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My end of winter engine rebuild/suspension upgrade project

20K views 78 replies 15 participants last post by  james.811 
#1 ·
Hey everybody.

I decided to take my 2005 out of action and do a piston upsize to + 2mm over and 12.3:1 compression in addition to a 20 mm Ohlins front suspension kit, an Ohlins rear shock unit
AND as long as its down, I will send my heads off to Hord Power for a complete port and polish job to round it all off.
Allong the way I will get rid of that nasty stock rear tail and put a pimpBike tail kit in with LED lights.

Weeeeee....., thats gonna hurt !!!

Pics to follow as I tear it down -- mod it ---- and put er all back together with a PCV fuelie and a Dyno or two to finish her off.

So far to start the day I made a custom tool for the swing arm/rear engine support shaft removal ( I have made many custom tools for bikes so don't worry about this part) :grin2:

The Bike is on a stand for initial tearing down of body, front forks for deliver to Kyle racing, misc wires, tubes, hoses, liquids, nuts/ bolts, sweat and anger along the way to get to the engine.

Pics today after about 3 hours work time -
Down to almost ready for front tube removal
 

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#3 ·
Update to motor work

Well tonight I went crazy fast and got the engine on the floor of my dining room.

All so far looks clean and in great condition.

After about 3 hours work the engine is out and ready for disassembly

See photos :nerd:
 

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#6 ·
This is the easy bit!
I love the tear-down, you never hurt your back hauling the lump out, but it always hurts putting it back in- no idea why; I use a lovely little hydraulic crane-type lift designed to hoist small adults/large children with mobility difficulties- it works perfectly and disassembles for easy storage.

No cam upgrade?
Which pistons are you planning to use?
 
#8 ·
No cam upgrade, doing a custom porting that opens up the intake instead.

Too many stories about the cam upgrades being the worst of any upgrade for integrity and long lasting reliability so I decided to work around them with a couple tricks.

I know it will hurt me for a few horses but not worried about that
 
#9 ·
Had a real busy work week so no new pictures at the moment,
but have the cases almost ready to split then will take a few and post them up.

By Monday the upper case will be at the machinist. Found a local racing motor machinist that does great work and landed a spot inline with him so I don't have to wait but 1 week for the work to be done.

The heads are already in Ohio waiting in line (5 weeks) for my custom port/polish job

YeHAW !!

2 more pics during take down included
 

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#12 ·
Ok.
case is split.
ready for delivery to a local MC racing machinist for boring and balance.

had a real bad week at work and just could not get myself to work on it the last two days.

Pics included
 

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#14 ·
quote"I can see why you wanted to rebore- there's a few marks on the bore- any corresponding scores on your old pistons?"/quote

oh yeah there are scores.

I will be running nothing but high end synthetic oil from now on. Was running Mobil 1 but now not sure how good the quality is for it.

See the pics
 

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#15 ·
couple of things I noted while getting the case splitt.
1. There is a bearing retainer plate with 3 bolts (2in top half and 1 in bottom half of case) that must have bolts removed from at least one half of the cases to split them. The service manual does not say this. It is behind the clutch on the shaft.
2. there is a metal dowel in the top case clutch shaft race and another race on the other side of the case that is pushed into their bores by the shafts. I assume they are a type of oil passage restriction for those shafts. They dont show on exploded views in the service manual. They seem easy to loose when pulling the cases apart.
pic included
 

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#17 ·
Nice!!

I plan on sending my forks out to Kyle Racing, and picking up an Ohlins rear from them in January 17.

Wouldn't happen yo be in Cal Bay Area would you? Rain here since the 7th, still going...
 
#20 ·
Well this morning the top half of the case was delivered to the machinist (an old guy wearing a harley shirt and looking like he slept at the shop that night) shop along with a few other parts for balancing.
I must say that I found, in my opinion the RIGHT shop to do the work.
I walk through the shop door with the owner bright and early today and see at least a dozen older than sin motorbikes from the teens (thats 1910-1919) and a couple from before those years being restored along with 4 automobiles from the 00 years. There were engines there with manufacturer names I have never heard of filling this shop so full it was difficult to move around.
This guy is top notch. I knew I had the right guy before going there, but once inside I was completely convinced my case was in perfect hands.
 
#21 ·
Tonight was to be a down night for me, but I decided to start some bike frame cleaning.
A lot of degreaser and even more elbow work and my frame looks almost new again.

I am pretty anal about keeping my bike clean, but once I got into tearing this thing down I noticed rocks up in the top part of the engine, grease so deep around the front chain sprocket you could lather up the entire 1950's rock and roll bands, rock chips along the inner swing arm sections, asphalt tar and gravel stuck to everything near the bottom and so on.

Take it from me, every now and then spend a few hours with a spray degreaser and some rags and wipe everything down. If you don't, every time the bike gets wet this stuff holds that water against the frame and makes it eat away at it.

Nothing like a nice clean bike !!

Someday I will get back to my complete restoration of my 1946 norton 16H 500cc single cylinder thumper bike. Parts and pieces all powder coated and thats where it has sat for the past 3 months (see the pic).
 

