As I've stated many times, generically speaking I don't like the front brake fluid reservoir on most bikes. To me, they look like urine specimen cups. Having said that, Mattie, I really, really like the one you have installed. It has form as well as well as function. It really adds to the right side of the bars, which is a rare thing.

 

Thanks for the compliments Hamlin you might remember the fluid reservoir originally being blue and cylindrical but I was not happy with that one and specially so with the whistle shaped self made clamp so I went back to ebay and found out these had just came up for sale. I suspect it's a knockoff from some more expensive one so I ordered one straight away in case they are being pulled from the market later. As said before pretty much every detail in the bike has been thought of thoroughly and some even redone until I'm happy with them. There still are small things here and there to detail later but the functional things have all been sorted. Well, apart from the brain box lid screws, I've been unable to find 2,5x65mm wood screws as so long ones normally are minimum 4,5mm thick. Some bolt shops probly have them but been waiting for something else to buy as well so I wouldn't have to go buy four screws

The pickup for the fairings has been locked for Thursday next week after which I still have to glue the tail light on, pics of finished bike probly to publish at thursday and if the weather permits the maiden voyage after work at friday!

 

I have to say the few two weeks have been LOOOOOONG! The pickup of the fairings have been pushed yet forward several times, the painter refused to tell me the final sum what they cost until they were completely finished, there has been a LOT of other stress in the air of which I better refrain from writing here, I remembered the construction of the tail light completely wrong and had to re-redo the braket from scratch, when I finally got to assembling the bike which I have done dozens and dozens of times, NOTHING aligns, the seat simply refuses to go in it`s place with no apparent explanation why, the tail sits like it`s from a completely other bike, I actually had to refabricate one of the brackets as there was no change it could reach the hole, I managed to make a little crack while trying so I drilled a new hole lower and made threads there..........


but eventually got everything together.
























































Mina damen och herregyd, ladies and betlehem, I give you: the finished bike!






















































































When you take it to the sunlight the silver metal basecoat creates a cool 3D-effect that cannot be seen in a photo, and when you take it inside the blue darkens surprisingly much, as you can see in the tank pad picture on the top of the tank, when you look at it from an angle in the shade it almost goes black!

I have to say I`m somewhat pleased with the outcome. There still is much detailing to do but hey, these things never get completely ready do they?

IF it`s not raining sleet sideways as it was when I got home today gonna go for a wee spin when I get home from work!

Now excuse me, I think I`m gonna go in the garage to stare at the bike and take a looooooooooong sigh!

and a pint.

 

:icon_banan a:
:icon _headbang:
:icon_imnotwor thy::icon_imno tworthy:

:icon_v iolin:

:i con_drink:
:i con_toast:



I love every bit of it! Supreme work Matti! VERY EXTREMLY BUBBLY HAPPY FOR YOU!!! It has been worth it!!!!!

ME SHOUUU PRHOYYYYYDE

 

Back from the first test run which at the same time opened the riding season 2015 for me!

Too tired to write a full review of it right now but hopefully will have the time to do it tomorrow. Will be going through my thoughts during the ride. The bike works like a swiss clock, looks the part and sounds awesome! For Missynet: you mentioned earlier that you are afraid of your new bike because I`m afraid of mine. Well guess what, I`m not the slightest bit afraid of it anymore now that everything works and I can trust the bike because I`ve done all the things to it myself! Will be doing a thorough review later, possibly tomorrow if I find the time!



To prove the bike has actually moved today The lighted pillar in the pic is from the same pier that is visible in my sig pic with the cbr.

 

Very tidy job indeed my friend.

 

Breathe taking!!!

 

Looks great Mattson. I'm glad to hear its running as good as it looks

 

Done a bit more of riding this morning when I went to get a haircut, and I must say the bike works almost perfectly! There`s only a few small things to look at later.



