Docs say I need fusion surgery. Preparing for it now. I will be down for a while. Just when I was about to finish the bike...sort of depressed right now.

 

That sucks! Hope it goes as well as it can possibly go and that you recover pronto.

 

This surgery is a tougher one. Whats sad is it is the 3rd one in 2 years on the same problem. What bug me the most is I was on a roll to finish the RR conversion and it has ben turning out so well. Really wanted it on the road this year. It will be hard to do that now.

 

My sister in law has had fusion and it vastly improved her quality of life. I bet the third time will be the charm. Here's wishing you a quick recovery - and a much cuter nurse than I had last time I was in the hospital.

 

Good luck with the surgery, and hopefully you will be able to heal up quickly & properly this time through. Being so close to finishing the bike is tough, but using it for motivation to get through it & back to work (and riding it!) should help a little.

 

thanks everyone. I know it will all be fine just hate the set back. Very frustrating. I'm on the floor typing this...pain is nasty.

 

Here's a little update of my project to keep the thread active while Dennis recovers. I've been installing the brakes. Bought some Chinese made sort of wavy-ish rotors, as the fronts looked pretty well worn and the rear had the notorious cracks. Seem to be pretty well machined, we'll see if they hold up to the heat. Calipers and master cylinders are all rebuilt, with the pistons cleaned and polished and EBC sintered pads. I am using a CBR929 front master cylinder, that came with Galfer brake lines designed to attach right to the master cylinder with a dual banjo bolt. Oddly the left, longer line fit fine, but the right line was about 3/4" too short. Obviously the 929 forks are a little shorter or the point where the line attaches to the caliper is somehow closer to the brake lever. Anyway just as I was ready to have one silly line custom made I realized that I could put the dual banjo bolt at the right caliper, run a single line from master to right caliper, and have the second line routed up over the fender to the left caliper. That worked out pretty well.



I'm working solo today so I am putting off bleeding the system until I have a second pair of hands around. One note of caution - when Galfer says 15 ft/lbs max torque on their aluminum banjo bolts (stock honda steel banjo bolt torque spec is about 22-25lbs) believe it. I had a leak at the M/C and tried to go to 18lbs. Snapped a bolt head right off. Steel one now in its place.

One more caution - Duplicolor caliper paint is very easily removed with brake fluid. I will be doing a fair amount of touch up.

 

Nice work Doc. Coming along.


I got a cortisone shot to get me through until my surgery and was able to move well enough to do a little work on the bike. I got the rear brakes completely done, bled and working great. Rebuilt everything, new pads and I painted the caliper gold to get a nice contrast with the gold highlights on the bike. Turned out pretty good.





I also got one front side done, but still need to bleed the brakes once I get the other caliper on.


It was a lot of fun finding all the parts because the bike didn't have any brakes on it when I got it.





I'm going to add stainless lines at some point but wanted to try and get the bike together first.


Pretty happy with how the build is turning out and finally getting closer to getting it all together.


I'm also glad I put all new bearings, cushions and sprocket on the rear. Wheel turns and feels tight like new. Brakes grab awesome.

 

A little more work today. I got both front calipers mounted and plumbed, still need to bleed them but waiting because I need to pull the one fork tube due to a leak. I'm rebuilding another set of forks for the bike so these will go on the next build anyway.


I started working on mounting the "RR" front fender. I did some fits originally when I was fitting the fairings and thought the RR fender wouldn't work, but then decided there was a way to cut it down so it would fit. Very difficult to get this together because the RR forks are much wider.


My plan was really close but needs more work. I also need to figure out some brackets. The top can mount were the brake hose guide clamps are, but need to fabricate some brackets for down below.


This is the fit so far. Not too bad.


I think it will look more like an RR with the actual fender on it.

 

The gold calipers look great and take the look to that of later models. The fender looks good too. Can you squeeze in a bracket from the front mounting boss for the original fender, that runs down to holes in the RR fender?

Today I got the carbs and airbox on, plugged all the vacuum leaks from the half missing California emissions stuff, got the engine wiring done, and got the fuel lines installed and adjusted to fit around the R1 voltage reg I put in. Figured out that I put in 19 hours on the project this weekend. I swear all the mods are making the job take five times as long. As it was getting dark I dropped in a battery and got to hear the starter run. Hoping to fire the engine in the next couple days.

One interesting project was rebuilding the air box intake baffles. The foam on the tubes had turned to dust and I had stripped it off months ago. Found some urethane open cell foam from the leftover packaging for a car radio and cut strips to replace the old stuff. wrapped it around the tubes and held it with rubber bands while I screwed the clamp down on the tubes. I like throaty mufflers, but the intake shriek gets to me, so hopefully this will keep it more mellow.

Just one more observation - I think one of the best things I did for this project was to pick up a fresh set of metric taps and, in particular, dies. Running any original screw that seemed the least bit funky through a die made it go back into the hole nice and easy and torque up smoothly.