Forking around

With a friend over to help me with the 750 we realized that the whole front end of this bike is tweaked to the left. Must've been in a front impact, the forks seemed to travel ok, but there was no denying that they're bent. So... I do have these laying around:

It's time to put them to good use. From one 750 Honda to another. Since Ill be swapping the VFR to an R6 front I think I'll probably end up having to use an R6 wheel too (one of the reasons that project's still held up) So Squid will be borrowing the VFR front roller.

Everything actually fit except the VFR stem was too long for the CB750 neck so I had to grind the weld off:

and then have both stems pressed out and the CB750 stem pressed into the VFR tree by Plano Machine for 15 bucks (I actually had the VFR stem loose in hand from the other swap at this point) Then I got a friend of mine to run a bead along the bottom for a little extra reassurance, but more on that in the next post.

Stem done and new tapered bearings from Cycle Concepts in Frisco ($20). Once all the parts were swapped it was just a matter of bolting it all together.

So I may not have a rear brake for a while, but man oh man should that front stop good.

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.

BBQ

Had some friends over last Saturday to talk some shop and somehow we managed to a little work done.

Skyler adding a little Motul 20W50 sauce to his steak.

We managed to get the VFR started (on carb cleaner) I got it wired up last week, but we discovered that neither the neutral switch or the clutch safety switch were working. Had to jump the clutch switch.

Skylers 360, with all the times he's had this motor apart, he's become the 360 guru.

Check out my ABS

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene that is. I love this stuff, if it wasn't so bloody heavy I'd make my next bike out of it. I work with ABS all day long most days, typically I'm making it into a handheld, or TV, or toy robot or something, a motorcycle fairing is nothing!  I got stuck at work tonight babysitting a mill, so I took a little time to work on the FZ600 upper.

I've already done some work to it, primarily stripping a lot of paint, and filling holes

 Here you can see one of the buttons I made to fill the mounting holes along the bottom. This will be all the fairing that the bike has for the time being, so to give it a little more of a finished edge, I cut down strips of ABS and solvent bonded them to the lower edge, built up a radius on the upper edge with dental resin and sanded it to a nice profile. In the picture the strips already on and sanded, the one laying next to it is what i started with.

Note the hole for the signals. Someone before me made a fairly nice patch with bondo, but they didn't put anything in to back it up, so it would never paint well. I knocked the one that was already cracking out....

 ...and made these...

I decided to give them a little shape to fit the space and not look quite so obvious.

Gluing:

I left the other bondo patch in. There's nothing wrong with the stuff, it's just not a good idea to bridge gaps with it. With these back plates in place everything should be fine.

Another project I was able to knock out was the drilling of the other side:

Started off with a two guide lines 

...and worked with a .5 inch strip of tape to place them all perfectly. 

I'm on the fence about the holes, I always thought they were kind of strange on the fireblade, but it's such an iconic design detail that I couldn't help myself. Especially since it's a Yamaha fairing.

rings and teeth

Working on the details

Attached and filled the front brakes... much safer to roll up and down ramps now (I dropped it the first time I brought it down, fortunately it didn't have any bodywork or anything at the time)

This though, was the most exciting thing to happen this week. I finally broke down and ponied up for a pair of serious stands for it. Happy Fathers Day to me!

 Brake side: not bad. Clutch side: toast. This needed to be done.

Picked the new ones up from a store on Ebay called Lucky Bike and I am quite impressed with the quality. The finish is killer.

Picked up an RK sprocket set from Motorcycle Superstore. I'm sure the quality's there, but the finish (which closely resembles the stock finish) on the rear is pretty nasty cheap looking chrome. I love the color of the front sprocket and wish they would have done the rear the same way. 

 

Stock sizes

 

Pretty

Lubing the threads so that I can get an accurate torque reading... As someone who likes to put theadlock on everything, this has always terrified me, but it's what the service manual says to do so I thought I'd give it a shot. By the way, you don't have to use such fancy oil, this was just one that has been sitting on my shelf since a friend gave it to me years ago.

As you may note, the pinch bolt needs to be tightened down quite a lot. I'll be taking care of that when I do the chain.

...and my next little project for tomorrow night:

Wow, hard to believe that's all that I got done this last week. My wife and daughter are down in Houston for these two weeks so I moved the VFR into the dining room where I could watch some of the hundreds of Top Gear episodes that my DVR recorded for me over the Memorial Day marathon while I worked on the bike... turns out I can't multi-task. So now the bike's back in the garage, maybe I'll have better luck tomorrow.