Selling bikes

 Due to an illness I will be selling all the stuff in the garage including the bikes. I have the kawa, the rg500 and the track going fzr600 as well as my brother's ducati for Sale.

New bike

My intention is travelling this year so I needed a new bike up to the challenge, I really wanted the new Speed Triple RS, the faired one but I couldn't bring myself to leave 26k€ on the table so I went about trying loads of bikes, I was almost going to get a S1000XR, but that frightened me aswell, With it's 28k€ price tag with right options, so I ended up going for an ex demo Kawaski Ninja 1000sx. for 14k€.It hasn't got all the right stuff either but hey hoe I'll add. It's missing: centre stand, electrical usb port, and heated grips. Never mind it is an excellent ride and a really smooth engine, with plenty of young ponies and some interesting gadgets : Traction control, an IMU, a shifter up and down, ABS, and all sorts. Can't wait to get her out on a dry road! In the meantime I eventually got my RG heads back from Laurent after a year! what a mess, luckily I managed to find some in Spain to be going on with. More news as it happens. i noticed the kids FZR has a break in the fairing which needs fixing let alone getting the forks staight.

Loads has happened

well the Triumph starts. After having redone the forks, I discovered a brake line that was broken so i replaced the front brake lines with a racing setup i.e. 2lines coming directly from the master cylinder to the brake calipers. I am now trying to sync the carbs and then insurance and a road test. Took the FZR 600 and the 350 to a track day and the both rode really well until the 350 broke a throttle cable which recently been fixed however, I need to lengthen them as they pull on lock.....Other than that I have tried and failed to stop the bench grinder from vibrating. I will buy new stones and see if that makes a difference.

Triumph update on coil wiring

OK I tried to start it and failed and thought I had done something wrong on the valves (which could be the case still). Ididn't seem to have the appropriate wires going to the coils especially coil number one - OK This is half the issue, I am numbering the coils starting with Nr.1 at the back and nr. 3 at the front. I had somehow managed to lose the Nr1 coil wires and in there place I out the coolandt sensor wires which even in my heart of hearts I knew was wrong but hey they had the same connectors as the other coils. Anyway I should be concentrating on what is now right : this is an exert of a thread I read from the Triumph rat.net forum which simplified everything in my head - poor head. the colours, are in the manual but it doesn't tell you which cylinder it should feed The blow gives you all the information you need: left hand mount on frame coil No1, red + green. right hand front mount on frame coil No 2 , red + yellow/blue right hand rear mount on frame , coil No 3 , red + brown/yellow. SHould at least stand a chance of starting now.

TB Idle circuit

So I have been doing the carbs (agin) on Piere Luc's Triumph Thunderbird and one of the pieces of information I was missing was whether the idle mixture screw adjusted the idle fuel or air flow. Important to know as you need to screw these in or out dependant on whether you are rich or lean at idle. The symptom I am still getting is that the engine still hangs onto revs. a little too long to be confortable riding. this turned out to be lean running at high rpm so I went down on main jet sizes and put the needles back on the middle clip, but now I still get the symptom at idle low revs. I found one reference on the internet and decided to take the plunge and screw the richness needles in another half turn to 1.5 turns, in the hope of leaning it out - this would imply that you are restricting fuel to the idle circuit and therefore leaning it out! In the hope that I went the right way. So now I am on 97.75 main jets and 3 x 40 idle jets at middle slot for the needle clips. All the jets are not Mikuni and were purchased at WEmoto.fr. I am going to rebalance the carbs. and take it for a spin. Be back later with the results.

Daytona and calipers

Changed clutch plates 129k and installed heavy duty springs. Both outer clutch friction plates are thicker 3.65 MMS and the outer one goes in the external short slots. Didn't change gaskets on the 3 covers - need to next time!The steels go with soft edge closest to the engine. Seems to work fine. The spare calipers that are used on the street FZR and the 350 have had the seals changed and bleed nipples changed. They were also cleaned up.

Daytona Service 128200kms

Just serviced the Daytona, new front tyre and oil/filter plus spark plugs changed. Cleaned air filter some oil present in air filter box, either too much pressure in the engine or too much oil. Screw the dip stick completely in to check oil.

