Another FJ12 Front & Rear Modification

[FJools]

We all have it Jeff,

just need to let it out the bag................

[FJools]

Next Page (lost count........)

I thought I would have an easy day and machine up the cush drive / sprocket carrier. It all seemed very simple, which should have set the alarm bells ringing. Studs out, pop it in the lathe, turn off 4.9mm, studs in and voila, job done.
Getting the studs out was no short event. Each had to be heated up with a gas torch around the alloy. I also had to find some Metric M12 1.25 pitch nuts that would get a beating before the day was out rather than sacrifice the OEM flange nuts. I had two that had been tacked under the trailer for quick release bike stand fittings and the weld remnants had to be dressed off as they fouled the inner sprocket guides on the cush drive plate.
It took about an hour to get the six studs out. Stop for a drink break as its still as humid as a dockers armpit.
Next stage on to the lathe, the four jaw chuck I generally use could not hold the plate satisfactorily with either inner or outer jaws fitted and my 3 jaw chuck just wasn't big enough.
Over to the milling machine and I got to use my new rotary back plate for the first time. Only my T nuts wouldn't fit in the grooves ! (don't you just hate that?)
In the end I had to drill 3 x 10mm holes on 120 degrees spacing in the cush plate between the webs then find some M10 half nuts that would fit in the slots. Into these I fit clamping studs and slid the cush plate over these and held it firmly with 3 flange clamp nuts. The only problem now was how to centre this onto the rotary back plate as a test skim showed it was out. Also I wasn't sure that the inner faces of the cush plate webs, on which it was sitting, were true enough to use as a datum.

Off came the cush plate and I managed to grasp it in the lathe (not confidently) by the centre bearing surround. This gave a good enough datum to work from to machine the rear of the cush plate webs to be concentric. Light skims were taken and I was careful not to stand in the firing line !

Once this was done I could be sure the sprocket mounting faces would true, be near as damn it. The only problem now was to centre the assembly some how. This was achieved my turning up a dolly of the same diameter as the wheel axle with a spigot that would fit into the centre hole of the rotary plate.
Putting this all together I was confident we were going to get the job done. It was now lunchtime. That little lot took 2 hours of set up. (Now you know why these jobs cost so much outside – the machining is easy enough, it's the set up time that sometimes we don't consider.)

After knocking the froth off a few cold ones, I returned to the task in hand. The machining process involved setting up a cut (0.5mm at a time) and rotating the table a full turn before incrementing the next cut until the required 4.9mm of material was on the floor.

A quick debur and it was ready to re install the studs – except my Loctite 243 had seen better days and I could not be bothered getting cleaned up, changing clothes and jumping in the car. So that was a job for tomorrow.


Instead I continued with the swing arm. According to Marcs' spec I needed to make up some dog bones that were around 95mm centres. I had some R6 alloy ones that were close to that and were 8mm thick. They would be ok for testing so I drilled out the holes to suit the FJ bolts. This is when I found that the stock shock would hit the swingarm with these dog bones, in fact I didn't even get to fit them as with the swing arm resting on the shock they were half a hole out.
I called it a day after that.

[FJools]

Page 7 ?

Going back to the swingarm

But first I had to pop down the Hardware store for the Loctite (and grab a coffee while I was out)

Back in the workshop I ran a tap through to clean up and extend the threads in the stud holes as they would need to be screwed in further. They were also counter bored by 9mm to allow the unthreaded section in the centre of the stud to locate.

Then it was out with the Loctite and in with the studs, which was a far quicker task than removing them. I let them set while I got on with the next part.
(BTW – in between all these activities there was a heap of cleaning and degreasing going on.)

I had taken some reference measurements before the FJ swing arm was removed. One was from a fixed point on the frame to the rear most axle position. Using this measurement as a guide I determined that 100mm centres dog bone was closer to the mark and would not foul the shock.
I took the original Thunderace dog bones, bolted them together and cut 65mm out of them. Made a jig with bolts on 100mm centres then bolted both sets of dog bones, one on top of the other, to the jig. This would ensure they were both exactly the same length. Then the trusty old stick welder came into play to glue these temporary dog bones together. (My welding is getting much better)
Bingo; they dropped straight into the assembly. So I thought if I stuck the wheel in I could get a feel for how it would sit.
The problem now was I still hadn't received the new bearings for the linkage. The old ones were in bits in the bin so it was a case of turning up a replacement dummy bush to keep everything in place while I assembled it all.
Just at that moment the courier arrived with the new sprockets – including the Honda front 17T that needed relieving on one side. Now these things are hardened and my normal lathe tools just bounced off the case hardening. Here is where the bush engineering comes into play and with the sprocket held in the lathe by the boss on one side spinning nicely, the offending boss on the opposite side was attacked using an angle grinder as an improvised active cutting tool. This took enough of the hardening away when ground flush to the sprocket face to allow me to machine a 0.75mm recess at 44mm diameter for the countershaft nut.

