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Hi VFRD folks, long time no post, you probably might remember me from such post as, "What did you do to your VFR Today?", the "VFRD Golden State Rides", the numerous "Palomar-Borrego Springs" and "Malibu Ride" posts and probably the most watched, "New 5th/6th/8th gen performance header now in production in USA post". Well, sorry for the lack of anything substantial or interesting in such a long time but somehow life got in the way of a lot of things, fun rides being part of them. So what's being going on during this hiatus, well apart from the pandemic? Really not much, at least in terms of rides go. I sort of took a break from riding public roads in favor of doing some track time. I was able to get onboard with the California Superbike School's corner working group. In exchange of my time monitoring and reporting on student riders, I got a load of track time as compensation, how cool is that? Unfortunately, on my last session with them, 6/2020, I ended up crashing my 5 Gen at about 100MPH! Last look at my speedometer coming out of turn 9, I saw 110MPH, then saw the ground, the sky, the ground, the sky, the ground, the sky...you get the idea. Ended up with some bruising, tore up gear, a dislocated pinky and two fractured vertebrae (Ouch!) All in all, it was more detrimental to my bike than me but the cost of Dr. visits still seems to be lingering on but the bike and I are all healed up and doing well now. Since it took a bit of time to heal and restore the bike, I decided to just hold off the fun riding and work on all three of my bikes. The 5 Gen was first, then my Ducati 900SS/SP. The latter was kind of leaking oil out of the cylinder heads, so a top end rebuild was in order. That went well and even had a few friends come over and let a hand, if not a beer. So she's now looking and riding as good as ever. Then, had to address the real issue, my 6 Gen. She has given me many miles, a little over 106k to be more precise but she was doing something a bit more sinister than the Duc. She was losing coolant and not in the typical way of leaving some here and there any time she was parked, she was burning it! Yeah, somehow, there was coolant disappearing and no trace of it being expelled externally. So, decision time, rebuild like I did the Duc or just swap in another motor that doesn't have a leak???? Well, decision was made, find a 5 Gen engine and put that in instead of a 6 Gen motor...Hmm, good idea. Why this instead of another 6 Gen motor. Well considering it was time to do a rebuild of the top end, I also figured it was getting near time to also change out the cam chains, as the number of miles would suggest they were getting long in the tooth and there is only so much the tensioner would take up as slack. No such issue with a 5 Gen motor, got to love those gear driven cams! Well, I was lucky and found a gentleman on a Facebook forum looking for someone who wanted to buy a 5 Gen. Me, me, me, I PM'd him and spoke with him over the phone. Turns out he was in Northern California only a few hours’ drive for me, so deal was made. I was able to secure my friends van and he and I drove up to a little town just outside Stockton, where met up, exchanged money for vehicle and away home we went. Since I was mainly in it for the engine and had a few friends who wanted or needed some 5 Gen parts, I was able to extract the engine and lose some of the extra bits to those in need. So, took some time, figured out what parts and pieces I was going to need from Honda, like O-rings, gaskets, seals, etc. and that's where this pandemic really intervened! Took a long time to get some parts and even some orders got cancelled because the dealer only holds the order for so long and will cancel the order if they don't get the parts in that time frame. Oh well, eventually all the stuff I ordered came in but took a lot longer than I was expecting. So what was the plan entirely, remove the 6 Gen engine, replace with 5 Gen engine and finally install our infamous "WyLD" headers! Along with that, replace some seals and bearings that probably, if not for grins, should be refreshed with new. So anytime I had no family or work obligations I went at it. Took my time with this beauty as she is my main "Squeeze", my commuter, tourer and yes, even my track lady once in a while, so that's what I did. So after several months and many hours, I completed my mission. A beauty who not only looks lovely but runs very well and not only has a lovely voice but a little whine to go along with it! Standby there will be more to come...

As we all know, when things go too smoothly, there has to be something we forgot or missed, right? Right! Seems that rather than terminate the VTEC spool valve, I just removed it. Well, that little oversight will trigger the FI light to stay on. Well, a call to fellow VFRD member Christian, he pointed out what he did so, I had to do some slight disassembly and get that spool back in and mount it somewhere. Yep, somethings missing... ...This! OK, now let's get this more put together...

ust like "missing" a step, what mechanical project be complete without a minor mishap with tools? Well, not to miss out on that opportunity, I decided to drop my SSSA wheel stand onto my middle finger when I was trying to move it out of the way. Well, with that out of the way I had only a few more things to do, one was get my 2 Bros mid-pipe end expanded to be able to fit the "WyLD" headers. Took it over to a local muffler shop, asked the guy down in the work pit if this was something he could do and how much. He said "Do you have it with you?", "Yep", "Give it here, I'll do it right now". "Cool, how much?". "Nothing, it'll only take me a few minutes". I ended up handing him the last $10 I had in my wallet and went home with the modified mid-pipe. For some reason can't find the video of her running, so I'll have to recapture that and post it later. Thanks for following along. Cheers!

With the original motor removed and all of the coolant hoses put on the replacement motor, I went to work getting that installed and tightened up.

