Tell me about it man , dug one hell of a project hole. There's my daily / project bike and daily / track build car on top of that, then all the bits and pieces I sort for people. Time, space, funds and resources have been spread far too thin the last few years. 4 or 5 projects at once, Keep telling myself never again but find new distractions. Almost there though!

 

Squirl !!

 

oh! piece of candy... oh! piece of candy... oh! piece of candy

 

got a good bit of progress made and its almost good to go. lots of pics to update with.









so here we go, sc project replica exhaust, fits the bike much tidier and will do the job for no. still thinking about doing a proper under engine setup or under tail in the long run. mad how low the front end feels on the standard 929 clipons and slightly raised seat height.



borrowed the previous 160 pilot road for another project and used a spare 180 as a placeholder. looks meatier but think id rather stick with the lighter and more agile 160. always said id never 180 a f3 rim but there you go.



placeholder rotted out swingarm removed for repair and i swapped my original back in, downside of juggling multiple cbr builds is that you wind up robbing parts from yourself. anyway subframe is painted.





emc shock fitted. looks sweeeeeeeet but turns out the seals gone and it also knocks on full extension. nightmare! bought it a few year back and either its died in storage or i was sold a dud but its too late to do anything now. cost me a bit of money so i was a bit annoyed. spoken to emc and its from a uk factory that closed in 96' and is nothing to do with their current products. no way to get parts for it either then.



swapped a shock in from a 14k mile 98 f3 and fitted placeholder bars with the new top yoke. the cnc top yoke is heavier than the standard one but i think i can afford some added weight with how much i've removed. might get some material machined out further down the line but its not important for now.



this was the battery location solution given how difficult it is to stash a battery on an f3 but it just didnt sit well being exposed under the seat/tank area.





also not an ideal solution but trialing location. i wanted to keep the battery weight lower down for centre of gravity but given space limitations this works out as the only way to stash it out of sight, battery is a mere 700g ish with it being lithium so its no issue really. its a squeeze for sure between the brackets, tail, electric tray and how close the undertray will be to the electrics tray.

 

couple of small issues arrived with maintenance given how long the bikes been sitting unused in that the forks needed rebuild and the brakes were a little sticky.





so brakes rebuilt and given a deep clean.



the forks... which i rebuilt previously will not take a seal. ive been through 3 sets of seals and suspect there is a further issue as to why they leak. obviously the seals are protected from sharp edges when installed, no pitting etc in travel area and have been lightly scuffed back and polished to be safe, air gap is set so theyre not massively overfilled, inspected the stanchions for bends visually and by rotating the fork in the yoke and checking against a solid position for bends. ideally i need to get the stanchions on v blocks and check properly but ran out of patience throwing seals at them and picked up another set of 'good, recently rebuild forks' but check the state of the dust seals... why cant sellers just be honest online... good thing is they arent leaking for the time being though.





made a wee alloy bracket and fitted my new speedo. its an acewell md52 with temp gauge. still to wire it up and suss out how it'll take a signal from the cbr factory speed sensor. honda vss is 3 wire and acewell takes 2, need to be wary of not putting 12v input into that circuit of the speedo as it can cook it. vss should put out 5v ish from what im aware but has a 12v reference, ground and signal wire. i'll need to suss it out.



had borrowed the fatbars set out for the fighter on another project so ive just picked these cheapies up. geometries not bad, wouldve liked a little more backsweep but for the money... who cares. 30" wide which is a bit too much to be honest when you add barends on top of that. id cut them down a little but id lose backsweep so we'll see how that goes.



braided lines routed and bled in. really enjoy the way they loop up high and route. turns out ive got a bent disk too. so the good 929 front end i got all those years back has forks that wont seal and a bent disk. haha typical eh. its been an expensive week. picked up a set of 2nd hand lighter weight ebc disks. not too sure what to do about levers, keep the hong kong specials and just change the finish or fit oem levers.

 

knocked up an alloy number plate bracket, going to slim it back a bit further though as its excessive and quite heavy a grade of alloy.



so 98% finished. literally just need to fit a numberplate, tweak the wiring routing etc and wire up lights... and this happens.



the old thermo sensor shears in the stat housing... nightmare. and you cant access it with a drill whilst in the frame. and the easiest way to drop the engine when you dont have the right kind of jack is to strip the bike down to bare frame and engine to lift the frame off. heartbreaking when youre on the last hurdle.



so... damn it. easy enough to strip these down but couldve done without that.





5 steps back, one forward and two steps sideways. so both front mount bolts sheared in the engine. i put a crazy amount of heat through them trying to free them up and in the end had to shear, pry and cut to release the frame.

had a friend weld on nuts, get them reeeeaaaal hot, was concerned about them being so close to the head gasket but its been okay, let them cool and try that way but after several tries we had to just drill them which is always a bit sketchy as its so easy for the drill to wander. after many hours mucking about we got them out though. man i need to get myself a welder so it removes that reliance on other people's time



now these thermo sensors are a tapered NPT thread just to be awkward. looked at the engineering specs and decided m10x1 was the the next thread size that was nominally larger that the max diameter of the NPT threads, managed to source a m10x1 to 1/8 NPT adapter quite easily, went to drill the old sensor out and realized i didnt have a 9.1mm for tapping that size. so waited a few days for one to come in the post. went to tap it and realized i only had a fine 10x1.25 not the extra fine 10x1. asked a friend for one, said he definitely had one, had to wait almost a week to find out he only had the same size. ohhhh life.