Finally I got it all together, in a fashion, and onto its new wheels for the first time.

But before I rolled it off the centre stand I thought I might need some brakes, just in case. The rear wasn't fitted yet as I wanted to clean up the furry alloy footrest mount plate. The old FJ master cylinder was disconnected from its lines and hooked up to the new Goodridge lines from the Blue Spots. A top up with new fluid and the Mityvac dusted off. I have to say that these have been the easiest brakes I've ever had to bleed through. 10 mins tops to get a good lever. Then all that remained was to drop the bench and take it off the centre stand.


It's hard to say till I can ride it, but nothing looked odd or out of place, other than the new bars which will need replacing with something with more rearward offset – unless I can swap them over.................
I finished early today and feeling a touch guilty I bought the clocks and the new GPS speedo into the house and set to work on that.
Using Tim's (Axiom-R)  instructions I was able to get everything in but in my case the Perspex outer face is fouling on the Speedo Bezel and I can't see an easy fix for this. A good place to stop for the night.

[FJ1100mjk]

Thanks for taking the time to show all of the detail in your modifications. Sourcing the components and doing all of the modifications necessary is enough work, but your added detail and photos are most welcome. This site has been suffering technical doldrums of late and your write up is a breath of fresh air. Keep up the great work! 

[FJools]

Thanks for taking the time to show all of the detail in your modifications. Sourcing the components and doing all of the modifications necessary is enough work, but your added detail and photos are most welcome. This site has been suffering technical doldrums of late and your write up is a breath of fresh air. Keep up the great work! 

I try to tell it as it is, warts & all, so anyone else contemplating this can be aware. My machinery was a good investment - I couldn't imagine how I would have carried any of these mods out without this flexibility.

I'm glad the members out there are enjoying this thread. I seem to be as happy doing this type of work as riding these days. It keeps the brain active and the fingers dirty !

[Mark Olson]

Great info and write-up with pics. Always a treat to see someone getting into a Mod .

Keep it coming you are doing an excellent job.

[FJools]

Part 8

Speedhut GPS

After some PM's with Tim I double checked the wiring in the back to make sure everything was clear but the Cover still fouls the GPS Bezel. There are three types of Bezel available so I asked Speedhut if the one I had was the lowest profile and it appears that it is.
I carefully removed the Bezel & machined off as much as I dare (after measuring the thickness) to flatten off the pointed part of the Stealth Bezel. This improved things but its still not good. Removing the Bezel entirely solves the problem, but this is not an option as the Bezel retains the guts of the speedo in place.

With all this messing around, I thought it best to power it to see if it still worked !

I was contemplating an O ring under the cover but in the end I resorted to machining around 3mm off the Bezel height. This, combined with removing the glass gave the cover the clearance it needed. A quick coat of semi gloss black to cover the machined bare alloy and it was looking good.

Once it was all assemble it was case of looking at wiring options. I didn't want to run a power cable all the way back to the battery. After studying the wiring diagram I concluded it was possible to hook into the Tacho wires that terminate on screw terminals on the back of the unit. The Brown tacho wire is the switched feed, and the black the negative. To get the panel light connection I cut into one of the unused blue wires from the redundant bulb holder and the red hot wire was spliced into the digital clock red wire (permanent 12 v) at the 2 way connector.



In the meantime I set about trying to clean up the LH footrest mounting plate which was a bit furry under the laquer.


I tried various methods of cleaning this off but all were a bit of a struggle. In the end I opted to use the blasting cabinet which had very fine India Glass beads and was great for alloy parts.

But when I lifted the lid of the cabinet, a winter of standing around with the old dust in the mix had turned the beads into a semi concrete mass.


It was an old blast cabinet and leaked at the lift up lid so I decided to treat myself to a floor standing replacement. I wanted a side door type as these would keep their sealing capability better than the lift up lid type. I didn't realise it would come as a flat pack.......

