the end, got loaded up at about 4pm on Friday and made my way to Brands Hatch! Here are a few links to some action shots a don't want to post the actual pic's because of copyright infringement... http://www.edpphoto.co.uk/ngroadracing/2016/NGRoadRacing200316/Adam%20Jeffery%20Flooring%20Pre-Injec%20700-1300/index.html#Pri_NGBH20_4981.JPG http://www.edpphoto.co.uk/ngroadracing/2016/NGRoadRacing200316/Adam%20Jeffery%20Flooring%20Pre-Injec%20700-1300/index.html#Pri_NGBH20_5168.JPG http://www.edpphoto.co.uk/ngroadracing/2016/NGRoadRacing200316/Adam%20Jeffery%20Flooring%20Pre-Injec%20700-1300/index.html#Pri_NGBH20_5029.JPG http://www.edpphoto.co.uk/ngroadracing/2016/NGRoadRacing190316/Adam%20Jeffery%20Flooring%20Pre-Inj%20700-1300%20/index.html#Pri_NGBH_2243.JPG http://www.edpphoto.co.uk/ngroadracing/2016/NGRoadRacing190316/Adam%20Jeffery%20Flooring%20Pre-Inj%20700-1300%20/index.html#Pri_NGBH_2155.JPG All in all a great start to the year, lots of improvements to do so I'll be updating you as I go. Thanks for reading

If your not doing high touring mileage then go for 525 or even 520 and you'll get more power delivered to the wheel

Update time, had a week off so progress has been slow but with race day 2 weeks off I'm spending every scrap of free time in the garage. With the frame out of the way *I've been focusing on the Engine, started by striping it completely and giving it a bath. Swarfega Jizer is a pretty good degreaser never used it before but very happy with the results The crank from this block was shot so I acquired a replacement from Grumpy1260, I went through my box of shell bearings and managed to scrap together a full set with 2 thou oil clearance on all journals which was a bonus. Honed the liners, still a bit pitted but they will do. Shot blast and a lick of paint... All laid out ready for reassembly. When assembling these engines I find putting the cylinder block on last is a PITA, so I loaded the pistons in first... Many hours of huffing and puffing... This set-up runs a constant loss so the alternator is removed and I cut off the fly wheel. To help with clearance when leaning I also modified the fly wheel cover, it's my second attempt at aluminium welding so it's a bit naff... I'll shine it up at a later date as time is running short Does anyone know if any more modern Suzuki's use the same spline pattern for front sprocket?

@Gammaboy thanks for the tips, I will put another brace between the rear engine mounts, not sure about the head stock though, wouldn't it obstruct the lugs that hold the front of the tank? @wraith thanks for reminding me about that cross member, doesn't the 1100 have that as standard? As for tuning my trusty cousin always says go with stock until you need to go faster, at the moment I'm going fast enough for my level of talent What does the es cam do? advance or retard?