Street 675 and Daytona955i

I bought a second hand radiator for the Daytona in the UK, got it delivered to Dad's as mine is still weeping from the leak in the lower left hand side, It had been slightly damaged but for 35 quid it was cheap, I cleaned up the fins fitted the fan and fitted the rad. It is watertight and does the job, although really need a bigger rad to do the job. Put Lib's new pads in the front of her bike (disks). nothing special to say easy job - I also changed the DOT4. She's done around 30K kms. Tried to get the Ducati started although it was pissing from the front carb so I purchased 2 new float valves , fitted the front one which solved the problem also adjusted the float height. The rear float pin was jammed despite soaking in penetrating oil and carb cleaner I couldn't remove it. It can be done but you would need to destroy the float to do it, so I left it in place. Went for a 50kms drive popping quite a lot on the left pipe.

Daytona955i

Got back from a spirited ride on the Dayto and noticed a strange smell as I was putting it away - it was dripping oil onto the exhaust on the right hand side. Today I took a look and the gasket was in good shape so I just put some gasket silicon on both sides of the gasket and torqued the cover into place and hopfully it will be alright. I put the same oil back in as it has only done 5K kms. There is one cover bolt that has a washer on it for no apparent reason I neeed to find out where that goes....

Daytona

I installed the freshly charged battery and she started straight up, unfortunately when I took her out of the garage the front left indicator was dangling, broken. The only whole ones I have are rear ones so they went on instead - they are exactly the same except the front ones are slightly shorter, still they'll do until I can source some second hand ones. At least they are a pair! I need to lower the "fan on" temperature so it doesn't get as hot - I had reloaded the standard map for the ECU with the standard "fan on" temperature at 104°c I need it to come on at 100°c. While I have some time on my hands I will get the rear indicators level - I initially installed them with the bike on the side stand and they are not level, but I will need to fill the hole before drilling another one as the are only about 0.5 cms out. I will try some plastic welding, and if that doesn't work, some araldite or glass fibre will plug it sufficiently to support a new hole.

FZR 600 service

The track bike was leaking a bit of oil from the left hand side cam cover so I thought I would give it a bit of a service. drained the oil and antifreeze, and will order some plugs. I think I will go for 10w40 synthetic oil as I have a stock. OK the leak is fixed I did the valves whilst I was in there. I didn't change the plugs or internal filter, just cleaned the air filters and re-oiled them. The bike started right up, so I topped up the oil 10w40 motul 7100 and removed damaged stickers from the belly pan, covered a hole made by the hot exhaust with carbon fibre and epoxy and then stuck some new stickers on the various scrapes.

Street 675 and Yam 350

So, Libby was complaining about manouvering her bike so in order to encourage her to ride I bought a lust engineering lowering kit, which was duly installed and the fork tubes were raised through the yokes approximately 14mms, of course this makes the side stand difficult to use, so I made up some spacers for the aide stand bracket and purchased some longer bolts to fix the stand. I took it out for a ride and was plaisantly suprised that I didn't really notice any difference! I fell off the 350 at Ales race track trying to follow a hopped up scooter through a slow bend! Anyway it was the last session so the bike was packed up in the van, and Up havw only just looked at the damage. The left footrest took the brunt, it is fixed on with a huge bolt going through a hole in the footrest holder, which had broken, the gear lever had bent and that was about it. so I used a footrest holder that had been cut from an ally plate about 4 mm plate. I drilled holes for the footrest and gear lever and Bob's yer uncle. I also changed rhe front wheel on the bike to use a new tyre which I had fitted to another wheel. The 350 has different disk bolts each side, on one side are 4.8 mm star headed bolts and on the other (Left side) there are 5.0 mm allen head disk bolts, and if you inverse them they rub on the fork leg on the right! So after a fare bit ofaffinf about I got it on and setup correctly. as per below photo.

Daytona and last bike for Atelier Entre 2 Temps

Ordered and fitted a new front S22 tyre to the Daytona 123XXX kms. Excellent tyres but I might look for something a little more hard-wearing! I have been working on a first gen 1200cc Daytona this last couple of weeks, it was basically a barn find that a customer purchased in the Bordeaux area and trailored it back to the workshop. It had a few bits and pieces to change, but I got it going and it went out of the door yesterday. This will be my last official customer!

