Shane - Superlite (#43)

We knew that she's fires up and runs. Admittedly she was running pretty rough, but she was running. So it was time to start tidying up the fiddly bits and getting her ready to hit the track.

We headed around to Brents place after grabbing some things and turned up with beer and some yummy chocolate croissants from Bakers Delight. After knocking those off we headed out to the shed for the last burst before she goes to her permanent home.

It was a stinking hot, muggy day so the beers were starting to go down quite nicely and we just cruised along through the day, not rushing anything. I started off with the intake system while Brent took care of other bits and pieces.

The intake for the dead cylinder is a couple of pieces of duct hosing joined together with a pod filter on one end. To make the duct hosing robust enough to clamp into the intake manifold rubber I was going to have to get to work on a piece of alkathene pipe and reduce the outer diameter so that it would fit inside the duct hose. Being lazy, I hauled out the air lines, hook it all up and put a flapper wheel in. With this I attacked the piece of pipe, gradually shaving the outside down. It was bloody noisy and messy work because there was tiny bits of plastic being fired around everywhere. I had to stop fairly frequently after Brent yelled out about the compressor working too hard.

Eventually I got it down to a size that was usable so I went over my clothes with the air gun then went and washed the remaining bits off plastic off my hands and glasses. Once I could see again I started cutting the pipe into pieces and joining up the bits that needed to be joined. After lots of careful cutting and fiddling I had the duct hose secured to the intake manifold, another piece on the other end and finally the pod filter on the end of that, all routed out of the way where it wouldn't get in the way. I had to lightly cable tie it so that it wouldn't move around and short stuff, but otherwise it was looking pretty hot and sexy. After putting the airbox and fuel tank on to make sure no was going to be fouled I moved on to the rear fairing.



I have no idea why the plebs that had the bike before me left the rear fairing exactly as it was. The original shape meant it was a pain in the arse to get on and off, meaning the edges of the fibreglass get damaged and cracked. They'd wrapped duct tape over the edges to protect it, but it needed parts some bits removed so that it would go on and come off easily without damaging anything.

Scrounging for a marker pen I sat the fairing on the top of the frame and traced out where it was catching. It turned out that I wouldn't have to remove much at all so the fairing wouldn't look shitty.

After attacking the fairing with the air cutter I found it was getting all clogged up by the bloody glue from the tape so I had to have a good go and getting that off before I could continue. After frequent stops for beer and to give the compressor a rest I eventually had the correct bits chopped out. I was very pleased with how easily the fairing went on and off now, much better than the previous arrangement. I don't know how they put up with it because the bike has had the alternator removed and is running total lose so they'd have to have the fairing on and off alot to change batteries.

We started fiddling with the idle after that. I like to have it between 2500-3000rpm if possible and we'd found that with the idle stepper motor and air injection systems removed the mechanical idle was set way too low. After plenty of fiddling and running her up to a decent working temperature we settled for having her idling just over 2000rpm.

I had the lock washer for the front sprocket so that went back on. No idea where the front sprocket cover is though because that wasn't included with the rest of the bits and pieces for the bike so Brent found something that could go in on to hold the neutral indicator wire out of the way, otherwise it'd get fouled in the chain/sprocket and get ripped off. Seeing the neutral indicator helps determine which fuel/ignition map is used it was kinda important it worked correctly.

We put the chain back on and tightened up the rear axle nut. However, the wheel was very reluctant to turn so we checked the torque settings for it and torqued it up to the correct value, but it was still very reluctant. So the rear wheel came off and we start poking around. Pretty much all 3 bearings were shot, as were the seals. When we put it all back together just to check things Brent said it looked suspiciously like there was a spacer missing. After consulting the manual we found that he was right. We had a very thorough look through everything and couldn't find anything that resembled the missing spacer. Neither of us could remember seeing anything like it so there was only one possibility. The Muppets strike again!!

No idea how long it'd been running like that but it was definitely long enough to root the bearings and seals.

After that and the previous things we'd found we pretty much went over every important nut and bolt the bike. We knew the engine was already sorted so it was just everythign else, from the brake caliper bolts to the fork pinch bolts to the dog bone nuts and bolts. Thankfully, we didn't find anything else that seemed like it had been muppeted.

We'd already put the front fairing back on and she was looking like a bike again. So we sat around drinking beer and talking while the girls were inside doing whatever girls inside do. Eventually they yelled out that dinner was ready so we washed up and wandered through to find a mean Corned Beef with Mustard Sauce, corn on the cob etc ready to go.

After an awesome dinner we veged on the couches and watched an episode of Firefly. It was about our 10th time viewing it but that was cool, it's a fantastic series.