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#23 ·
So, I decided that with this down time it would be a good time to start my tail section change, so I did (start)

I purchased a PimpRides tail long ago and it has sat in my closet waiting this day. Once I started looking at the PimpRides in comparison to the OEM tail that now was on my floor, I noticed a LOT of mods would need to happen to make it look right. This PimpRides tail is NOT made for the SP2 and that is obvious (sold to me as an SP2 tail, but it is designed for an SP1 only).

I looked at the online instructions they have for cutting the OEM tail to slim it WAY DOWN, but I was not happy with it because it was nothing near what my tail looks like.
So, I decided to start with the now "suggested" cuts to my OEM tail, full well knowing I would need to go back and make further cuts as I go.

The pics I have included show the monster OEM and the "Starter" PimpRides new tail (I suggest unless you are really good at body mods, don't go with this companies products, but I chose it solely because it was the tail look I wanted and I knew when I bought it that I would have to mod it, just not this much mod!!)

So far I have made the initial cuts to the OEM tail, opened up the too small cut outs in the new tail and mocked up a proposed location for the new tail.
I am now (my next step) ready to analyze the two tails again for mapping out a game plan for the second round of cuts.

Some may be asking, what is the issue and why so many cuts needed.

Well, the OEM location and size of the bike brains (computer) are located to the right of the battery and set down lower than the bottom of the new tail line,
The protruding mounts at the rear of the tail for all of the switches, sensors, electrical gizmos and necessary equipment mounting of an electronically programmed and censored (wishing here for a bike from the 70/s) bike are all completely different for the two models of RC 51, and three, the mid section of the OEM fender just to the rear of the battery location is entirely different on a SP2 than an SP1 model so this section I am looking very closely at to determine what needs, really needs to stay.

The one thing that really gets to me about this PimpBikes tail is that there becomes a seam in the mating of the two tails when done and they mention nothing about this.

I have 2 really big issues with that,

1. The area above the tail section is where 50% of the wiring is located and nearly 99% of the sensors, switches, controllers, etc, etc, etc. Now everyone knows that water and electrical don't mix, are bad for each other, and and just not a good idea. The way this new tail is made leaves 2 huge openings along the sides where the exhaust hangers/rear foot peg hanger is located (it is cut out around them and I need to make these cuts even bigger).

2. If I just place the OEM section of the tail (whats left of it) on and the new tail on, they lap over the top of each other for a distance (I have still not exactly decided how much I am willing to have here) and if you don't seal this and/or mechanically connect these two sections, well we all know what is going to happen now don't we...., For those that don't, see #1 and then move on to vibration, torsional movement of parts, tail section temperature changes, brittle edges, cracks, bends, etc, etc, etc.

So, I am still thinking about a game plan for this part. I am thinking rubber automotive rubber bumper repair bond between the tail overlaps, rivets and for the exposed tail edges (inner and outer) a folded over rubber edge glued on.

The point about this part is there is NO mention about any of this at PimpBikes or in the instructions at all.
NOT A GOOD THOUGHT OUT PRODUCT

See the pics
 

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#25 ·
I finished the mockup of the new tail section so that the fit was very close to the original OEM fit. The front end of the new tail dives down a little more than the OEM tail did but I got it to look close around the rear peg hangers/exhaust can hangers sections on both sides.

Now for my next trick I will try to seal these two pieces together so no water infiltrates and then rivet them before creating some sort of rubber flashing at the gap that is located at the rear peg hangers/exhaust can hangers where the new tail section is cut around them.

I found a good quality rubber seal for a garage door bottom at a hardware store that I think os a great material to use to seal the areas from water.

See the final fit pics
 

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#26 ·
Update

The past couple days I have slowly worked on getting the now fully cut 2 pieces of tail section together and riveted. I had to do a final cutting because I didn't like how they fit together (lapped onto each other) and how that looked with the tail body piece on.
I finally was satisfied with both the fit and the look and used gasket maker between the two parts as a type of bonding agent and sealer to try to keep water out and then riveted the two together.

Next step is to prep them with the inner side with undercoating for a good rubberized inside look and to keep anything in there from bouncing around hard on the surface. I will also paint the external side that is seen (exposed side) with paint to match the OEM color (this bike os the cool black and gray).
This weekend I will do the paint prep and the undercoat spray then the lock, wiring, etc is the final step.

Pics included of this update
 

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#27 ·
Update

Today with little to do on the bike because the top half case is still at the machinist and the heads are still back east waiting to get ported and polished and my new tail section is drying from spraying the inner side rubberized bed liner I sprayed in it,

I decided to do a little touchup body work on my front cowl.

late last year I put a small scrape on the right front cowl backing the bike into my parking spot when I somehow scraped it slightly along a stucco column. I also notices a small crack developing in the very bottom edge of the intake port in the center between the headlights.

So, I lightly sanded the 2 areas today after tearing apart all the miscellaneous from the front cowl and got it ready for some thin layers of putty this week so I can paint it and the new tail section together next weekend

Pics included of the inside rubberized bed liner on the new tail and the front cowl ready to get bond putty.
 

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#28 ·
Looking for little help today.
I took my paint codes sticker to the paint shop to have paint mixed and the NH1D (Gray) does not come up in the computer.

Anybody know what they named this color ??

He said there is like 9 grays for honda motorcycles for 2005 but we dont know the name
 
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