my quest to become a winged hammer

[riversbikes]

Some more work to report.  Front fairings are nearly there, just need to fab some more bracketry.  Splurged on Frando brake and clutch M/C -- I've used them before, and they are decent quality stuff at half the price of Brembo or Magura.  The R1 master I first used had no bleed valve and the zx14 clutch master had a leak.

[riversbikes]

Some more progress...  I tried to fab a bellypan from a leftover lower I had lying around but gave up as it looked like shite and was too long.  I ended up buying a gimbel bellypan from Eblag Germany.  Quick shipping to me in Canada, and with a little work it fits well.  I do need to trim a few sections to clear the pipe (its aftermarket, so that makes sense), and fabricate a rear "dam" to ensure that if the engine does puke its guts out, it will remain in the lower.  I've also properly fitter the say what now!? upper.  I used a stock upper fairing stay, and then fabbed side mounted brackets out of aluminum, and knitted it all together with dzus fasteners.  So the sidepanels come off with 5 dzus, and the upper with 4 m6 bolts.  In all, steady and solid... don't want things flapping in the breeze.  I'm also happy with the cockpit -- the frando brake and clutch resevoirs have been moved a bit, and I was able to wire up the gsxr1100 tach on the first try.  There are 2 idiot lights as well, red for oil pressure and blue for neutral.... and they work as well.  The grey foam on the aluminum dash is temporary.  I'm going to do it over with black foam which covers the entire plate, with cut outs for the lights and the mounting bolts.  I've since sandblasted the front fairing stay and have primed it in metal etching primer.  I have also cut out the front "intakes to nowhere" in the upper fairing, which I will 'glass over for better aerodynamics.  Note the wooden pedal plane Harvard in the background.  Two students and I built it this winter, and we are going to donate it to the local Commonwealth Air Training Plan museum once the decals have been made.  It'll be an exact replica of the flying Harvard the museum currently has.

[riversbikes]

A bunch of work has been done since I last checked in.  The bike went to the dyno, and the result was 112 hp and 78 lbs/ft of torque.  Not sure if that is particularly high or low, but it is more than stock, and most importantly, the AFR was nearly perfect when we decided to call it a day.  The main jet could likely go down one more size (has  132.5s in it), but only at max rpm did it start to go a bit rich.  I still need to put on the NRC sidecovers and install the FOX shock that I got rebuilt by racetech.  The forks I did myself, but I'm worried that some simple wear at a certain part of the sliders means that even with new seals, it might be sweating a bit of oil... when I inspected the forks, there was no pitting or nicks, but some discoloration right where the sliders and seals spend 80% of their time.  Perhaps new ones might be in order, or maybe some rechroming.  I did the bathroom scale weigh method, and I'm shocked by the results, in fact I honestly don't believe it... scale under the front wheel netted 214 lbs, and under the rear, 201.  So 415 pounds?  Can't be!

[Leblowski]

It sure does look like a racebike !

what did you expect weightwise??

[riversbikes]

I was thinking close to 450 -- considering the weight of the bike stock...  Although the rear subframe is a lot lighter, and the bodywork is also much lighter.  I did google the "bathroom scale weighing technique" and it did come back as a decently accurate way to weigh a bike...

[Dezmeister]

On 5/11/2018 at 7:49 PM, riversbikes said:

Well that was easy -- new All Balls steering stem bearing kit.  Leave the triple over night in the freezer, and warm the bearing in the oven for 20 mins at 200C.  Bearing went on with very little aggro.  

 

Will have to use that trick @riversbikes & bullshit the wife that im cooking

[Dezmeister]

On 5/8/2018 at 7:17 PM, riversbikes said:

I'm liking the look of this Harris-framed endurance racer from France... although a cheaper option would be to use the bodywork I have, fill in the headlight holes, and go from there.  My goal is to have the bike on track by next spring, if not sooner.  I'm still racing my supertwin EX650 this season.  So why negate all the work I've done to make the bike street legal?  Well, I've already got a street triple 675 for the road, the ex650 racer, and an xt600 cafe bike as well.  Insuring bikes is very expensive, particularly in my province, and we don't have any multi-bike policies available.  I can always return the ex650 to street duty and sell it or the triumph when the time comes...  I'll keep you all updated on this step of my journey!

Very nice,

[Suban12]

Nice project you have going on.Think I bought the forks and stuff off you the other week.Small world eh.

[riversbikes]

Yup that's me!

[riversbikes]

The August round at my local track took place this past weekend.  The plan was to run in the Blandit during the trackday session to see if everything works as it should.  As you can imagine, some things did and some things didn't.  It certainly got lots of looks and compliments in the paddock.  It is by far the oldest machine at the track.  First off, I need to do some work on the bellypan -- early on, as soon as I got my knee down as the pace picked up, I started sanding fibreglass!  It is towards the front end of the bike, so I'll need to modify it to allow the bike to corner without dragging things.  This would point to the forks, and there was certainly a problem there as well...

Coming in from the second session a few riders mentioned that they noticed a bit of blue smoking coming off the bike entering the final turn -- towards the end of the same session I noticed that the brakes seemed to lose some effectiveness... it became obvious what the problem was -- the seal failed, forcing the dust wiper out of its location, and oil was misting back over the engine onto the brake caliper as well as the hot exhaust.  With no way to fix it, I had to park the bike for the day.  You can see where the male fork tube has worn away -- I was aware of this, but hoped it would still be OK for one day on the track -- it was not to be, and the opposite fork tube was also sweating oil.  It looks like new stantions are in order (as rechroming really isn't an option 'round these parts).  They'll be shipped off to racetech to be serviced.  It was a gamble, and in hindsight not the right move, but all racing is a risk.  I did drop 3 seconds a lap from the first to the second session, so I really feel that serviced suspension will yield a lot more control and better lap times, and of course, more fun.  Thankfully a buddy let me take his SV650 out for a session, so the financial pain of paying for a day's track time and only going out 3 times hurt a bit less.

[riversbikes]

I was able to adapt the Penske shock from my Street Triple 675 to the Bandit with a change of lower eyelet to clevis.  Result!  Should work well with the upgraded front end!

[riversbikes]

You can see by this pic that the GPR muffler results in a pretty loud bike -- although its a race bike, the sound is tinny and annoying.  For $50 murican on the bay of E, i found this:

With a bit of tweaking it fitted a treat.  The same overall length of the GPR, but I'm hoping the larger volume of the muffler itself will change the tone and quieten it down somewhat.

I made some progress with the Galespeed wheels -- the rear required a custom rear rotor, which I got Kayla from Projection Components to do up for me, at a fraction of the cost ISR quoted me.

Front ready to be fitted with race tires in about 4 months time... c'mon spring!

[mikeyd]

Beautiful outcome - it looks like the bodywork that should have come on that bike. And $700 is cheap!

[riversbikes]

At the current exchange rate that's about 350 pounds!  It only had 12,000 km on it when I got my hands on it.  Carbs were toast... that's a lot of years with ethanol rotting everything, and helped justify the carb swap!