The Phantom

We have a mate with an RC51 front end on his SuperBlackbird (CBR1100XX)... actually we have two mates with that combo...

Missed this due to moving house at the time (although I knew you'd gotten it all together), what can I say, another excellent job! I love the blue on blue combo and the blue front wheel really sets off the hardware. Normally it's lost in the black front wheel. Good to hear it rides so well too :thumbsup: Some questions, of course. I take it you still have the Convertibars on it? Are 929 bars an option with the SP1 top triple? With the SP1 top triple (and the forks correspondingly raised), have you got the same front ride height as with the SP1 forks?

Try a PM to zRoYz. He has done the SP1 mod and has a 954.

Bel-Ray EXP semi-synth has been a favourite of mine since my teenage dirtbag, err, dirtbike years. Stripping a motor down that had been running on Bel-Ray oil always revealed cleaner internals than any of my mate's motors which were using other oils. Of course there is such a thing as 'too clean' - high detergent levels may wash more lubricant off than is ideal - but I never had any failures or undue wear. I'm a bit of a 'change it every other interval' type of user. I think I would average an oil change every 10 000km... the top end of my 98 000km motor still looks good. When I swap to a full system I'll pull the sump off and see what's going on downstairs. Anyway, the sooner it spins a bearing the sooner I can bore it out, yes? While on oil, I love seeing those gooses who insist on giving their throttle (or pedal) a good blip then shutting the motor down before the revs start to drop. What's with that? Washing the cylinder walls down with unburnt fuel... you can imagine the accelerated wear on start-up.

I'm with Ralph, but given the effort that's gone into this so far I had to wonder whether it was perhaps a bit of an illusion. So I went back a page and found this. I'm going to guess that with the bolts out the cam cover can be moved down and out? Also enjoyed seeing this again (I just jump to the latest page so I forget what's gone before): RedMarque, given the (so far) minimalist bodywork you seem to favour, what do you have in mind for the rear end? Because something that looks so right simply should not be covered :thumbsup: May I suggest an LED tail-light with internal wiring in one of the rear horizontal tubes - if in the lower one it would certainly be unobtrusive. Regarding www.emachineshop.com - I recall a guy from the VFR 'big list' who used them and was very happy with the result - IIRC it was for a mount for a camera/GPS/something. Sorry I can't give any more info than that.

Those FFE graphs are way cool! Good to see more progress, thanks for the update/s.

There was a turbo VF750 at a trackday I went to many moons ago. Canberra-based IIRC, will see if I can get some pics of it - rough as guts, but went hard on the track.

Just going right back to the beginning for a moment... is the front wheel in the pic destined to be there on the final product? If so, may I suggest a Marchesini three-spoke rear wheel to match... (yep, I'm the master of the unlimited budget suggestion ). How gorgeous is this bike??? I'd normally take an RC45 over an RC30 any day, but this bike sure makes me stop and think.

Uh-oh - where's the ToroCharger drive belt gonna go??? :rolleyes: Was the projector headlight clearance issue caused by the Hossack set-up (centrally mounted shock)?? Those headlights certainly need some depth. Not only is the assembly quite long (at least 150mm, or 6" for the metrically-challenged) but the lens itself needs some clearance as it will melt anything plastic that's too close. I'm juggling projector lens headlights myself. One more thing - don't rush it just coz we're so demanding of pictures :salesman: I owe the collective a heap of pics, but I'm having to just go on with things according to plan, although the temptation is there to slap things together just for photos - oh, hi there AB, the pics are on the way!! :rolleyes:

Uh-oh :mellow: Too busy with kids and the like to get much bike time, but I do steal a few hours a week. I'll post new pics by the end of the week...

Not at all Eeen - I'm a VFR owner, not a VFR rider :mellow: OK OK I will see what I can do re. pics. The cockpit looks fantastic :thumbsup: if a bit impractical in current guise...

:blink:

Beautiful bike, and fantastic mods - it'd stop and handle like a GP bike now.

That's quite amazing work Larry, and a wonderful write-up - great pics! Unsprung weight just got a whole lot less - fork response will improve as will steering response, I imagine the Brembo radials are quite light. So you now have that much less weight/inertia to shift when turning the bars through fast direction changes. I've just been up close and personal with my own radial caliper set-up tonight, so can really appreciate the design and execution of these mounts. Quite a fitting end for 10 pounds of magnesium.

Newly Designed Wheel for Honda VFR800 F4i in 3.5/5.5 x17 They've been reading VFRD!!! That black bike is spectacular - can't pick the frame. but it has MV Agusta fairings with R1 tail on custom subframe... Edit: a few posts in since I was writing mine... ZX-7R eh? Always liked them, and I'd love to build one up like that thing! Big bucks though.

Can't be bothered with another edit! That bike is magazine feature quality, after Safe-T's n'th degree effort with Murphy, FotoMoto's bike gets my vote as the next VFRD showcase bike!

Cool to see the gospel getting out to the other VFR forums then :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: Edit: that's actually the best pic of the bike I've seen so far... :wub:

Second both of Darth's comments - you need to look inside the fork before you shave it down, but modding the triple/s might be your out. There's a lot of meat in Honda's tripleclamps. You may be correct about the Yam fork outer being pretty thick if it's only got 41mm sliders. But best to take a look first.

Affirmative, checked my triples tonight and got the same dimensions. Funnily enough the forks themselves are described as being 43mm, which is the slider diameter of course. I'm fairly certain that all vanilla late model USD tripleclamp dimensions are as per above, only some MVs and the like (i.e. exotica) seem to be different. Oh and earlier bikes, too... So appears no good on the YZF750 fork swap, what about ZX-7R forks? Potentially a little short...

Pretty cool! B)

I have a spraycan of Nyalic ($55AUD from the distributor) and can vouch for its qualities. It's amazing alright, almost weird in its qualities and characteristics. It comes out of the (very high quality) spraycan like water vapour, extremely fine. It's self-leveling, so there's not much difference between spraying and brushing it on. When it cures it's very tough and durable and won't ever go yellow. And if you do need to touch it up (eg. if you get a scratch in the clearcoat) you literally just paint over it with more Nyalic, and the new coat blends into the old coat (and self-levels). Space-age stuff! Great choice of clearcoat. The wheels look tops. Sort of. The 5th/6th Gen uses recessed bolts to hold the rear brake rotor on, the earlier Gens do not. So when Honda designed the 5th/6th Gen rear wheel they used a flat face between the lug holes. You need to either relieve this area (in the four sections where the rotor bolts hit it) using a diegrinder or Dremel, or fit countersunk rotor bolts. Both relatively easy mods, the one you choose depends on your resources I suppose.