F5’s first ever brand new bike!

[F5 Dave]

ok so I scampered off home & taped them together & came up with a reasonable result. There were a couple of options but this seemed the best compromise. I want to keep front wheel clearance ok & cornering clearance. But ultimate ground clearance will suffer a bit, should be ok if I don't try to ride off too many gutters.

I can try to angle these up a tickle more to move up the lowest point. But the constraints are that these are fat as 250cc & long as they are roadbike revs. Yes the headers come down quite a way, the optional headers don't & curve around tighter, but they push the rest of the pipe too far back for a short bike.

The right pipe is pretty simple but the left one curves around pretty well. A good fit considering they were made on the other side of the world.

So off I head to the local pipe guy to get them welded up, fit mufflers etc. I've been lining this up for weeks, before Christmas even. But sadly the place was packed with bikes so I have to go back & drop it off tuesday before he can even start to look at it. [sigh].

Summer is running out. I kinda knew this would happen.

[Deviant Esq]

Phwoar. Those pipes exit pretty durn close to the rear tyre and to your right boot, once it's on the footpeg... that wouldn't cause any problems?

Otherwise, Watching with interest, looking forward to seeing the mostly finished result! I say mostly because, at the end of the day, what project is ever completely finished?

[F5 Dave]

Yeah it was always going to b a tight fit around the back of the linkage but the parallax in the last picture makes it look closer than it really is to the rear tyre (that is currently pushed right forward to be worst case scenario).

The exit stingers that will be attached to the ends of the cones will snake out but will be behind the line level with the master cylinder, (left pipe in the s/w scallop) you'd have to push your heels in to touch them.

Will use the extra time to fit a new chain & some grips, maybe program a couple of curves in the ignition. The hugger & new tyres are not fitted in case they got damaged tacking the pipes or something.

[madbikeboy]

Hi Dave, I've been reading your posts with interest. A while ago you made the comment that people can't understand why you'd build a special instead of a proddie R6. I get where you're coming from. I've never been good with out of the box stuff. I find myself messing with stuff, trying to improve the mass production shortcut approach.

I've got a GSXR1000 that's had a reasonable amount of work done to it, and I have a CBX1000 that's had everything refined and rebuilt "done correctly". Bikes are transport, but they're on a higher plane than that, you get an emotional and visceral connection with a bike that you can't get with cars.

I used to build show cars for a living, we won a bunch of trophies, but actually, I enjoy working on bikes more. I'm doing the math of building a supermono - I don't even care if I can't race it, it just seems that this is where all the shed thinking is - you can't buy it, so you have to build it instead.

Full circle back to the point. Reading your posts make me reconnect with being a biker, I like the fact that you're building your RGV500, and I'm enjoying the posts with the level of detail that you're writing with. I dislike the 95% of the way stage, and it's always the toughest bit finishing - so I guess I'm just trying to give you some encouragement.

MBB.

Rutherford - We didn't have money, so we had to think instead...

[F5 Dave]

Cheers man, yeah I am finding I am getting less & less interested in the results of the 600 magazine shootout every year. Had to happen one day I guess.

I also decided that I wanted a light bike. With exciting power. But not mega powerful. (Don't trust myself with a 1000).

It's the waiting for the bits I can't do that is the drag. Here we are in the final & spectacular throws of the best summer I can remember & I'm waiting for the pipes to be welded (better than I could with my nasty mig). Following that they will get sent to be HPC plated. 1.5 week turn around. [sigh] Still then I can dyno it to select a baseline for the jetting & programmable ignition & then it will be change the tyres that just arrived & rego.

Waahoo! Hopefully.

[madbikeboy]

Cheers man, yeah I am finding I am getting less & less interested in the results of the 600 magazine shootout every year. Had to happen one day I guess.

I also decided that I wanted a light bike. With exciting power. But not mega powerful. (Don't trust myself with a 1000).

It's the waiting for the bits I can't do that is the drag. Here we are in the final & spectacular throws of the best summer I can remember & I'm waiting for the pipes to be welded (better than I could with my nasty mig). Following that they will get sent to be HPC plated. 1.5 week turn around. [sigh] Still then I can dyno it to select a baseline for the jetting & programmable ignition & then it will be change the tyres that just arrived & rego.

Waahoo! Hopefully.

I don't trust myself on a thou either, but I own two... Never been the top of the class you see.