As you can see the test run yesterday started with a little bit of drama as the bike refused to start due to the battery being pretty much empty. I tried starting it but it barely had enough juice to turn the engine and the gauge went dark after every revolution so I knew from experience it`s not gonna go. I even tried to run-start it but as I suspected there`s no way you could do that on a 955cc three cylinder engine, it will not turn at all. So I pushed it back home and unbolted the seat, which is NOT such a small job that you would imagine, I`m gonna have to further develope the fixing mechanism later. But apparently there was a reason for all this, because when I was pushing the bike back home the 50 meters I noticed I have neglected a major safety issue: both of my tires have almost no pressure! So I hooked up the charger and the compressor, let it charge for about 15mins, filled up the tires, bolted the seat back in it`s place and pushed the bike back to the street. This unfortunately meant that I missed the kickass orange blazing sunset that I meant to go photo in the background but I actually got something even more valuable at the end of the route: info about riding in the dark.

So I geared back up, walked to the bike, waited a second for the blinker flash to tell me I`ve been recognized, pulled in the clutch and pushed the starter button. BRAOWW the bike roared to life! Waved the wife goodbyes to the window, threw a leg over and took off like I used to with the CBR.

Big mistake. I forgot one tiny little thing.





It immediately shot the tail to the side spooking the crap out of me! Oh yea, this one has 1,5 times the power with less curb weight than the Honda did so better be a wee bit careful with the throttle!

I got to the street and decided I`m gonna go tame some twisties that start just a few km:s away so I turned right and opened the throttle, this time a little more careful and STILL the bike shoots off like a bat out of hell! No wheelie so I know there`s still more reserve when I get to know the bike better. First off the riding position feels surprisingly natural to me, the bars could be just a little narrower but they`re OK as is, I MIGHT still turn them back just a few degrees at some point but they`re not bad now either. The footpegs could be a little lower and a little more forward but since they already are at the most front-low setting that they have I`m just gonna have to accustom to them like that, again something that could be tweaked but since they can`t, they`re good like that. You might have noticed from the pictures the absence of the steering damper as it currently sits in the garage shelf awaiting new seals but now that I`ve ridden the bike with the dirty bars I`m not entirely convinced it needs it anymore. The steering is really fast, way faster than the cbr did but he wide posture compensates for that pretty well.

Then the engine. I remember mentioning this after the first test run as well, but there`s this one little thing with teh transmission: the first gear is ridiculously long. The bike IDLES forward 15km/h at first gear so traffic light jumping makes short work of the clutch, specially with the added fact that these bikes boil pretty easily in the heat of summer so avoiding city centers is recommended. Otherwise the engine caracteristics are in one word, amazing! It was in a way fun with the cbr to go carve the twisties as one part of the challenge was to keep the engine in it`s power band wich started at about 6300rpm so I were constantly stomping the cears up and down through the corners listening to the howl that it made. With this bike I don`t have to! The engine starts to pull from 2,5k, the "good" power band starts from as low as 4k and there`s really no need to ever rev the engine as all the power is in the low register, which means I can tackle almost any situation that comes by with one or two gears! The torque of the engine can only be described as ridiculous! As a three cylinder fuel injected engine it does not think, there`s absolutely zero lag in the throttle twist, the power is right there just waiting for you to unleash it, and there`s a LOT of it! The trick of this engine is not the 146 horse powers, it`s in the immense torque that it has.

As I have done once with all the vehicles I`ve owned, I had to test today how fast will this thing go. well, this was the first vehicle I`ve owned that I was unable to determine the top speed. Why? Well, being a naked bike the wind really gets to you. Over speeds of 120km/h the wind is really starting to get to your hands, at 150km/h it is actually starting to get hard to twist off the trottle. I was able to clock 194km/h into the gauge in just a few seconds after which I was forced to back down as I felt if I`ll go any faster I`m not going to be able to hold on to the bars anymore despite that I was really hugging the tank, so I backed off. The gauge shows a few seconds the top revs you just did, and it showed 10,5k, teh engine tops up at 11,5k so I was pretty much redlining it. Which was the same moment when I realized I was in FOURTH GEAR. So I`m assuming the bike would easily do 230-240 IF I`d be able to hold on!