The rest of the day was spent assembling it !

[FJools]

Day Z

Finishing off the cabinet assembly of fitting the last few screws that retained the glass screen by climbing inside to fit the nuts while #2 daughter held the screws from the outside. (My arms weren't quite long enough to do both)


The final job was installing the compressed air fitting and loading the fresh India glass bead. The first test was interesting. After about a minutes blasting I noticed that the flexible suction pipe was bending almost closed at stopping the beads. This was fixed by sliding a piece of silicon hose up the inside of the pipe to stop this happening. All was better until with a bang, the air hose to the gun blew off at the gun ! I should have checked the hose clip before I started.
Fixing this problem and continuing when a minute or so later the same hose blew off at the cabinet gland. So I went through every connection to make sure they were all ok this time. I also backed the compressor off to 90 psi for good measure !
The best thing about the new cabinet and new beads is the lack of dust – you can actually see what is going on. Maybe the old cabinet was due for a bead change long ago.......
After a quick 30 mins on the buffing wheel it was good enough for me ?(I'm not into concourse, just clean and tidy will do) so, the footrest plate came out quite nicely



A bit of hand polishing finished it off.

The next job was to try the plastic welding out on the few tabs that needed fixing. Experimenting first on an old side panel to try and get the gun heat setting correct.



The trouble was it was an old style 2kw heat gun and it kept going into thermal shutdown and not wanting to play again until it had cooled down. I will need to invest in a proper temp controlled one at some stage.

I have great success with a Selleys plastic glue product, which is available from Woolworths for around $10, It has a primer pen that is used to coat both sides of the work, before using what is the adhesive (very much like super glue – watch your fingers) and holding the parts together for around 10 secs to cure. This was really impressive on my race screen after some prick knocked it off the stand at the race track. The screen broke into about 5 large bits and this glue stuck it all together and it held up for the rest of the season – but looked a bit crap.
I tried this on the ABS instrument surround where one of the bottom tabs had broken off, Cleaned up the pieces with brake cleaner and it held on perfectly, which was good as these tabs would be a pain to get in to weld neatly.

Another part missing was the tab under the choke cover on the inner panel, so I glued two plastic M6 washers from my Pro Bolts kit over the broken part and they held too.

For the missing tab off the side panel


I cut up and old LC250 side panel which had a right angle shape that would be trimmed and welded on. It started off ok but the heat went into sulk mode again and I finished it off with a gas soldering iron ! It will do, not as neat but I can't see it and its held so far.

[FJools]

Another day !

I'm still waiting for the relay arm bearings and a reply from the guys giving me a quote for dog bones (Lust Racing) so I decided to begin putting the bike back together.
Front fairing, then make sure I got the GPS antenna in before putting the instrument cover on. Dismantled and cleaned up the seat fairing. Fitted the LH and RH Footrest mounts.
Braided brake hose for the Thunderace caliper. Cleaned up the rear master cylinder and bled the rear brake. Changed engine oil & filter.
Fitted new OEM fuel filter. Now here is something to watch for. The fitted filter was a non genuine item with larger pipe spigots. This had stretched the fuel pipe so it was too loose for the OEM filter. I replaced the section from tap to filter with new braided fuel line, but had to cut back the fuel line to the pump just enough for it to fit on the new filter.
Fuel tank on. Side panels on.
The aftermarket clip-ons I fitted would have to go as there wasn't enough rise and the master cylinders fouled the fairing. I took the original bars to the mill and opened them out to 43mm but I'm still not happy.


The top clamp fixing holes are half a hole out compared to the R6 top clamp. In fact this top clamp swap has caused more problems than anything else on the build and I should have considered just opening out the original triple clamps  to accept the R6 forks ! Its been fun though.
I ordered some of the 4D adjustable clip ons from Danmoto, mentioned on a thread elsewhere. I also ordered some more relay arm bushes from the local Yamaha dealers, which should be here quicker than the HK1816 ordered from the UK.
I also ordered some of the adjustable dog bones, so I can play around with the rear end.


All that is left to do now before I can test ride:
•   Fit Relay arm bushes and dog bones
•   Fit Exhaust system- new Delkevic Headers, original Staintune silencers.
•   Refit Battery Box & Connect
•   Fit front guard (bushes and collars ordered)
•   Fit new clip ons (not really needed for test run)

[FJ1100mjk]

It's all coming together nicely. Like others here, I look forward to your first ride report.

