Welding rusty exhausts
is not fun, but first niki’s gpz500 has it head back on:
Onwards with fixing sarges rusty rebel 125 exhaust, first the link pipe was poked until i was sure we had solid metal
then the header was bashed about for the same reason, the inner skin was solid the blowing noise came from a small bleed hole that was meant to work inside the outer skin.
Big patch for a big hole.
Then i moved onto the gilera runners exhaust, decided to whip off the outer shield which is meant to stop a burnt leg. It’s useless extra unsprung weight.
Chopped off the mounting lug then smoothed the whole side apart from the dent, might cover the dent with some sort of welded art?
Tuning parts ought to be here for next tuesday, twiddling my thumbs looking for the bbq paint till then.
More runner shenanigans
shenanigans is in the spell checkers!?
Went for a short spin to kinsale yesterday, perfect coz it’s raining today 🙂
Piston is well fooked, even the gudgeon pin was damaged.
Barrel however has survived! if it don’t survive being ported and decked to within .02mm of it life, i’ll swap the whole top end for a malossi 172 then but for now it means i have more money in the budget for other toys 🙂
Like a 24mm PWK flatside carb (37% bigger then the original 20.5mm dellorto) along with a stage6 reed valve and stage6 manifold too. When they get here i’ll go hunting for a kart airbox to suit, Foam filters and rain are not a good mix.
I promise myself a PM5* pipe if i get a proper job!
Runner 180, strip down
Well first thing that didn’t help the engine survive was a seeming lack of water anywhere in the cooling system. Most of it seems to have escaped into the exhaust.
BEGIN!
That can’t have helped.
That can’t have helped.
THAT CAN NOT HAVE HELPED AT ALL NOT ONE BIT!!!!
Skull cap off and it looks like the bodged o-ring survived fine. However the compression o-ring didn’t, letting all the water out into the exhaust and ruining the ability of the two-stroke oil to lubricate.
Plated barrel now fecked, might be able to hone off the melted aluminium, will definitely do some porting. Don’t want to have to do this again so if the barrel doesn’t come up 100% it goes on the spare pile.
(does my hand look fat in that pic?)
New piston for sure, fair bit of water in the crank too but it seems to have escaped proper damage.
I have a theory about the missing exhaust bolt and the oil pump falling off, it’s usually the case when things start to vibrate off that the freq is too high (or not high enough if your pedantic) and the best way to lower the freq is by attaching a weight. So to kill two birds with one stone i’m gonna remove that gigantic rubber block and just mount the engine properly to the frame, that ought to sort the flipping handling and the bolts falling out, at least in the engine anyway, rest of the bike may suffer…
A plan is needed, have a three point one:
1: it will have an autolube system.
2:it will have a rain proof airbox/filter.
3:it will have a nice crisp exhaust note.
4: it’ll be faster then steve’s!
A day at the drags
steve was bringing his runner so that meant i had to fix mine, shortened up a fuel line and it was leak free and good to go
Steve just used zip ties.
then to alex’s place (he doesn’t live in a cage).
then it all went wrong, it was steves fault you see, we were flatout to cobh flatout back from cobh and some more flatout ness just for the heck of it pas douglas.
I missed that alright, seems that dodgey O-ring in the skull cap let go again (it was quite a hot day, really) i missed the temperature shooting up and then it heat seized. 🙁
so a quick  spin on the back of ronans bandit and it was off with the cbr again, the fall back bike.
Made it too the drag race any way and got a few pics, this pink busa was up at our place a while back didn’t know it was gonna be racing!
nice set of puppys there girl!
this bike broke the 200mph barrier in the uk and ireland back in 70’s (i think) ted and mum got up at the crack of dawn to see it do it .
quite a machine.
must dash, gotta sort a shopping list for a faster runner 🙂
Today was a good day.
Turned up at the shed today to find ted is now busy with plenty of interesting work. Slightly confused at  first, why the hell is seans rs250 bike painted blue?
cable operated disc brake, eep!
I MUST get a test ride off this elsie
I promise not to do any wheelies!
