A sad day here... My mom`s neighbors, a couple that I too knew very well were killed last night in an aircraft accident not half a mile away from their house. From what I`ve been told they had taken off from the lake next to their house, but for some reason the plane had stalled right after the takeoff and crashed into the trees on the opposite shore immediately exploding into flames killing both...

Not exactly looking for sympathy, one of the reasons why I didn`t make a new topic, just feeling a bit bummed about it, meant to go to the garage today but didn`t feel like it after I heard the news late last night...

I`ve made the decision to scrap the tail lights, no way those frog eyes are gonna stay there ruining my rear, gonna order them "shark nose" lights I spoke of earlier...

Now a "few" beers and a sauna, good for what ails you...

 

U mean like got killed almost in their back yrd?
Thats just reallly bad luck :/

 

'ts what happened, they went down right aftet liftoff, you can see the crash site from the garage. It's been on the news for the past days, you might have heard of it.

Anyways would be nice to get the bike going again soon but I`m afraid tinkering time's gonna be a rare luxury for a while, I would have gotten my scootet sold today after repairing it to the wee hours at sunday but last night when I was fetching it from the garage, for the first time the POS refused to start! Couldn't get it going no matter what, I kicked it and yanked it and yelled and spanked it, took the fuel injector to pieces, it gets fuel and it does have a spark but it just refuses to start!!! Totally baffled, would have needed the green to get parts for the cbr but now it seems im stuck with it. If the worst happened what i fear, a fried ECU, my winning margine just dropped to zero, worst case under... Gotta try with a fresh plug but I fear itll do nothing...

 

Managed to drag myself to the garage today:



Got one of the new tail lights in the mail, for some reason they only sent me one, sent them a complaint email and they promised to rush the other one to me. These are LED:s so I hope I wont get into trouble because of them cause technically they`re illegal although very few police bothers to say anything about things like that if everything else`s in order... I didn`t get the holes perfect cause I had to carve them with different kind of drill sanding tips but I can live with them. The jagged guide line makes them look way worse in the pic than they really are, you can see up close that the fit is not 100% but not from a few feet away.



The "shark nose" is way longer than the catalogue picture showed but they`re the best option available so I`ll just have to adjust to them... At least they`re way better than the horrid frogeyes...







The new (and old modded/refurbished) parts are slowly starting to find their places, got to rewire the blinkers and route the wires through the new bracket so they don`t hang in sight. I tried to push the rubber bushing back into the exhaust bracket with a screwdriver, pushed too hard, it came through, shot out from the other side and got lost somewhere in the garage, so I have to try to find that later on or fab a new one from a piece of pipe or something...

I also sanded the tail fairing (got a terrible itch in my arms and back from the fiberglass), bought primer, color and 2k clear coat (150E for 0,5l each!!!) and taped and covered the rear rim and the sprocket flange, all of them are loaded in the trunk of my car and are delivered to the powdercoater and my friend tomorrow to be (re)painted.

Right, the next challenge will probably be the headlight unit, I did some measuring and test fitting and the projectors SHOULD fit where the old lamp was, if only I can come up with a way to fix the finished part into the bike, the law says here that the headlight has to be adjustable without tools so I probably have to einstein some kind of spring/mickymouse nut patent thing in there so I get the mods through inspection. Wouldn`t have to, but cops can`t touch me on the road if the mods are on the slip, don`t want to argue with some old knowitall copper about is something legal or not if I can show him the slip and shut him up...

Oh, and the scooter I mentioned earlier: fried ECU so basically it`s trash metal... New unit costs roughly the same that it`s worth, hopefully someone would buy it for parts...

 

The scooter you're talking about... am I to assume that's your little Cagiva 125, or do you also have an actual scooter?

 

`03 Gilera runner Purejet 50.



Only fuel injected 2 stroke I`ve ever worked on. It was originally our "bolt bike" in the truck depot if you had to get to a parts shot to get screws or something and there were no cars available, my friend wanted to sell it so I bought his half too so my mom could scoot around with it, but she can`t get on it with her prostetic knees so it`s been collecting dust in the garage for a year, one guy at work would have bought it from me if it hadn`t done it`s tricks on me... It`s either the ECU or the compressor, it fires, takes throttle a few times, then stutters and dies with no intention to start until the next day it fires again, then stutters and so on... A real shame ,apart from some road rash in the fairings it`s in pretty good nick, would hate to see it go to waste but then again am not gonna put any money on it either, already bought new mirrors, battery and misc bits for nothing...

The Cagiva`s been sold last fall (thank god...)

 

Maybe the injector nozzle is just dirty/blocked? Try some Sea Foam in the fuel, or some other fuel additive maybe?

