Nice work man, and I'm with Hamlin and Conrice on the color, so, is it matte black for the win?

And I also second Conrice on the comment about what you've built, and how that will magnify the appreciation and smile factor, when you ride it!

 

You might be surprised by how well good powder-coating will hold up, even that close to a significant heat source!

 

So true, so sad, and SOOOOOO frickin' ANNOYING!!

Lowe's, Home Depot, the neighborhood Ace hardware, and closest lumberyard... in ALL of these places, at NO time have I been assisted by someone who knows more than I do, or even as much, about the things I'm coming to procure... it makes my want to bring Wayne Brady with me in the future!!



95% of the staff at these merchants have absolutely no idea how to do pretty much anything with, or using, the materials and tools they stock and sell... and I'm being VERY generous with 95%, because if there ARE 5% that could give proper assistance, I have yet to meet them in my area stores!!

 

Hehee good to know the hardware staff problem is rather global than local nowadays. Being a trucker I frequently visit the stores around Lahti to fetch construction material for different companies so I have the perk of being known by the "good staff" so when I`m there as a customer I usually walk straight past the temp workers and to the cargo side to ask the guys there as they are the ones stacking the shelves and keeping the books so they know where every single screw and bit is.

Nice to see you here JNS, haven`t seen you around much lately!

Got a winter storm raging here ATM, although our house is completely safe sitting at the bottom of a ridge that rises up just at our back alley lifting the winds over our house we`ve had several power-outs during the night, got a big-ish update post coming so gonna post`n edit it several times in case of a blackout so expect more until I say so.

 

Roit, first off as you can see I decided to split the crash cage for ease of fitting in place and to be able to take only one side off later for maintenance purposes. As I`m not planning to actually stunt with this bike I`d reckon the loss of structural integrity will not be an issue cause I`m very much planning to keep this bike upright as long as I can.

I dropped the halves off to the powdercoater today and had a chat with thim about the desired finish. He showed me sample plates of different options and we concurred to do the black paint with matte clear combo as it will both be more wear resistant and blend best with the engine. I`m expecting to get them back by next weekend but knowing the guy not holding my breath



So, the next part was to remove the valve cover to get to measure the valve clearances.



I removed all the wiring that was in the way and labeled the coils, probly not necessary but as I`m doing all this to determine why the engine has massive backfiring when cold at engine braking I want to be able to remove any variables.



These plugs have been driven for approx 200km so something is definitely wrong, no way that much soot should have gathered on them on a four stroke engine. Looks like the motor is running way too rich, and since it is a fuel injected engine my first suspicion lies in poor connection in the engine temp sensor (plug broken and wires stuck straight to the terminals with lots of electric tape) The valve cover seal on the middle hole is seemingly leaking a little as both the coil and the plug has some oily crap on them and some seems to be at the bottom of the plug "well" at the contact surface too.



Off with the valve cover. What took me by surprise was that the bolts were tightened very uneven, some were almost fingertight when some others had to be "cracked" open with the allen key.



I have no idea what is that crap in the seal contact surface but I`m not planning to reuse the seal in that condition. Might swap the plug gap seals as well while I`m at it.



Already bought this to seal the cam end bits as instructed by the book but that`ll have to wait till I get the new seals ordered.



Here`s the results from the valve clearance measurement. The nominal values are 0,10-0,20mm on the intake and 0,20-0,30mm on the exhaust so all valves should be well within spec. This is both good and bad news. Good because the shims on this engine are located below the "lifter caps" (dunno what they are called in english) so I do not have to remove the cam chain or the cams. Bad because I still have to figure out what is the cause for the backfiring when cold. It goes away when the engine reaches operating temperature but when I engine brake with a cold engine it bangs to the exhaust pretty violently.

All done here, no power-outs!

 

Thanks!
It's true though, with Winter having a solid hold, no currently rideable street bike anyway, and not yet having the new race bike in my garage, I just haven't been active with bikes, and my posting has gone down a bit as a result... it must be time to buy something for something!

 

I visited the powdercoater today and exactly as expected he hadn't painted the cage yet. No worries don't actually need it for a good while but it gave me a window to drop off an another part to be painted at the same time.



The plate holder/mudguard. Or at least the first proto version of it. It's been modified so many times and put together in the wrong order that it looks pretty manky and dodgy. Specially the indicator stalk. I don't have anything powerful enough that'll fit there to clean the dodgy welds, actually broke my Dremel while trying. Some crap must have flown in the fan jamming the motor, gotta take it apart later. Another thing are the nuts that hold the indicators. They not only have some weird size fine thread they are actually different from each other (ccc - cheap china crap...) so changing the indicators is probly going to be impossible when they blow (and they will) so probly when that happens I'm gonna bin the whole thing, redesign and re-fabricate it to make it look better. For now that'll have to do as that is one of the less observed parts and I have very limited resources and time to spend on this project right now.

 

Spent a good part of today in the garage trying to get the muffler finished.





Ehmm... yea... no.

What seemed like a good idea on paper actually looks like crap now that it`s somewhat finished. I do like the steampunk-ish feel of the allen bolts in the end pieces but the strip covering the gap looks pretty daym awful... Most probly not going to finish the can and gonna start looking for something else... Already looked at ebay but universal cans with a 2" inlet are extremely few and far between, not to mention the 2-300eur prices!

If anyone has a hot tip on an affordable can with a 2" inlet let me know. Can be oval, round or triangular, carbon or matte gunmetal grey. Not chrome cans! One option would be to order another used OEM can but that would kinda kill the idea of the attempted mod as I was trying to make the can somewhat smaller cause the original muffler is humongous and to me looks a bit disproportionate.

Gotta keep one ear to the wind, something will eventually pop up somewhere. It always does...

For example could consider this but can`t shell out 200 to a can at least right now.

Not bad either but I reckon there are better ones if I keep looking.

Like this one. Now that I could actually consider buying. Just have to ask the sellr about the construction as I`m worried that if a can has a 2" inlet and a 1" outlet it inevitably restricts the flow if the round hole is the only outlet.



Bummed by the can I turned to the electrics cause that`s something I know somewhat well. I did the headlight cutoff relay re-pinning/ re-wiring that is required for the installation of the keyless ignition box. Not a lot to show for even though it took me a good few hours to get done cause I also had to keep very quiet so I wouldn`t wake up the boy sleeping directly above me. Probly gonna have to install some noise insulation sheets to the roof when I get some more money as they are not cheap at all.

 

You can look at buying used/damaged aftermarket pipes and then modify them.

 

Stayed up till 3am sitting at the computer yesterday, was waay past getting cross-eyed finding nothing to my liking until I stumbled upon this:

Jisu Danmoto Exhaust Triumph Daytona T 509 595 955i 97 01 1997 2001 EX689 | eBay

It's the cheapest of the lot, same brand as my rearsets and I really like the modern look, think it will fit nicely to the bike once the fairings are painted. The only bummer is there's no direct fit version as the only available ones are for the 97-01 gen1, speed triple and the 98-04 Sprint of which none fit without modification BUT now that I decided to bin the old attempt I can just cut the midpipe from that, weld spring hooks to it and throw some hi-temp silver over it.