So, a small update. Your posts got me thinking about building a special. So my fiscal imprudence is entirely your fault. I bought a Honda RS125, the intention is to build a supermono race bike. The RS125 is lighter than Paris Hilton's brain matter, and I did the math on fitting a CRF450 single. It'll fit. The issue is that I've bought an RS with a load of very good brand new spares. New cranks, head, clutches, and an entire new gearbox... Oh, and a box full of gaskets, seals, bearings...


Oh, the dilemma...

[F5 Dave]

Must be a 95+, would never fit into a 94. My 91 & 89 are also super small compared with 95, the seat to peg relationship are much more cramped, I had to move my seat up to be able to ride it. Long ago thought of putting a CR250 into a 125, but never got around to it & now wouldn't be competitive. I have bucket engines in both of mine & even they don't want to fit (95s got bigger in engine area as well). Hmm, must get some newer forks & a wheel some time.

Biggest issue will be carburettor to tank interface & vibration.

[F5 Dave]

Well pipes back. Had to gasp at the price, but one thing you learn is things end up taking a lot longer that you naively think. i think one of the big lessons of projects is that they aren't for the faint of wallet. At times you just have to take a deep breath & forge on.

Still I am well happy with the result. My concerns for clearance were listened to & the fitting has maximised it in all directions. Will be mighty fine.

Muffler mounting will be painted black to make it fade into distance a bit, but this is a road bike I do want it to hold together. O-rings fitted to back of header fitting so it shouldn't weep spooge onto the front of the bike, they are a tight fit as well.

Would love to start it. Sadly they are off to the platers today. 2nd hand pipes attract a cleaning charge so I'll just have to be a bit more patient. So be it.

[vifferman]

Wow! That's looking very good, Dave!
It's gonna be a cracker when it's finished.

[madbikeboy]

Must be a 95+, would never fit into a 94. My 91 & 89 are also super small compared with 95, the seat to peg relationship are much more cramped, I had to move my seat up to be able to ride it. Long ago thought of putting a CR250 into a 125, but never got around to it & now wouldn't be competitive. I have bucket engines in both of mine & even they don't want to fit (95s got bigger in engine area as well). Hmm, must get some newer forks & a wheel some time.

Biggest issue will be carburettor to tank interface & vibration.

There's a crowd called Tigcraft - bascially you strip all the running gear, swap the beam frame for their nifty tube jobby, and then it's a case of slotting in the new motor.

The hard bit (apon a bit of reflection) is finding a big single... Anyone crashed a CRF450 lately??

[F5 Dave]

Well there has been some progress, but I am in some doubt where it leaves me. Let’s just say it hasn’t been as plain sailing as I’d hoped it would be.

Ok so have the pipes back from plating & run it on the dyno.

Here’s a list of the things that went wrong:
Stator plate came loose & bent the pulser coil ending spark & the day. The slotted stator can only easily run 2 screw, but the screw on the bike were a bit short & vibrated out. (replaced longer sprung washered allen bolts).
Dyno didn’t want to read revs & the R1 tacho stopped working.

Next day got it going again. Tacho seemed to work (just) with stock ign but not with programmable Zeeltronics.
Got to dyno & the carbs were overflowing. Spend ½ an hour sorting that out. Learnt a good way to get the airbox seated in the process so was worth the time (basically the bell mouths didn’t want to seat in the airbox manifolds easily so undid the inlet manifolds & worked them back individually & then once both in pushed the pair forward).
Ok do a run or so. Bike running really badly farting about. Try the next size jets down (160s). Better I think but not flash.

Oh dear, this is where I start to run out of jets this small (had borrowed some Keihin jets but the selection was as bad as my own, almost wishing for Mikunis at this stage).

Ok so the next run & took the airfilter out & it was running better. Took the airbox off & better still. Oh dear, hoping the airbox wasn’t going to be a restriction. Other thing was the clutch would often slip like crazy making a consistent run pretty damn hard. When it did go it went like a wild thing.

Hmm [rummages around jet box] ok so best I can do for next size down is 150 & 152 (Kei jets go 150, 152, 155, 158, 160) so I’d be running mismatched jets from left to right & 4 steps down. Hardly ideal. Put the airbox back on. Bike loved it. Still running real crappy at low revs & revs a little higher than I wanted. Tried without airfilter, better still. Without airbox better still.
Trimmed the intake trumpets from the manifolds (was using 4 stroke inlet manifolds from a GS1000 box) & then the airbox runs matched the no airbox runs. The airbox wasn’t really a restriction, it just didn’t like those trumpets.

