Darth Bling

Thanks for the update Keith!

I was actually just thinking about Rich a few days ago. Looks like I'm going to have to do a Mary's Peak ride this summer.

Has anyone put blackbird shock into VFR800 vtec? If yes any pictures / info would be greatly appreciated.

There's no real performance advantage to the 1100XX shock. It's a tad longer at 320mm, so that would be nice. Besides that, you would need to upgrade the valving in the XX shock at minimum in order to see any improvement.

Since the 6th gens use a 315mm long shock you are kind of out of luck when it comes to options.

I put a blackbird shock on my 6th Gen and it's was pretty much the way Jamie describes it.

It was nice that it was a tad longer, and it was nice that the spring was a tad bit stiffer. Otherwise, it was the same POS crap shock that the OEM 6th Gen has.

I eventually upgraded to a full Elka shock, so I sold the shock to Silver788. He found that the shock was a nice improvement for his 5th Gen since the Blackbird shock with its stiffer spring supports his weight better than the stock VFR shock.

Awesome mod. .....the so called air guard is a safety guard to the pinch point of the chain / sprocket meeting. With the direction of rotation, the chain will pull what ever is near into it (road debris, foot, or loose clothing). Its really critical on dirt bikes to keep sticks and rocks away which would lock up the rear wheel......on a road bike...it looks sucky....but...it has a job... Just my 2 cents.

:comp13:

he's got signals in his mirrors

Tim knows that. He's just trying to be funny. Try harder next time, Tim... :dry:

Ha ha ha, that's funny stuff right there!

BTW, the bike looks good Loni!

how long of a ride from Seattle is it and what is the best route to take?

Philomath, OR is 95 miles from the WA/OR border I-5. Mary's Peak is another 20 miles past Philomath.

If you're trying to make good time, I'd suggest slabbing it down I-5 from Seattle.

My foot rides on the rear brake lever while I'm on the peg of my '06. I would like to lower it a bit. I want to be sure not to f up the operation of the brake light while at it. Can anyone be specific about to to accomplish this?

Thanks,

Gunzer

You should be cruising on the balls of your feet. You should not have your heels on the pegs. There isnt really an adjustment for the brake pedal. You could adjust the master cylinder and brake switch but you would just be compensating for poor foot placement.

I have big feet as well.

Actually, there's quite of bit of adjustment in the rear brake pedal. Many of us who've gone with lower foot pegs (Buell or BLS blocks) have had to lower the pedal. :idea3:

Gunzer, check out these post for instructions on how to adjust your brake pedal. http://www.vfrdiscussion.com/forum/index.p...mp;#entry215329

<sarcasim>That's news to me about cruising on the balls of my feet. Guess I've been doing it wrong for the last 40k miles. </sarcasim>

Seriously though, he can put his foot anywhere he wants if he just out cruising. If he's out in the twisties, then yes, definitely get those feet up! :blink:

I will see you at the cafe at for lunch.

Portlanders, we should probably leave around 9:15 if we want to get there in time for lunch at 11:00.

Thoughts?

Triple Clamp Assy 072108.jpg

Yeah, you could of at least picked up the place before you took pictures of your filthy floor... :blink:

Great stuff, I'll be putting this tool together this weekend. Is there a full writeup on the disassembly of airbox, or is the service manual good enough? Should the tank be taken off entierly?

Regards,

Bruckner

There's no need to remove the tank completely. Just have to prop it up.

Taking the air box off the bike is pretty straight-forward. The only hard part is getting the MAP sensor unpluged underneath the airbox.

...Registering it should be ok, but I’ll have to have someone make sure they see it doesn’t have an exhaust/was converted to electric so I can be excluded from DEQ. ...

Motorcycle are excempt from DEQ testing in the Oregon. The only reason you would need to take a bike down to a DEQ testing center is to get the VIN inspected, but you can have that done at the DMV when you're getting plates for it.

Not sure if Jeff is a member here or not, we have several Jeff(.......) usernames on file, but I remember him from the "Big List".

Anyhow, here be the link with instructions:

http://motorhead.stanford.edu/unifilter.html

Cool. Pictural insturctions are the best. :warranty:

I do wonder though why he removed the metal screen just to reinstall it later. I'd probably just skip that step and leave the metal screen in place.

I may have to do something similar to this soon.

Kuryakin makse a nice looking voltmeter: http://www.kuryakyn.com/products.asp?bn=harley&ci=2695

Some pics of it installed on my bike:

In has a light sensor built, so it brighter in the daylight but dims enough at night not to blind you.