[FJools]

As usual its the small parts that are preventing that.

Apparently they are all in transit !

I used to used Millway Kawasaki/Causeway Yamaha that had a local on line ordering system similar to Boats.net etc.
They informed me yesterday that they are no longer franchising Yamaha so that order won't ne going anywhere.

I did fin Trooper Lu in Liverpool that has a similar system so have re ordered through them. He is the dealer I got the R6 front fork seal kit from that I mentioned earlier in the thread, so anyone in Oz looking for local OEM parts online ordering try them:

http://www.trooperlu.com.au/page/OEM-Parts-Finder

Tim suggested I add my solutions to the GPS Speedhut Speedo to his thread which I will do after posting this.

Oh I almost forgot - I also have to fit the replacement horn when it arrives, which will be a bit of a task since the fairing is back on Doh!

[FJools]

The relay arm bearings turned up, well I actually picked them up from Trooper Lu's on Thursday as I felt I needed to get out the shed for a while !

They all fitted without any dramas.
While I'm waiting for the dog bones (apparently tracking said they were in transit to my house yesterday............never turned up) I set to trying to repair the damaged chin fairing until I can find another decent one.

I posted some of this info in another link too.

The fairing was cracked in several places with one pretty big crack, and had melted badly on the back end of the LHS.



I set too first welding up the large cracked section on both sides. I supported this on the underside to prevent any distortion due to the heat and how floppy the ABS becomes during the process. This is the result of the outside. Its quite satisfying when you get the hang of it, but messy if you don't 



Still a bit more to finish when its cooled down on this side. There were a few small blister holes and edge cracks that proved difficult to get perfect. It is important to "v" the cracks to get weld penetration and debur and clean up the weld area. I used brake cleaner.

For the melted section - I cut off the crud and made a card template up from the good RHS of the fairing. I then offered this up to the LHS of the fitted fairing and marked where I had cut the crud out. This template was then used to cut a repair ABS section fron an old RD350LC side panel. You must use the same material and correct rods for welding or it won't work.



This repair section was tacked onto the fairing with the selleys plastic glue I mentioned earlier, then welded both sides, supported at the back, allowing the parts to cool down in between.


The result was cleaned up and sanded flat and trial fitted. A corresponding mounting hole was machined using a step cutter.



As this was not going to win any concourse prizes, I filled the imperfections with bog, sanded and primed, after masking off the decals. The gave it two coats of Nissan metallic silver/gold I had from my old 4WD Nissan Safari and two clear coats. The colour match is close but a couple of shades on the silver side of the original paint.



Not a bad bodge job. There was one crack on the edge in the front V that I didn't do a good job on as it opened again under the stress of fitting to the bike. I can live with that and its 500% better than when I started - I was going to throw it in the skip.

I machined up some stand off spacers to allow the rear of the fairing to clear the exhaust shield on the new Delkevic collector box too.

Now, where can I get some original style decals from ?

[FJmonkey]

Now, where can I get some original style decals from ?

We have a decal maker here... Will the decal maker please stand up!

[ribbert]

Now, where can I get some original style decals from ?

We have a decal maker here... Will the decal maker please stand up!

"Jeff308" makes them.

Noel

[FJools]

Update:

Danmoto riser clip-ons fitted,

98mm Lust Racing Dog bones fitted,

Forks dropped through 10mm to increase front height.

Delkevic headers and collector removed as incompatible with my Staintune silencers. I could buy some Delkevic silencers in the future but these mods were all about keeping the cost down using parts I had on the shelf.

So:

Today, after 4 hours polishing up the original Staintune headers & collectors, I refitted the exhaust.








It went on like a glove, no leaks no chain issues so took her for her first proper post mod spin around the block.

Its not the same bike (obviously) light to steer and flick around.

I need to go further but I wanted to stick it on the bench and check it all over again first. The chain seems to have a tight spot so have ordered a replacement HD XW type as I don't want to stuff up the new sprockets.

Also not sure if the FJ front master cylinder is compatable with the blue spots - I have new pads to put in first, but I may have to use the R6 master cylinder which will upset the aesthetics slightly.

Also the GPS speedo works a dream.

If I wasn't piucking up a TZ250 V Twin tomorrow to repair for a mate, I would be out to put some real Kms on it