Ok next jet change is worse & I only have a 145 to mix with the 150. Runs slightly worse. We’ve reached a point it appears. With air filter back in it equalises with the best runs so far. So it would appear I’d need a pair of 150s or 148s I’d guess. Of course I had neither pair so that will have to wait.

Bike is sounding better, but clutch still slipping, often negating runs. Hardly ideal but got a bit easier if I tested in 6th so did for all later runs. Doesn’t want to take full throttle below 7000 rpm. Revs like crazy.

Ok so it appears that the carbs are so rich down low that they are loading up the engine so it doesn’t want to clear till higher revs. I try adjusting the needles but don’t have the right tool to do it. Feel foolish for not bringing enough tools.

Try adjusting the static angle with the ignition (push a few buttons). Had been running RZ350 31k curve. The curve shifts back a few hundred revs. Cool.

Try a few other curves but the jetting in the mid position is screwing things up enough to make it a waste of time. Until I get this sorted there isn’t much point continuing. While runs are usually conducted at full throttle, if the bike won’t pull cleanly into full then it buggers it up until it clears out affecting the run at medium revs.

Ok so I have a few things to fix before I continue the tuning stage. While I am there I try to get the speedo to go. Ok it goes, but is way out of calibration. I’d bought a Jaycar kit to recalibrate it. It has many options to suit different vehicles, but maybe the R1 doesn’t buy it. Maybe I’ll have to shell out for the proper speedo healer [sigh, more money]

The final indignity is the gear linkage rattles off. End of day.

The story so far (on 95 oct pumpgas, can't always get 98 where I ride) is 96bhp rear wheel on a conservative dynojet with no correction on a humid day. Was hoping to touch 100 but the Mickey Mouse efforts above may account for a few more I’d say. About double what a std 350 would do on the same dyno. Ignore the shape of the curve, it only really cleared out ~ 8500, it didn't really gain 80hp in 500rpm, until I can dial in some decent runs at lower revs it isn't the full story.

Got to sort clutch, jetting, tacho & gear lever. Wondering if the pipes may be too short. Haven’t ridden it yet but would be mental until I get it running properly in the midrange/mid throttle position. So, more work to do. Daylight savings finished Sunday. Was that the end of summer? Maybe we’ll get a nice autumn/mild winter.

[vifferman]

Pipes look great, Dave!

What's the problem with the Jaycar speedo corrector kit? I fitted one to the VFR, and had no problems. The biggest thing was finding out what sort of output the speedo sensor produced, then working out which wire in the loom to snip to connect the corrector to. Worked really well once I'd got that sussed, but I couldn't be fagged getting an exact figure to correct it by, so just used a "best guesstimate" based on reported inaccuracies other VFR owners had (6%), plus 6% for the lowered gearing.

Anyway, all the best. I hope you get the jetting and other stuff sorted.

[F5 Dave]

Hmm, interesting - some experience with the Jaycar kit.

Well the speedo is driven off a sender that usually goes into an R1 gearbox, but instead I've aimed it at a the output sprocket as it was easier to get to. Works the speedo fine, just it was out as there aren't the same amount of teeth & rear wheel (tyre) size. Shows about 30 k when doing 60.

So I fed the signal into the box, & I know which one it is because I used it to drive the speedo with a signal generator to see that the speedo works. (thinks, maybe I've mixed up the wires in a rewire & I'm interrupting speedo earth, must recheck). Anyways the kit instructions say when setting up & links removed that the speedo won't work but the LED will flash if it is receiving the signal. Mine doesn't flash but the speedo remains working (LED does work later in test).

Did yours stop working at the start like it said it should? Maybe I should recheck I have interrupted the right wire & haven't transposed it.

[F5 Dave]

The speedo calibrator issue. It turns out I'm a turkey. When rewiring the bike extensively I had everything going & then bought the speedo calibrator kit. There was this bullet connector I'd used for the signal so it was an easy bypass to use for the calibrator. But the calibrator never seemed to work properly. Just wouldn't adjust at all. All a bit uncertain that I'd not screwed up the PCB assembly somehow, although that would be embarrassing.
Of course in my haste for plugging it in I hadn't traced the wire back (no colour chart when you do this many mods). I was trying to calibrate the tacho input, not the speedo one. Doh! Made a suitable bypass & now the speedo calibrator works fine & I can adjust the speed up & down. Felt silly.

So reconnected tacho wire back in. But now the tacho doesn't work now. Shizensomething! Oh well tomorrow. How I haven't fried it, but the voltage levels shouldn't have been particularly high.

[Slingshot]

Looks like this wee project is coming along nicely...can't wait to see it in the flesh.