To be fair, I was lucky this week that I didn't have much work on and got on with it. Life always has a way of getting in the way. I've only just done mine so I'm like a kid in a sweet shop about the whole thing
Today’s job involved the removal of several years of grungy oil and rust (courtesy of the previous owner) from my bikes chain and sprockets. The judicious use of a brass brush, muc off chain degreaser, some elbow grease and the wife’s toothbrush returned it to a reasonable state.
- It’s actually the wife’s fashion catalogue - honestly - she’ll murder me if she finds out what happened to it!
Today the low volume insert for my Yoshimura rs5 arrived - thank you Calsport for the swift delivery. Hopefully it will reduce the decibel level enough so that I can finish a longer ride without feeling like I’ve had my head in a bucket that someone has been hitting with a stick. Had to punch out a tab from the exhaust cap and then slide the insert in, a few light taps with a hammer helped to seat it properly. Then came the task of inserting the set screw that goes through the hole punched in the exhaust and threads into the insert, holding it in place. This necessitated a fair amount of guesswork as the hole isn’t easily visible and is set at an angle to the insert. Much patience and the occasional swear word helped to complete the task. A test ride tomorrow should tell whether or not the decibel level has been reduced. Not overly enamoured with the decibel meter comparing my exhaust note to that of a vacuum cleaner!
Great job! I like the twin pipe look. If its too quiet for you, I wonder if shortening the pipes of the insert would increase it...the shorter they are the louder it would get and you could incrementally shorten them until your happy.
NC30s just had an early morning wake up and breezed through an MOT, can go back under its cover for another year now As usual the only advisory from my regular local 6’ 6” tester, was ‘it’s like a fooking mini moto, shall I carry it in or attempt to ride it in’ same comment year in, year out, at least he’s as predictable as the pass certificate
In an effort to increase the luggage carrying ability of my 04 cbr I replaced my seat cowl with a pillion seat from a cbr600rr and I fashioned some attachment points using a couple of pieces of nylon webbing and fastened them to two existing bolts under the pillion seat. Combined with the tail tidy this should give me somewhere to attach some bungee hooks.
Kriega do a fitting fitting for the Ducati 1199 that looks just like the ones you have made. https://kriega.com/sports/touring/panigale-fit-kit
Can I sue them for pinching my idea? Although I think I might have actually borrowed it from someone else.
Bagster have a separate set of loops which fit under the pillion seat with tabs sticking out to anchor the bag. Very stable.
When I bought my bike it already had the pillion footrests removed and a seat cowl fitted. Which was fine because at 65 my wife had declared her pillion days over. So, in order to make carrying luggage a bit easier I bought a second hand pillion seat to replace the seat cowl. This would make strapping a bag to the back of the bike much easier. Then I investigated rack options which boiled down to a choice between the Ventura system or a Renntec rack. While both had their pros and cons it was their price, especially the Ventura system which made me look elsewhere. Then I discovered the Hepco Becker sportrack which would replace my pillion seat and could be easily swapped back to a pillion seat or seat cowl. However, they don’t make one for an 04 cbr, they cost over £160 and they are only held on by the existing seat lock. So I doodled an idea for a DIY rack/plate, loosely based on the Hepco Becker sportrack but with a direct, more permanent and hopefully stronger attachment to the bike. Just in case I wanted to fit a top box. Yes, I know that nobody in their right mind fits a top box to a cbr! The plan was to fit the rack to existing bolts beneath the seat and luckily there are 4 suitable ones in just the right position. The existing bolts were removed and replaced with longer ones and some aluminium spacers. I made a template for the rack which I wanted to be as large as possible without resembling a tea tray and it also needed to cover the hole left by removing the pillion seat - don’t want water flooding in! Having made the template out of plywood and having checked out the price of a suitably thick piece of aluminium as well as the difficulty of working with anything metal, I decided to keep the template and use it as the actual rack. So after much fiddling around, fine tuning and multiple swear words I got the rack to fit. A couple of coats of primer and some aerosol paint that I already had and the job was nearly complete. The rack - I’m going to call it a plate from now on because that’s probably a better description of what I’ve made - stands proud of the tail plastics by a few centimetres and so the problem of water ingress had to be addressed. Luckily the water company had sent us, free of charge, some pipe insulation which was a good fit for the gap between the plate and the tail fairing. It should keep the water out. The plate, now that the bolts have been snugged up, is really solid with no movement at all. It sort of follows the contours of the bike and provides a larger and flatter surface than the pillion seat. It is also firmly attached to the bike and so removes the worries that I had about strapping things to the pillion seat with its dependence on just the locking mechanism to hold it in place. It cost me the price of four bolts and four spacers, I already had the wood and paint and foam. I might replace the plywood with aluminium at some point, we’ll see how it goes. It isn’t as easily removable as a sportrack - it takes less than ten minutes to remove it - but I’ll usually be carrying luggage of some sort so it’ll probably stay on almost permanently. It’s possibly not a suitable modification for those who spend any time on the track or those who like to pamper their bike - not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things but I intend to use my bike on a daily basis. Fast and practical, what’s not to like? As for the top box - well, a givi universal plate would bolt on easily and I just happen to have one (and a suitable top box) in the garage. I haven’t decided yet Someone else has already done it though, luckily to a cbr250 or something similar
Nice, looks aggressive as rear huggers go. Today I resprayed my R&G tail tidy. Its been on a while and the black finish had started to flake off so had to tidy that up. Also ground off a small bracket that I couldn't remove when I got rid of my abs system. I think it needed the rear subframe to come off so thought bugger that and managed to get an angle grinder to it.
Looks great. Could you send a product code as I went through the Puig site and couldn't find it. I could do with one too. Thanks for any help cheers