 

Man oh man have you been through the wringer with this build. Way not to get too frustrated and give up. I've seen lots of guys on here have the slightest issue and just throw in the towel. You've done a great job so far. If I can offer some advice, since you have it all apart now, it might be a good idea to replace the isolation boots. They look a little worse for wear and could cause you problems sooner rather then later. While the bike is apart it's a 5-10 minute fix.

 

here we go. adapter in. new sensor has been ptfe taped too as its a requirement with NPT threads. i've since had it running and it doesnt seem to leak so fingers crossed.



good thing has been that the time in waiting on parts / welders / tools is that i've had time to put into things like degreasing the engine, cleaning things up and a little painting.

anyone know nd easy way to remove black corrosion spots from alloy without abrasives?



frame was a little scuffed up and nasty from all the work on the bike and storage so took a little time to cut old brackets off and give it a lick of paint. used silver because i had it sitting.

the plan was to do this over winter and powercoat but this will do for now. ill need to get some metal filler just to give it a proper smoothing where brackets were.

i did also cut off the tabs beside the fan wiring and to the left of the headstock by accident. got carried away grinding but its fine.





id used a brass wire wheel to clean these previously which turned out to be brass coated steel and allowed the steel to meld to the stainless and cause corrosion whilst in storage. so ive taken the time to treat and half polish the headers back up. just watch out for brass coated wheels vs brass wheels.



new forks were fairly cheap due to needing a sheared pinch bolt removed. needless to say i made light work of that.



once again the bike is together again and looking fresher than ever with a decent deep clean.





readdressed the battery situation. utilized the old broken battery box lid by hacking it up and using it to sit the battery on rather than cable tied to bare alloy, bent the tray, filed down the bracket above it for a little more clearance and squeezed some rubber onto the edges to act as a buffer to the bracket. with the two bits of angle alloy it cant go anywhere nor is it hard mounted now. its not elegant but itll be functional.



now i completely jumped the gun with rewiring the bike so early on... for a different layout and tail nonetheless. my custom loom has become a bit more of a mmm stretch it, hide that over there and tape that bit up kind of job... bit annoying but for now it'll do and ill address it over winter. just want to get it on the road for the last of the season as its been driving me crazy for years .

anyway, ive stashed these components under here. im hoping the regulator rectifier will be fine without being attached to a flatter surface area for heat syncing. last thing i wanna do is cook a lithium battery.

fuel cut relay and starter solenoid are stretched forward under the tank with the rest of the connectors for now. also running gravity fed as the replacement pump i got years ago is for too small a fuel hose size.

ive since had the bike running to get water/flush though it, had a thermo housing leak but luckily had a spare gasket, the npt adapter seems to be holding so far. brakes arent sticking since new discs, forks are good. its almost road ready. just need to wire the lights up and do a few wiring tweaks.

so close now.

 

What a great write up, well done good sir.

 

thanks man, appreciate it. is there ever really a 10-15 minute job though haha yeah i think we all have those moments. its been quite a journey considering its been off the road since winter 2014 when i only set out to just swap to a 929 front end and keep it in standard trim but the wind picked up and smashed my tail into 20 bits and its just escalated from there.

ah i live for this stuff, in hindsight its a project that i've really enjoyed working on whilst ive actually been working on it but its become a burden and mostly due massive holdups due to relying on others for welding stumping progress, then storage issues, death, losing workshops, a broken back / recovery, the 100 silly little issues that arise and its fallen to the side whilst ive got on with other builds that im not held back on but then juggling projects detracts from physical time spent and available resources to any one thing.

in hindsight my minds been occupied with this build since 2014, its a lot of time for something to be occupying mental space, not making progress has been bothering me every other day for years haha its mad to think about it that way. it's hard to think about about a project positively and be objective when you're not getting those little victories to drive it forward and it feels like there's no reward, just another issue to deal with. through the wringer for sure, yeah i just cant wait throw a leg over it, get out for a rip and actually feel like i've achieved something with it rather than thinking jesus what next haha but yeah the project as a whole has taken a toll for sure. lessons learned are never a bad thing though.

see to anyone either building or looking at building something, biggest bit of advice i can give anyone is not to take on too many projects haha never again. set your mind on something, send it, chip away until its done and try not lose that momentum but when you do, regroup and get get back on it. well that and research. and oh if youre taking a tail swap on seriously consider getting the correct subframe to begin with, especially if youre relying on other people's time to fabricate.

i'm just rambling about nothing here haha anyway. isolation boots? do you mean the carb boots connecting between the head and carbs? if so they just look a bit grotty in the pic but in theyre in quite good shape still but the big jubilee clips im using are a pain in the butt. long term plan for that is to run threaded rod across all the clips and have it so they all tighten at the same time on a wing nut, semi quick release.