Busy bee in garage today. Forks back in, plugs changed, both air filters replaced, rads on, coolant in, calipers stripped and pistons and dust seals cleaned and greased, and then the worst job as always on a V4, carb balancing, the clever little Japanese engineers who decided to put the balance screws in the middle of the V, and make them virtually inaccessible, then for a right good crack make 3 of the vacuum take offs just as inaccessible, need a good kick in the bollox, it’s the job I hate doing on these bikes, an contorted hour later and a leak on the fuel tap of my aux fuel tank the carbs were finally balanced, coolant bled, and tank back on. Should be finished tomorrow and ready to ride for the weekend.
So after my self pat on the back yesterday, just thought I’d put the preload and rebound back to where they started and bugger one of the rebound adjusters had stopped clicking, a session in the garage to midnight revealed the culprit, one tiny little garter spring had snapped on the preload adjuster when I was putting the fork bolt cap back on the damper cartridge adjuster, was lucky to find the ball bearing on the garage floor. As expected non serviceable item from Honda and Showa. Tracked down a supply today and ordered a couple, just hope my measuring stick was accurate
Had to finally admit defeat, although I got a garter ring to fit, the adjustment never felt right, and on stripping down the adjuster, I could see advanced wear on the brass assembly, so had to bite the bullet and go with new ones, albeit OEM are not an option, long discontinued although I turned up some NOS at €1100 per leg, love me bike but not that much, but had to go with a bit of bling, not really my style, but left with very few options.
Crawling over the finishing line, Saturday was rebuilding day, all that’s left now is a deep clean of the inside of the plastics, and talking Mrs KB in to spending sometime in the garage to crawl around taking measurements so I can set up the front and rear shocks.
Inching along, 3 stage polish and then 2 coats of Surreal ceramic wax on wheels and each panel, just the tail section to do, slow process, about 8 hours of polishing so far, amazing how 30 year old plastics really scrub up so well, so much nicer having a metal tank to pamper over than the modern plastic covers.
6 months after the planned start, finally got around to getting the RRR on the stand, carb upgrade, shim checks, plugs and air and petrol filters. So much easier to work on an across the frame 4 than a V4, made the hours work quite enjoyable.
Cleared out some queued up jobs such as fitting a new cam cover gasket to the drz and sorting out the KTM clutch oil jet before starting on fitting the slipper clutch to the Honda. I really need more space.
Finished the clutch off today and just need to put the bodywork back in order. Original clutch in place... Clutch out of bike laid out with replacement parts. Being fitted is a yoyodyne slipper that I bought second hand from a seller in the states for $475 including shipping which I thought was pretty good. Very little evidence of wear and came with the clutch plates from the donor bike, the clutch outer which I didn't need and all the shims. Installation was fairly easy. It all goes back together as standard with the exception that the order of the first two discs isn't in the standard order. You install a thin friction disc, a metal disc, then the friction disc that normally goes in first with the spring seat and the friction spring followed by all the discs is the standard order. A couple of gotchas are that the outer need to engage with the oil pump drive. To do this you slide the outer in and then gently rotate the pump until outer move back a few mm when it's engaged. The other one is when you put the cover back on. This is tricky because the idler gear shaft and the starter gear shaft need to engage in the cover and the start can move. The way to do this is to feel the natural position of the starter shaft (it makes sense if you have it all apart) and the locate the idler gear trying not to move the starter shaft. If you do that the cover will slot on and if you don't do that the starter shaft will move and the cover won't go on. I reused all my friction and steel discs and they were all at the top end of wear so had loads of life left. Some might say swap them while you're in there but these were fine, it doesn't take long to swap a clutch and I didn't want to change a lot of things at once and then have to diagnose a fault. This is the cover back on looking very nice, shame it's covered up. I did confuse myself by using the original bolts for the cover and then couldn't get the clutch to disengage but then remembered the kit came with other bolts so fitted those and it works fine. Can't really test it as the bike isn't road legal but it all works on the stand so should be ok. Will take all the original bits to the next track day and reckon I could swap it all over in an hour if need be.
Carbs apart for cleaning and fitting a Dynojet kit. Someone had been there before me, spotless inside. So quick blast out of the pilots and the PITA of fitting fiddly E clips onto needles without losing them.
Just finished a full service, including valve clearance check on my RRV fireblade. Over 22 years old and still in amazing condition.
A few more snaps of my first track day on the TV4. Ran in the novice group and defo some improvements to be made on my body position. Overall though I was happy with my efforts.
