Well last weekend saw us make a brief trip back to the UK to visit family and also so I could pick up some bits that were waiting for me from Graeme France and Rick Oliver, amongst others.
New rubber on both my project bike wheels and the OEM ones for the Rothmans (ready for Cadwell in June
), HRC mapped Ignitech ECU, fancy carbs, new Arashi discs, Rick O GSXR Generator housing, Samsco hoses and clips, new throttle cables etc etc. Ignore the straight 30 oil, that’s for the old bike that came back with me this time.
We got back on Monday and I had enough sense to book an extra day off work on the Tuesday. With the Mrs back in work I got to spend a full day in the garage for the first time in ages to getting things moving forward again. I decided that the first thing to do was to turn the current “frame” into a rolling chassis. If nothing else at least that would mean I could move it out and give the garage a much needed clean/tidy.
New discs fitted to the wheels, fitted to the forks and all bolts torqued and wire locked.
Rear hub assembly all lubed up and rear wheel fitted.
Hub nut and wheel nut still need final torque loading as I had nothing to pull against, so that will have to wait until the brakes are working, but at least I now had a rolling chassis.
Having taken the bike outside and given the garage a much needed tidy up and re-organise, it was time to take it back in and refit the engine. This is not the easiest job by yourself but with some blankets and pieces of wood you can get the engine into a position where you can get the long rear mounting bolt through. Once you have that done you can pivot the engine up and hold it in place with one of the other mounting bolts before fitting all the others. Note: I thought I had been clever refitting all the cooling components (water pump, thermostat etc) whilst the engine was on the bench, only to find the thermostat gets in the way when trying to fit the engine. Dohh!
Thermostat off, engine in and thermostat refitted.
I got as far as fitting the GSXR flywheel/generator and Ricks very nice bespoke cover
, many of the various brackets that had come of and some of the new Samsco hoses before time ran out on me for the day.
Back on track and making good progress again