The exhaust is also playing ball almost surprisingly well considering the muffler is not meant for this bike at all and the midpipe is self made as well as the "db killer" / baffle. at idle it is surprisingly quiet compared to what it was before I made the baffle, when given proper throttle the sound can be best described as angry, nasty... there`s not really a suitable english equalivent for the finnish word I have in mind but imagine a really totally pissed off late seventies british punk rocker and you`re pretty close. at cruising speed it also is surprisingly silent, almost too silent to my taste. But when it really shows it`s caracter is the engine braking. at 3k rpm which is smack center of the usable power band there`s this awesome deep throaty resonance sound that really sounds like "don`t F* with me!" I actually got a good laugh when I was returing home from the test run and took off from one crossroads at the town center, I first did a good acceleration after which I had to slow down after a car that turned in front of me about 100m later so the engine braking happened right at one grocery store which apparently was the meeting grounds for tonight`s "bambinos MC" moped meet, I could tell with one glimpse I turned quite a few heads. When I got home and pushed the bike in the garage I heard about 10-15 mopeds whizzing by trying to chase me

Back to the test run.

I`ve done the same route with the cbr about ten times so I`m fairly familiar with the corners and remember quite well at what speed I`ve been going through certain corners. Well, during the test run I got a pretty throrough eplanation why I got my *** handed to me at the race track last summer. Now keep in mind that this was the FIRST run of this season which as is can be a little...fumbling? with the added fact that it also was the first time that I`ve ever ridden this bike, since there`s been excessive changes in the riding posture and other characteristics I don`t count the ~200km I rode before taking it apart two years ago, and I totally wiped the floor with the cbr times. The bike corners MUCH faster, it carves like a filé knife, I might be imagining things but it felt to me like it doesn`t lean into the corners nearly as deep as I had to with the Honda. I remember at least two corners of the route that I repeatedly tried going through as fast as I could with the cbr and maxed out at (approx) 82km/h, feeling if I lean any more I run out of tread in the tires. I flew past those corners doing 105km/h with the feeling I still had plenty in reserve.

The lights also perform just as I imagined they will. Being projector lights they have almost zero side glare so the beam is focused exactly where it`s needed. It`s a bit of a double bladed sword because I cannot see the sides as well as I did with the cbr, but since the beam is focused 99% forward the lighted area is much more bright with the same amout of wattage. The high beam actually shoots out a completely round beam so when it gets dark enough it actually feels like you`re riding in a tunnel. The one thing that started bothering me was the bright blue gauge that started to hinder my concentration to the road ahead, so I stopped at a bus stop, pressed the passing flash a few times to cycle through the gauge colors (can only be done when the speedo reads zero) selected the red color and took off, problem solved!

So, the bike looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, performs like Jet li and sounds like Barry White. Really what more can you ask for. Maybe it being a Honda...

If I really have to dig for minuses there are a few.

-As mentioned the first gear is stupidly big so slow traffic prowling is gonna be something to avoid.

-I will have to have the connector pipe between the header and the muffler redone from stainless steel. The exhaust gets so hot that the polished header has obtained a golden hue just after 150km:s and the painted midpipe, despite being painted with 600c heat resistant paint, is bubbling all over

-The max comfortable speed is 110km/h, 120km/h which is the motorway limit here is still doable but getting uncomfortable in the long run as the wind resistance is getting to your hands.

-The tail is a tad high so I might still play with the suspension settings later on.

-The rear brake actually does something before locking up, but even after the dual line conversion the front brake could be more responsive so I might be changing some race spec pads in there later if such are available.

-Being a naked bike it seems to form a vortex behind me. This is being shown in two things: if the road is wet the whole tail, top and bottom, gets covered in mud splatters. And secondly one thing that did not happen with the Honda: my clothes REEK of exhaust fumes!

-I need new cold weather gloves. Brrr!


I know I thought of something else before but cannot remember what it was ATM but this should give you a some kind of a review of a 955i Daytona after a fighter conversion, assuming you had the patience to read it through, trudging past all the typos and literature mistakes I missed after two read-throughs, so if you managed this far, thank you!

 

Lol on the "apart being honda"