Anyway to work, remember the cb1100r in the shed? owner of it is painting the tank for nothing more then cost 🙂
the tank will match the chinese plastic i bought, hopefully we can save the nice embossed S sticker.
busa fuel pump and sender
poped it back in so i can remember what way it goes back together 🙂 once the busa is gone i can afford nice things like tdr250 expansion pipes..
Shot of the size of my side of shed now
the light comes in here, no the door doesn’t actually work.
Borrowed a honda 300 and took a slow ride down to nab’s, an excellent end to the day.
Little updates
Went to sarges wedding, only took this photo cause the left hand painting annoyed me..
Finally decided to clean the carbs on the cbr
went quite well was expecting them to be utter bastards to put back on, but no they just poped on.
Was gonna mod the airbox then, but discovered i don’t have have two exactly the same ones to mod, not even certain what year cbr use’s that lid..
Garage all chopped up now.
Chunk taken out of my side 🙁 but i am getting a 20″x12″ container out the back 🙂
spotted this fzr600 at the vjmc meet on sunday, feeling the hankering for a new bike god help me.
Choke cable
step 1: remove entire bike…
there it is just under the right hand coil, totally seized. when this new cable stops moving I’ll rig up a cable that is just pulled out the side.
didn’t have the tools to properly clean the carbs so i left that till some other time, still wondering what to do with the airbox, I have a spare lid so i can experiment with one and still be able to return to stock.
Perhaps if i remove the bell mouth of the snorkel, the sharp edge might add a bit of induction noise. Must have a look at some mid 90’s kawasaki airbox’s there known for a proper induction roar.
cbr mods
Looks like the runner is leaking fuel, so i decided to swap back to the cbr. Tried to get the fuel out of the runners tank, que gob full of petrol and then i only got 2 litre out as well, it’s a weird tank shape can’t get the pipe in far enough. Been thinking of ways to give the cbr more character, decided i needed a louder pipe and i should sort the jetting. I’ve always avoided loud pipes as it attracts guards but these days I’m not so fast any more. Not sure what pipe i’ll put on,we have a dented cbr straight thu pipe(chrome) i’d love to make the haybusa’s left hand carbon pipe fit but that’s a suzuki bolt on type, not slip on. So in the mean time i couldn’t remember weather i had de-baffled the stock pipe before, hmm, do it any way!
Success! pretty nice sound out of it, unfortunately i can’t hear it anymore when there is any wind speed, perhaps some airbox mods to bring in some induction roar? have to pop the tank off anyway to clean the pilot jets anyway, could do two birds with one stone and rejet to suit a modded airbox too.
Christmas break work.
This scene last year was a mini glacier.
Cleaned up the 32mm carbs, fitted needles which richend the top end and left in the 210 jets.
Bastard throttle cable is near impossible, but i got it
Found a better fuel filter and slotted that in too.
Knew this things are restricting the engine and since i found out where our stash of jets were hidden, they got the chop.
Now all i need is some free time, fuel and dry roads to take it for a test spin. And to figure out where the throttle cable is meant to be routed.
The runner needs some love, so i found it a mirror

And since i got 11.42litres/100km(25mpg!! i may have stolen some fuel at some point i forget) decided to change the clutch springs, the green polini ones are great for a quick get away but i have to use plenty of throttle to keep the bike doing 50k, hence the suspicion that their causeing the crap fuel economy. Also they fit like shit which is i hope the reason for the weird shoe wear pattern.
I was going fit the old ones but I’ve lost the feckers, so i fitted the malossi race ones, which were a much more reasonable poundage and better shaped. Even managed to get em in single handed this time.
Test ride revealed a tiny amount of bog off the line and only once at that, if it still drinks the fuel it must be the rollers, which will make me sad since the buzz from the acceleration is awesome.
Back to FAS tomorrow, but at least the summers on it’s way.
In before the snow!
Just got the runner out of storage literally hours before the snow hit hard. If i have to travel the runner will be much easier to pick up after a slide 🙂