So yeah, I did a thing, that was put a 5 Gen engine into my 6 Gen frame. For the most part, I was really loving my 6 Gen, got it setup for my comfort and was really enjoying how it was running. Well, up to a point, seems that I had a coolant leak and it wasn't external but rather internal and after every ride, mostly commuting at this point, I'd be low on coolant. After several searches for where the coolant was leaking from, it was determined, it was leaking into the combustion chamber! Yeah, not cool, no pun intended. So what to do, repair the motor? Replace the motor? Sell her and get a new one? Well, as luck would have it, someone on a Facebook forum was looking for a buyer of his 5 Gen. His son bought it and was going the "stunter" route when dad stepped in and said we are either going to build this right and for normal use or we're selling it. Well, looks like the latter ended up being the choice. I reached out to him and had a couple of conversations, mostly to get a read on him and the situation and I felt comfortable with both so agreed to buy it from him. Luck would have it he was in California too, albeit a few hours North of me, but no out of state travel or concerns (California plated). Anyway, got my friend to help me go pick it up using his van and company to go grab it. All went well, got up early, hit the road, stopped for breakfast, met the seller, stopped for lunch and home just after dinner time. I think we might have stopped for dinner too, don't remember though. One of the first things I did after I got the bike home was throw it on my Abba Sky Lift and did an assessment of what I got. One of the first things was to inspect the stator. That turned out to be almost brand new! Then I took compression readings of all 4 cylinders, again good to go there too. Then I pretty much stripped it down to the motor.

Thanks. When I started "barrel rolling" I thought, "Oh man, this is it, I'm gonna be hurting for a while!" When my left hand hit the ground and I felt the finger dislocate, I immediately grabbed both shoulders with the opposite hands and I came to a slow roll. I thought for sure broken bones and the like. Nope, not as bad as I thought. Small fractures of vertebrae and dislocated pinky, I'll take that any day of the week, just no broken bones, with all of my off-road riding crashes I went through, I should have been in cast many times. My dad use to tell me he thought I was born under a lucky cloud, have to say, based on several events in my life, I started to think he was right. I definitely don't take my luck for granted though, some folks just get lucky. Yeah, that Duc is one of my favorites, glad I bought it when I did. I've had so many riders who came up to me when at rider hang outs offer me cash on the spot! (Well practically) definitely had a few over zealous fans pester me even after I said no more than a few times.

Thanks. As far as the crash. The track was "Streets of Willow", which at the time was still in OK shape, they have since repaved it but have not been on it as of yet. The turn I was coming out of was the "bowl" a fast right hand curve which takes you to a little chicane. Two things that were both my fault, one, I didn't do a proper warm up lap, so cold tires! The other is that little chicane, if not on the middle part of the track, can be really dusty near the edges. I came a little too close to those dusty edges before I started my lean to the left, touched the front brake to do my trail braking and viola! cold tires, meet dusty track, meet braking...BOOM! instant crash. The funny part, if you can call it funny. When I got up, the guy that I was following had also gone down but at a later part of track, so when one of the other riders came up to me said "Hey, are you alright? Steve went down too. Both you guys crashed" I immediately thought "OK, so it wasn't just me" but later found out he low sided on a turn just on the other side of where I crashed. He mentioned almost the same thing as me, he went to trail brake and down he went. Sometimes the wind is really bad at Willow and can often make the track very "dirty" so caution needs to be taken. This is one of our jobs while corner working reporting sections of the track we feel are getting "sketchy" and also to report when students go down. Another. maybe not so funny thing. When they asked if I wanted the medics to come by and check me out I said yes. Figured just to be safe as adrenaline can often mask injuries you might have and don't notice. The one thing for sure I knew I had, was my dislocated left pinky. I initially thought it was broken but realized it was only dislocated. I popped it back together and then made my hand into a fist and it popped back out. When the medics came over, I asked them if they could reset my pinky, the responded with "That's out of our scope. The best we can do is put a splint on it or tape it to your other finger, otherwise you'll have to be driven to the hospital". I said, that's not going to happen (I really wasn't feeling too bad this point) so I popped it back into place, put my hand up to them and said "Tape it!". This is how I ended up at the end of the day.

With my Arai helmets 5+ years old now and the graphics no great match with the 1975 MV, i got me a "proper" lid Feeling blue is not all bad....

After doing some more stripping and investigating, I was surprised to find a rather new and "full sized" K&N air filter. Once the 5 Gen engine was out and all the other parts and pieces set aside, I put the 6 Gen onto the Abba stand and got to work there too. Started by draining the fluids and removing vital bits to be reused, like the throttle bodies and coolant hoses.

6 Gen ECU, Injectors and coil on plug. The only thing I have that is 5 Gen is the motor, everything else is all 6 Gen. Thanks for the Ducati compliment. I bought that brand new in 1995 and I plan on keeping it until I can ride no more. 🙂

Fantastic! I think many people have dreamed of a 5th gen mill in a 6th gen chassis. I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing the final results! 🙂 And the Ducati looks amazing. As sleek and sexy as their newer sportbikes are, the older ones just have more character. Maybe call it panache. Very sorry to hear about the crash and the damage to your 5th gen, but glad you were generally okay. And yeah, medical bills suck. I have excellent health insurance, but even with that a 3-day hospital stay and minor surgery last November has been expensive.

It is a small world...... I put a friend in touch with a guy in Italy (Umberto) that has loads of parts for classic Mv's, via another friend of mine. To check for a side engine casing for a particualr 175. Which the guy had. With my friend retired (he is 80), he and a pal rode to Italy to pick it up and talk classic bikes... so in addition to the side case, he agreed with Umberto he would build him a 175 Disco Volante... 🙂 I'd mentioned that I was -w/o luck- looking for a front fairing stay for my Ipotesi. From the 1,991 Ipostesi's build, only maybe 75 were sold with a full fairing. Making the stays even more rocking horse shittery 🙂 Next I knew he'd dug one up that needed some TLC and we'd settled on a price. Today Umberto came back saying he'd replicate the OEM and I was given the choice. No contest, give me the "replica"!!!