 

Not a good weekend... I was promised the rear rim for today, didn`t get it cause the painter`s been too busy and will paint it over the weekend. As if... I`ve actually heard of an expression "painter`s promise", like it has absolutely squat of weight until the part is actually painted/ other job is done, starting to look like it does have some truth to it... The friend that was supposed to paint the tail fairing has fallen ill and will paint it sometime next week... It`s just that I`m starting to run out of free time, there`s a million things going on right now here, our baby`s cristening party`s coming, after six years of waiting I, for reasons unknown, was suddenly given a green light to build the roofed backyard terrace I`ve been wanting AND got to build a smoker BBQ I`ve been frantically fabricating the past few nights (gonna be sweet) among other smaller things like a major upcoming service for the Volvo including a rear wheel bearing assembly, cam belt and oil change so you guys can imagine time and more importantly money are to assets that are running increasingly thin round here. I`ve been having problems with the headlight unit, or more precisely the designing of one, no matter what I come up with I keep running to some kind of snag that renders the current idea impossible to execute either with my tools or more commonly with my skills so I`m basically left with the hard decision to drop the headlight project for now. Rest assured it WILL come since I already have the lights and all, but there`s just not time nor funds to make it happen right now so I probably will slap the bike together as is when I get the parts home (still got to take the tail to be taped after the paint) and worry about the light when I have more time and can concentrate my efforts better, the season here is already at full steam and I can tell you I`m itching to get on the saddle...

And JNS: I sold the scooter. Let it go for peanuts (100e) for the reasons listed above: no time and precisely zero motivation to do anything for it. The guy that bought it told me he has three of them already and has been more or less forced to familiarize himself with them, his diagnose was that it most probably has a broken piston ring/ rings (means new cyl+piston set on these things) AND a fried injection control box, it`s blowing gas at full steam from startup, the sensor values jump sky high and the ECU shuts out to prevent further damage. A pretty common fault on these things I`m told... The other option is a faulty comressor, slightly less work (still a full engine job I don`t have time nor energy to) but not much or any cheaper...

Well, It`s a SEP now... (in case you don`t know what that is, read Douglas Adams` Hitchhikers saga )

 

...is not always a freight train...

This project surely isn`t letting me off easy... Delays after delays of various reasons all the way. I probably would have been all done a month ago if I wouldn`t have had to wait for everything in every step of the way...

This week has been a real nerve tester. I finally got the rear rim back from te painter at monday and spent the night in the garage getting it all ready for the tire, just to find out I don`t have time to get them mounted at tuesday so I took them in yesterday in a hellish rush. Something like ten minutes after that my phone rang cause the guy at the shop called me they can`t get the tires mounted cause my rims don`t have valves!!! Well of course they don`t have valves, they`ve just been painted! I had to make a U turn, drop all I was doing, go back to the shop, get the rims and got to a nearby tire shop to get them valved! Had I known they also have the tools to mount motorbike tires I would have taken them with me. B*st%&ds had the nerve to charge the full cost after that too... Gonna be a while after I step foot into Storm Motor again...

The friend that got sick also returned to work at tuesday so I finally got the tail fairing and immediately took it to a tape shop to get the decals done. The guy promised it for wednesday, so after work I went to fetch it only to find out the shop is closed and from the window I saw the fairing sitting in the center of the table, untouched. A quick and pretty pissed phonecall revealed that he had double-booked himself to tape some shop`s windows that opens at friday so I was left without... He promised to do it first thing this morning, so I went to pick it up at 2pm, and found out it was still only partly done so I had to wait an hour for him to finish it...

People, how hard is it to:

A) listen to what the customer wants
B) PRE-ORDER MISSING STUFF IN ADVANCE!
C) use a calendar
D) either keep your promises or not make ones you cannot keep!


Well, enough of that...






































































the bike`s done.



























Well, for the most parts anyway, still have some tweaking to do, as you can see the tail`s not sitting 100%, or the decals are slightly mis-aligned, gotta check on that later. The tail is also missing two CBR stickers under the seat that the taper guy forgot and I just ordered from another place, should be here in a week or so. I think the colors match fairly well, given that they are totally shot from the hip without any Honda color codes, both the tail and the rims are painted with RAL3001 signal red.

Also gonna change the grips when I find a pair I want, still haven`t managed to do that, and there`s also one slightly bigger issue.

For some reason the engine`s not firing on all barrels. It sounds like one cylinder is either not running or runs poorly, it bangs into the pipe when cold and is missing a LOT of power although it does run and get to highway speeds it doesn`t want throttle. Best acceleration is achieved with the slightest twist, any more gets the engine to run rough and sound like a triumph daytona. Can the plugs be toast after just 10-ish thousand? I filled the tank with fresh fuel (95E10 with 10% ethanol since it did run better with that than the other option 98E5 the whole last summer) and it gradually did get slightly better, but only very slightly. I RREEEEALLLY don`t want to go down the carb cleaning road after I`m absolutely positive it necessarily needs to be done...

 

It's lookin' really nice, man!! It sucks to hear you're having running issues, though.

If you've got 10K on the plugs, I guess it sure wouldn't hurt to at least pull and inspect them, since it might help to determine which cylinder(s) might not be firing, if that's the case.

So am I understanding correctly that you never have cleaned these carbs before? Or has it just been a while?