How about Magnesium???

Ha ha ha. I was just over at Tim's place this evening visiting and I made some off hand comment that he should machine the clamps out of magnesium.

...I'm tentatively calling this a success.

So wiring wise - was it a snip it and reverse it job?

MD

No. All Jes did was replace the radiator fan with one from the VTR. The wiring stays the same.

Member JoeW on the forum can get you Honda parts. His prices are just as good as Service Honda's... FWIW

Did anybody answer the guy who asked: "Why not simply remove the stock fan from the stock fan motor, turn only the blade OVER so it pushes OUT rather than sucks IN, and reinstall the now-inverted blade back onto the stock fan motor?"?

If so, I missed it.

That wouldn't work. If you flip the fan over, the blades are still at the same angle and will continue to push air into the engine compartment. All you would accomplish is making the fan less efficient, which may actually be a good thing especially at low speeds... :rolleyes:

I was, we hit 85 here this week and the VFR started getting mighty toasty in stop and go traffic. I have bitched before about the stupidity of Honda's puller fan design on the left side rad....

DSCN1192.jpg

...IMO, this is how Honda should have done it all along.

Excellent post Jes. I'm going to have to have to perform this swap myself. :fing02:

I've found that the VFR's cooling system works very well when you're stopped. But, if you're riding around between 10-20 mph, the radiator fan loses all of its efficiency since it has to push against the wind. But, once you get up to highway speeds, the wind easily overpowers the fan and the bike cools down.

When I was in Billings, MT last summer, I was putting around town at about 15 mph. It was about 95°F out and I was currently running water with waterwetter (good stuff!). Well, my bike overheated, bad. I was seeing temperatures over 250°F and my VFR was puking radiator fluid everywhere. When I got on the interstate to head back to my hotel room, the temperature of the bike was hovering around 238°F as I was running an easy 85 mph. I refilled the bike later than night after it cooled down and i had lost 1/2 of my radiator fluid. There were a bunch of Goldwings there too and their bike's have the same stupid radiator setup that the VFR has too, and they were all having overheating problems just like me. Stupid Honda....

Nice work Bailey! :thumbsup:

The only thing I have to add is this: the longer 3.5" filters are a lot easier to install on the 6th gen if you've removed the evap canister.

I need help w/ spring specs for a 929 shock. I want to incease the rate by 20% like I did on the forks. Orig rate is 15.3, so the 19.36 seems like the right one. What are the dims of the spring (length and ID)? Then how do I make senso of the chart to come up w/ the part #?

Across the top of the chart is spring leignth, I think the F4i shock uses a 7" spring so the 1095- would be the length you need (7.1"). Ohlins mostly uses Neuton Meters, which is real close to kg but not exact.

Call Ohlins USA at 828-692-4525

and order a 1095-79/190 if in fact the F4i uses a 7" spring.

That's a 7.1"x 2.250" x 1085lb spring! :thumbsup:

NM to KG = nm divided 9.845(there abouts)= kg

kg to lbs = kg x 56.1= lbs

Looks like nm to lbs would be: nm x 5.71= lbs! :thumbsup:

I can't speak for the F4i, but I know the free length of a 929 rear spring is 6 7/16 inches.

So you should probably get the 1092 ohlins spring (6.7 inches). You'll end up with an extra 6.7 mm of preload though since the Ohlins spring is a tad bit longer than the stock 929 spring.

any idea what the #s on an ohlins spring mean?

01095-54/140 L346

i plan on putting it on my rebuilt fox shock. for my 94vfr rc30 replica.

Here ya go!

Shows thats a 7.1" 799lb spring! To soft for any VFR unless you weight a 100lbs.

am dead tired.. and buzzed cant read the chart well. are you sure? i told the guy selling the springs on ebay . i ride a vfr 2 up most of the time!!!! ggggrrrrr :goofy:

The stock VFR800 spring is 15.3 kg, or 857 lbs. So your 799 lbs spring is actually softer.

For comparison, i'm running a 1050 lbs spring on my Elka shock and i weight about 190 lbs.

Don't forget the Blackbird shock as on VTEC stock option.

...

The Blackbird shock doesn't have any extra adjustability over the VTEC shock, but it is slightly longer (higher ride height) and it has a stiffer spring (16.1 kg vs 15.3 kg).

Has anyone done this? Seems like it would quicken steering a little and help with laden with luggage/passenger.Is this a direct bolt in?