Daytona 955i

Changed the rear tyre (another S22) - they don't last long but they are great. Changed at about 120k, now up to 122K after boys run out over last 3 days. I also went back to the standard tune 10179.hex with non standard exhaust, think I will up the warm tickover as it is low and I have stalled at the lights a few times. I also modified the fuel sender as I was getting the MIL on after filling up with fuel. I drill 2 holes down the tube at about 5 cms down and then added a tie wrap to stop the floater going up to the part where it triggers an error, this means I don't get a MIL and I still get the low fuel light on - this has worked perfectly, I must have got the tank breather pipes on the wrong way around as sometimes at the petrol station there is a vacuum noise when I lift the filler cap, so I have reversed the pipes - hopefully good - to be tested this weekend.

Street triple 675

Libby was complaining about not having enough control as her feet are not touching the ground. So I purchased a lowering kit from Lust racing in the UK. Unfortunately you need to remove most of the exhaust system, which is a good opportunity to clean it properly! The kit had different torque values compared with the service manual. It got fitted using the service manuals numbers. I raised the forks through the steering stem about 12mms to even things out. seems to have had the desired result as she now feels more comfortable so all good.

RG500 Jetting

Well I have abandoned getting air filters for the 500, just can't get the jets right! I did look at trying to make some velocity stacks for 58mm external diameter carbs but nothin was available that was very short - due to lack of clearance with the fairings. So I am back to trying to setup the carbs better on the 500. Basically the symptom is : Good idle and pickup off idle As soon as you get mid range power dissapears (about mid throttle) and then you need to ease is above 8k rpm at which point it makes great power to the red line. I thought I was running too rich in the mid range so I purchased some needle jets p-4 and p-8 as apposed to the q-2 needle jets that are in there.

After changing the needle jets I can come to the conclusion I must have been running lean as the bike gets better with a richer setup. I am now running 240 main jets and P-8 needle jets and I will probably try going up to 250s just to see. On the other hand did the 120k kms service on the Daytona, all fluids except fork, sparkplugs, plus valves and throttle body synchro. All is well the valves were all in specification.

Service Daytona, Street plus RG500, 350

Ok loads of stuff going on in the garage. I completed the 120k kms. service on the Daytona, the valves were perfect. Small leak in the left side lower part of the radiator, so used some Barrs to block it up. This is a first and I hope it doesn't bugger anything else up! I didn't change the brake fluid as it was changed a year ago when I serviced the calipers. Throttle bodies were synched OK. The street had it's 30k kms service, although I didn't do the valves but everything eslo was done, filters, plugs, fluids, etc... I purchased at great expense some needle jets from Steve motocarb in the UK, with the vague hope trying to lean out the carburation of the RG 500. Nothing seems to do it, I think I will go back to running no filters and play with the needle jets to try and get it good with no filters. Seriously considering selling it if by the autumn I haven't moved forward. The 350 has had a carb rebuild and the reeds looked at which are not sealing correctly. Even with new reeds! This doessn't affect anything at revs. but will affect starting etc.... The FZR started up after a couple of seconds on the starter, running OK although the carbs -pilots need a clean.

Tool fab - Ducati

changing the frame on a 796 Ducati plus changing the engine covers. The alternator needs tightening to 250nM ! so an alternator holding tool needed fabricating, plus something for the steering head.

RG 500

Well I made a couple of air filters from a clothes drier filter. I tried the bike at Ledenon on Saturday but it was running miles to rich, I could just about get into power band but really high and with zero mid range.

I didn't really notice any change due to new ignition map, anyway I decided to go down on the mains. So all mains were set to 220, the next run was much better until one of the filters came away and was flapping loose onon nr. 2 cylinder. I thought I had done a piston through leaning off nr. 2, however returning home, the spark plug looked rich, so I decided to redesign the filters so each carb. Has it's own filter held on by tie wraps!

I wanted to richen up the needle but I was on the highest clip setting, so I went back up to 230's on the mains, but put the needles on the middle clip. We'll see how this goes next outing.

Daytona

Changed rear tyre S22 Bridgestone. F#€king brilliant but doesn't last long!

115K kms