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Gebruiker

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About Gebruiker

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    Factory Team Rider

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  • Location
    Connecticut, USA and the Netherlands
  • In My Garage:
    1992 VFR
    1993 CBR1000

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  1. Gebruiker
    This is from the Haynes manual. Blue black apparently goes to the fuel pump on the 750F J-K models for the UK. I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to do, but I hope that helps.
  2. Gebruiker
    I had to look those up. High tech performance upgrades of dubious value. 😉 (...translation: still more stuff I can't afford...) With all the cool modifications out there, I sometimes feel like I must be missing out. And yet, my bike hasn't let me down yet. It runs and stops and handles fine. One of these days I'll have to get a discerning VFR rider to take the thing around the block to see if there are any issues I'm completely oblivious to. I feel the same when I order a bottle of wine. If it doesn't make me cough, I figure it's good enough... I should take some classes.
  3. Gebruiker
    You don't know what happened to it? That's disconcerting... 😉 Good picture of a similar hugger though. Thanks! I checked the Harris and Durbahn and Pyramid Plastics websites. Harris and Durbahn don’t seem to have anything so interesting for me these days. Pyramid still sells huggers for the 750s. https://pyramid-plastics.co.uk/ They appear to be about like the ones I'd found over here in the USA for about the same price. Anyway, since you don’t know what happened to your own FP hugger, I’m guessing it may not have been a complete success. I have this idea that any not perfectly rigid mount could allow the hugger to flex at speed into the spinning tire which, you know, would be bad. There are a few possibilities on Amazon. Not just the Puigs for $25. This one for a BMW caught my eye. $35. It looks like the attachment frame is aluminum. I like that. Strong enough to hold the hugger in place without flexing or cracking. The mounting holes would not be in the right place for a VFR. I’d have to fashion a secondary aluminum adapter of some kind to mate with the swing arm. The thing about any of these possibilities is I have to actually buy the hugger first, then try to adapt it. (re. comment by Dutchy, above) And I'm still smarting about that generic switch pod set. 😉 I’ll keep thinking on it... BTW, in your picture there’s a cool aluminum rod attached to the swing arm. Is that your own external reinforcement for the hugger mount? Brake rod? Something else? Also, tucked up under the rear fender you have some golden...things. Left and right. I don't have anything similarly tucked in there on my bike. Is that something I should be worried about?
  4. Gebruiker
    Mirror extenders, part 2 Well, they work I guess. But they don’t blend in all that well. I’m thinking the proper extenders may be slightly concave on the sides for better fit. The windscreen mount itself is not molded flat. I’ll think some more. Hugger I’ve been thinking an inner mudguard might be a good idea for the back wheel too, to keep the swing arm and shock a little cleaner from road grime. There are enough different raw materials I might use to make one up. A piece of rubber car mat or stair tread would probably do. But maybe also flexible plastic material of a certain grade…a bit of old trash bin or storage box. The four-year-old next door keeps leaving her sled out in the yard and I’ve got my eye on that too. I’m tempted to cut a hugger shaped chunk out of it when nobody’s lookin. That’d teach the little monster to leave her stuff layin around. 😛 I’d do it too, but the sled is pink. A pink hugger? Stupid kid. A better idea might be an old section of motocross fender. The right sample could have the proper profile shape to begin with and even the right diameter curve. It would be tough and flexible too. I’ve looked at the back wheel of my bike. There is no obvious way to bolt any sort of mudguard in there. If I was just to use a rubber flap, then I could drill a couple screws into the forward part of the inner fender and let it hang down. That would be functional but not very elegant. I’m not coming up with anything else just yet. The single sided swing arm isn’t a great design for random attachment points. Most production designs appear to incorporate the chain guard in a hugger, probably necessary for mounting purposes. That seems a good idea and they look terrific. Reviews are usually less than terrific. Lots of folks have issues with their aftermarket huggers. Not just VFR folks. They don’t fit easily; reinforcement brackets are required; the material is too thin. I’ve found just one current source for ready made gen3 hugger. Nicecycle. I think they’re Powerbronze huggers. https://www.nicecycle.com/Honda-Rear-Tire-Hugger-p/pb606.htm I can’t even find a decent photograph of any hugger on a gen3 vfr. You can just barely spot one here on this white bike. I don’t have the source link: Puig has a few non-VFR huggers on Amazon for just $25... That seems a fair price for a gob of plastic designed for a bike I don’t own. I couldn’t predict if one of these would be in any way adaptable. In spite of my less-than-stellar track record for these kinds of money saving projects, I’m tempted to get one to play with. Another possibility would be to pick up a junk gen3 chain guard and then try to attach some kind of inner fender through some reinforcement and mods. Given the likelihood of making a mess, I wouldn’t want to start hacking away at my stock chain guard. I'll keep it all in the back of my head. What was it again, the thing Descartes says? 🙂
  5. Gebruiker
    Descartes? Descartes? I don’t recall seeing his user name in here. Did he even ride a VFR? 😉 Mirror Extenders Not to be discouraged Leon, I’ve already moved on to another task. I’d been wanting mirror extenders. That’s easy. I have a proper set on the CBR. These: They're plastic. The kind of bits that would be suitable for 3D printing. They make them in aluminum too. Back in the day, here on VFRd, Anik and Lobster made some acrylic extenders. Anik put LEDs in his. https://www.vfrdiscussion.com/index.php?/forums/topic/65080-acrylic-mirror-extenders-with-leds/&tab=comments#comment-763734 https://www.vfrdiscussion.com/index.php?/gallery/album/3565-mirror-extenders/ The cheapest I’ve seen any for sale is about $30. You’d think Honda would’ve cottoned on to the market for these things. Maybe even made their mirror stalks an inch longer? Anyway, after reading Lobster and Anik, and having recently most likely thrown away $10 on my switch set, I was inspired to make my own extenders. I didn’t have any acrylic laying around, but I found a scrap of meranti wood. That might work. I already have a saw and a sander and a drill… so I traced a template... The meranti was about 0.75 in. wide so I glued two bits together for 1.5 inch extensions. (I bolted them together just for the sanding process, so they'd be about the same size and shape) A lick of black paint. This is them drying in my dedicated paint booth… A better finish might be plastidip…of which I have none sitting around…or maybe a section of bicycle inner tube, stretched around the edges? My extenders, being wood, may not have an indefinite life span. I don’t much ride in the rain or snow if I can help it, or even leave the bike for long stretches parked in the sun, so they should weather okay for a while, assuming they do the job in the first place. I can’t think of any reason they shouldn’t work. Splinter hazard? Termites? I'll have to pick up some long bolts at the hardware store. Stay tuned.
  6. Gebruiker
    Switch Pod Update Aw hell. I can't use the generic pod after all. I dug out the VFR from the back of the garage to have a look at the pod connector. But then I noticed the choke is integral to the Honda OEM pod. Bleah. Wish I'd realized that before springing the ten bucks. On the other hand, I also noticed that Honda made a pop out pass switch tab for us where the pass switch should go... So all is not necessarily lost. It still might be possible to surgically remove the pass switch from my generic pod and transfer just that trigger to the oem pod. I know. Not very likely. But it might be worth a look inside.
  7. Gebruiker
    Currently available from Ebay these days. Switch pods for $10. https://www.ebay.com/itm/223789555759 They seem to be of reasonable quality although I have not tried them out yet so I'm not recommending them, only pointing them out. They're generics so I think they'll fit any model or year of the VFR. The set I received came with 9 pin connectors but it looks like you might also end up with random bullet connectors. The seller doesn't promise which version you'll get. IMPORTANT: Note the port side pod does not contain a choke lever. If you have a manual choke like I do, then it ain't gonna be an easy swap over...
  8. Gebruiker
    Grum, Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I’d been thinking the two clutch wires were only outputs…not something that passed the signal from the clutch through the switch pod wires and on down the line. Your explanation makes perfect sense. And the yellow bullet does have a mate on the other Ebay switch pod. There will have to be something on the OEM pod too if it is the headlamp interrupt during starting. That makes sense too. Yup. Thanks. As you suggest, I’ll have to slug through the whole thing with my ohm meter. I’d made a couple passes already but I’m not finding obvious connections. No worries. It would be nice if the Ebay switch pods came with schematics… I’d also vaguely hoped I could just scavange the upper section of that one EBay pod for mating with the lower OEM pod. The generic upper half has the light switch and the pass switch. Remember the pass switch is all I wanted in the first place. And I’d also thought the pass switch could be completely internal at the pod. I can't think of a reason for that circuit to travel out of the pod if it only jumps the highbeam. Easy. But it looks to me like it might get wired separately in the entire circuit. I’ll puzzle over it a while. 🙂 (If I could cut the top half of the pod free, I might be able to wire just that part to the bottom half of the OEM pod I have on the bike. I wonder if that would be the easiest thing to do.) Meanwhile, the switch deal is still on Ebay. Here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/223789555759 I’ll make an entry in the bargain finder section in case somebody else might like a set. I’m relatively sure they’d fit pretty much every VFR model and year. On more important matters, we here in the States are well aware of the catastrophic fires in your part of the world these days. There’s not a whole lot we can do right now except to send you positive vibes. But that much at least we’re doing. Keep your head down.
  9. Gebruiker
    Switch Pods In another dangerous and weak moment I got something else from Ebay. A switch set. Less than $10, shipping included. From China. This is what they sent: Back in the day, Honda apparently decided that the American VFR would have its own switch set. Maybe because the engineers decided Americans were too dumb to know how to turn on their own lights. So all our bikes run with lights on all the time. There’s no off switch. I never had a problem with that. I am not offended that I have no freedom of choice here. As a rider in Connecticut, I remain free not to wear my helmet if somebody from Honda still wants to call me dumb. 😛 https://www.iihs.org/topics/motorcycles#helmet-laws Anyway, those light switches are different in the USA than those for everybody else on the planet. In its wisdom, Honda also decided not to give us a passing switch. That’s the little spring trigger on the left switch pod that flashes the highbeams. This is a feature I like. I have it on the CBR and I’ve been missing it some on this bike. So it’s been in the back of my mind to snag a junk switch if I stumbled onto one in Holland. Up until now, I hadn’t. And then the Chinese put these on Ebay. Jeez Louise, $10 for both switch pods, left and right? How can you go wrong? Uh huh... The set is of reasonable quality. Like in the picture. Definitely not OEM quality, but they feel solid enough. Switching itself feels um, robust? The wiring seems perfectly adequate. I have no plan to swap over both pods. I only wanted the flash-to-pass switch, so the starter/lights/kill switch pod will not be changed. Since they are generic switch pods, I have to check the wiring. For once, I found the Haynes service manual better than my official Honda manual. Haynes gives both wiring diagrams, US and ROW, and in color. Lotsa wires. For the new switch set, I also have 9 wires in a 9 pin spade connector. I think it’s 2.8 mm. I checked http://cycleterminal.com/ for comparison. I haven’t yet checked on the bike, so I don’t know what size plug-in I need. Is it 9 pin, 2.8mm? Boy, that’d be handy! If not, then I’ll have to find the proper connector someplace and plug the new generic wires into that. No way I’ll cannibalize my current OEM switch set, even if I didn’t have a plan to use it again. Neither service manual tells me what the connector specs are. Besides the 9 wires in the spade connector, my new switch pod came with an extra external yellow wire with a bullet terminal and twin black weatherproof double bullet connectors for…something. That gives me 12 wires total. Haynes shows 9 wires needed for ROW. I don’t see why the clutch switch would run through the pod. What would be the point? But I’ll check on that too. That’d bring me up to 11 wires. Ya know, all I want is the damn passing trigger. This is getting complicated. For the US spec wiring, Haynes shows 13 wires all together. So…more wires than ROW for fewer switches. Um, I only got 12 wires from China. Dang. Still with me? I tried tracing out all the wires from the new Ebay switch. So far, I come up with this... For the lights, it’s five wires: dark blue, white, black, yellow/white and yellow (bullet). The flash circuit is black and yellow/white. And then there are all the others. Five wires for the turn signals and horn and maybe clutch switch: Orange, green, light blue, green/red and gray. Plus the two black weatherproof wires. (As a random question: Why would the external bullet yellow wire be in there? No clue.) As you can see above, according to Haynes, the US bike wires should be colored: Highbeam: Dark blue, blue/white and white. (3 wires) Horn: Green, green/white (2 wires) Turn signal: Gray, light blue, orange, brown/white, light blue/white, orange/white. (6 wires) And clutch: Black and black. (2 wires…maybe those external wires) Bear in mind the Honda color code is probably not in any way associated with the Chinese one. Why make things easy? Now wait. I’m not finished. If I go to the Haynes ROW wiring diagram, then I get this: Highbeam: Blue/white, blue, white (3 wires) Flash switch: Blue, white/green (2 wires) Horn: Green, white/green (2 wires) Turn signal: Gray, light blue, orange (3 wires) Clutch: Green/orange, green/white* (2 wires) (* not to be confused with the white/green wire of the flasher and horn) If you’re counting, that adds up to 12 wires, but I said the ROW bike only has 9 or possibly 11. That’s because the blue and white/green wires seem to be sistered internally. That’s where I am so far. Of course, I haven’t actually done anything constructive. As I’ve yet to learn from any of my other experiences in here, or in life, things tend to turn out more complicated than I anticipate. I chalk this up to my eternal optimism. 🙂 But for now I will also continue to casually look for a junk $5 OEM ROW switch pod…with pass trigger.
  10. Gebruiker
    Fake RAM Mount Update I'd been playing with a fake RAM mount since last summer. (re: 23 July, 6 August). My homemade Erlenmeyer flask stopper stem mount wasn't great. Now I've found another odd bit that fits perfectly and so should do the job right. It's a leftover leg adjustment from a kitchen cabinet. One of these things: Since I stumbled onto this one in a junk drawer, I don't know exactly who sold it. I'm guessing Ikea. Of course, they come with your cabinets. But I'm thinking they must be generally available. Either that or I have a wonky cabinet somewhere... It attaches to the ball mount with just a bolt. And this is it on the bike with my voltage meter. It's high enough to be out of the way of the key. Low enough not to block the gauges. I think I can also spin it 180 degrees so it sits just above the tank. I forgot to check that clearance.
  11. Gebruiker
    Voltage update It was warmish today here in Connecticut. Almost 50F (9C) so I looked at the bike. It hasn't been in use for over three months while I've been away, and I hadn't done anything special to prepare it for winter storage. Just filled the gas tank, added some stabilizer and plugged in the charger. Did it start? Of course it started. It's a Honda. But it did take a little more cranking than usual, and it didn't sound as smooth as I recall. Maybe my imagination. I also checked the voltages while it ran. Here's one for you: they're improved. All by themselves. 13.76 at idle. 13.86 at 2000rpm and 14.7 at 5000. That's up from the 12.7-13.6 I was getting last summer. (See entries this thread, 5 February and 15 July this year) Ya gotta love Honda. They even heal themselves if you just leave them alone 🙂 I didn't go for a spin. Roads are messy with snow melt and ice too.
  12. Gebruiker
    Check. I won't actually put it on the Classifieds page, this not being a high demand item. But I'll keep my eyes open for that desperate and hopeful gen4 owner in search of just this piece. 🙂
  13. Gebruiker
    Ohhhhhhhh. There it is. Um, I might find a use for it, but this isn't quite the same design on the earlier bikes.... Disconcertingly, my bike does have a gap under the shield there, above the meters. Just one more thing. An apparent misalignment from before my time...Or maybe I'm missing number 27. It doesn't seem to pose any problems, but that's the way it is. Number 8 might fill the gap... When I'm in there installing the air guide, I'll take another look. (Gap here... There doesn't seem to be a way to adjust that, so I'm thinking the support bracket might be squeezing the glare shield in a bit.) In any event, I sure won't throw anything away. I can bring the bit back to you, or hang on to it for that time when somebody in here needs just that piece. 🙂
  14. Gebruiker
    Air Guide I was advised I was missing something called an Air Guide (see post 29 August, above) for under the headlight valence. Happily, one was up for grabs! In Holland! I picked it up and brought it back to the States. Security didn't even question me at the airport... I guess it doesn't look very dangerous. I labeled it properly, as you can see, and I'll patch it so that it will be a proud new part of the bike. However it being Christmas time here, and cold in the garage, I don't anticipate installing it just yet. Thankyouverymuch Leon. Your cosmic energy will continue to travel around New England now. Leon also gave me a second bit...unlabeled in the picture. Mmmmmm. It looks like another air guide but I'm not exactly sure how or where to to install that one. There's no part number on it. I'll think about it. It might fit inside the instrument panel. Tool kit I also finally found a tool kit cheap. Yay. The bag is in rough shape. The screwdriver handle is missing. Otherwise it's just fine. All I really really wanted was the chain adjusting tool. I've hardly ever used these kits except for the specialty tools. But they're always good to have along of course. Now that I have it, I'm pretty sure I'll never need it at the side of the road. Knock on wood. 🙂
  15. Gebruiker
    I'll have to take a look at this in the local automart. From your pictures, it looks like you're cracks and fractures are in the same places as mine...like around the blinkers. So I'll guess the design was notorious for weakness in certain spots. Thanks for writing up your solution.
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