Bill

Yes, I've done it. It is a direct bolt in.

I can answer some of your questions Auspañol.

For the custom spacer, all you need to do is get some snap rings. It only costed my $2.26 to get mine from the local hardware store and they worked great.

With the RC51 front-end, you do lose a little height up front, but that's not the real problem here. The real problem is the increase trail you get with the RC51 triples. Don't quote me on this, but I believe the VFR triples had a 40mm offset and the RC51 triples have a 32mm offset. With increase trail, the bike because more stable for straight line speed but it looses some of it flickability.

The reason you'd want to raise the rear of the bike is to steepen the rack angle and thus decrease the trail, restoring the nimbleness and flickability of the bike. This is why fellow VFRD member Cassandtim is currently designing a set of custom triples for his RC51 front end swap. He wants to retain the stock VFR offset with the RC51 forks thus keeping his trail the same.

Now, I've personally have had any zero problems with the increase trail or lowered front end. And, I also had a Blackbird shock on my bike too. The Blackbird shock was good for about a 1/2 inch raise in the rear (it won't be as much for the 5th gen since the 6th gen shock is shorter than the 5th gen). Out on the track, I had no problems scrapping my kickstand and rear brake pedal, and my headers never touched down once!

I think everybody been running two lines from their brake master cylinder to each of the front calipers. You could do a single line down to one caliper and then run another line from that caliper to the other side (like Triumph does on their Daytona 675). I don't know of anybody running a single line down and then splitting it to each caliper.

Hope that helps!

It also looks like the 600RR (03-06) also used a 22mm axle just like the RC51. In fact, the Honda part numbers are the same between the 600RR and RC51 for the wheel bearings and inner spacers. I've read of one guy putting an RC51 front wheel on his 600RR, so it's definitely doable.

I'd imagine you'd have to have axle spacers made to make sure the 600RR wheel fit correctly in the RC51 forks. Plus, you'd have to put 320mm rotors onto the rims too. The nice thing about this swap is you wouldn't have to swap the bearings out.

Rims from a newer 600RR (07+) may work too. I believe the axle diameter is also 22mm, but the fork legs are closer together. This makes it pretty much impossible to put an RC51 or an older 600RR wheel onto a newer 600RR, but the reverse wouldn't be true. :rolleyes:

Much appreciated, Darth. That's good info you posted.

I think I'll stick to RC 51 rotors, to avoid the alignment and position issues. They're just a little more difficult to source 2nd hand. If I don't succeed on Ebay, I will get a brand new pair of Galfer rotors.

Thanks again.

Ok, just did a search and this is what I've found...

Yes, 06-07 (probably 08 too) CBR1000RR rotors will fit on the RC51 rim.

929 (00-01)....................330mm

954 (02-03)....................330mm

RC51 (00-06)..................320mm

600rr (03-08)..................310mm

1000rr (04-05)................310mm

1000rr (06-07)................320mm

Offsets and bolt patterns are the same. The only differences are rotor thinkness and rotor diameter.

It is my understanding that the 929/954/1000 rims are all interchangable. The RC51 has a different axle diameter (22mm vs 25mm on the 929/954/1000), so you'll need to install RC51 wheel bearings and have custom axle spacers made if you want to use a 929/954/1000 wheel in the RC51 forks.

I'm kind of stuck in the middle of my own 5th Gen RC51 front end swap. The rotors and axle spacer plus fender never arrived from the lass I bought them from in the US, although she did ship me the forks and triples.

Do any of you know if a set of rotors off a newer CBR 1000 or the older 954/929 will fit the RC 51 SP2 (2002 upwards) front wheel? I also need the OEM spacers on the axle (I have the axle though).

Anyone?

Yes, those rotors (1000RR, 929, 954) will bolt onto a RC51 (SP1 and SP2) front wheel. Of course, just because they physical bolt on doesn't mean they'll actually work (without some mods anyway). The 929/954 rotors are 330mm and the 1000RR and RC51 use 320mm rotors. So, if you use 929/954, you'll need to shim the calipers out somehow.

And, you'll definitely want to check to see if the rotor offset on the 1000RR is the same as the RC51. The 1000RR uses radial brakes, so they're may be some alignment issues. I haven't heard of anybody performing this swap yet (nor have I heard of anybody swapping an 1000RR wheel into a pair of 929/954/RC51 forks either), so I can't confirm if it'll even work (it may not even bolt on, who knows). The newer CBR600RR might also work too since it shares many parts with its bigger 1000cc brother.