Toe up

Tore her up a bit last night.

I want to at least start with the same length as the original forks, so some measurements are in order. I took the measurements I wanted, but as a precaution also spray painted the interface area with some cheapie spray bomb in case I needed to find this dimension after removing the forks. It will wipe of with most solvents when I decide I don't need it anymore.

 Original is about 2 inches longer than the new R6r parts. Which is a bit of a relief because the R6 head tube is a lot longer than the VFR tube and I was worried about the lower clamp landing too high on the R6 forks... if that makes any sense.

 So pretty. The lower bearing might fit right up, sure felt like it did, but the upper isn't even close, in this picture the ball bearings are just sitting on the top rim of the tube. So there's still a ways to go. Looks good though.

 Now I need to see if I can find some bearings that have a 22mm ID and an OD to match the VFR wheel. If not I'm going to have to have an axle made and I'm not looking forward to that.

Are you mocking me?

This is nothing but a mockup, but man is it exciting to see it wrapped up.

Clearly the fairing needs to move up 3 or 4 inches, and the bars need to come way down, and the lights need to be bumped up a touch. Most of the interference I think is caused by the massive flange on the exhaust joint just behind the oil pan. I'll probably have to start from scratch for the exhaust design.

Product development...

...on my own dime, and time

I'm now on my third revision of the subframe.

This time I've erred on the complete other side of the spectrum and made it far too skinny and spindly for me to feel safe sitting on it at any kind of speed. So it's back to the drawing board. I have been able to iron out most of the fitment of the components though, and I've still got to figure out some more of it. So, going may be slow but it gets better each time. I am getting mighty sick of scrapping aluminum though.

RC30

Starting in on the RC30 goodness

I'm not a great modeler so this will be a challange, but "don't try 'nuthin, won't learn 'nuthin" I'm not entirely sure what function the model will serve other than good practice because I might just go ahead and use the fairings I bought right out of the box, but at the very least it will be good for fitting up parts, and at the most if I find that I do need to redo it wholesale I'll have a head start. I'd like to do an updated RC30 (along the lines of the '05 Mustang) but as of right now I can't come up with anything I want to change, and I'm not going to force it.

Picked this up locally

very excited to see this show up: