Post by greenskeeper on Mar 16, 2017 16:23:51 GMT 10
First of all, Hi all!
I work with jubby and he has dragged me over here, we are of a similar vintage and arguably equally insane.
Early February this year I started tossing up if I was going to modify my Focus ST or buy a bike. I dont have a bike licence AT ALL and my experience on bikes amounted to about 2/5 of fuck all as it extended to a blat on a couple of dirt bikes, never even owned one. So modifying the ST was looking good, I wont go into how many car's I've had and how much I have blown on them here but needless to say, it's my bread and butter and I felt more comfortable going this route. Then Jubby start's talking track bikes, for about a week he's sending me links to different bikes for sale and i'm all "meh" I dunno. Among them was a ZXR400 that had taken my fancy, it was different, we knew a bit about the history of it, it was pretty well setup for the track (was actually a competitive race bike back in 2012) only needing what would turn out to be, a little, but critical TLC.
So a about a week goes by and the idea is all but gone, Im sitting on my porch reasonably drunk at this point, and I think, oh stuff it just have a go, so I start texting the guy and before I know it we have made a deal on the ZXR and I'm picking the thing up the next day. So my mate and I set off down the gold coast and meet a really top bloke named James who took the time to give me the rundown on everything he knew about the bike, threw in a bunch of stuff like spares, steering damper, a wheel chock. He even gave us noobs a hand tying the thing onto the ute. Bloody legend. So we get it home and I do this within about 30 minutes of it being off the ute:
I have turned a tyre or two (mostly two ) in my time... What better way to find out if it will break right?
WRONG, because it didn't break but was still hiding a little secret that could have very possibly killed me...also this is probably a good time to point out I have 0 mechanical sympathy and have always followed the "if it breaks build it better" philosophy. We had what turned out to be a non issue where we thought the bike didn't have anything but 1st gear, Kawasaki have had a lockout in the box that wont let you select anything but 1st unless moving, since the mid 70's. Until this became known I remember thinking "well that's just rubbish if it cant handle that little bit of abuse", Not once did I feel at fault or remorse LOL.
Zero sympathy I say...
The Bike:
The following weekend I rip into the thing to get to know it and find out what's what, did a service, flushed the brakes for ages until they came up awesome, I have experience bleeding 4/6 pot calipers and know they like to hide air in secret places so just kept bleeding like a mofo. Ran new fluid through them until it was coming out clean and kept circulating clean fluid, probably running around 6 liters in total through each caliper. Took just over 500ml until it came out completely clear, then just kept circulating the clean fluid until I was happy there was no air left. Cant get the handle to the bar even under repeated heaving braking so I'm pretty happy with how they came up. To that end I have been pretty lucky in regards to seals etc, for a 23 year old bike, fork seals look good although there is just the slight film on one side, which is strange given how good the seals look, perhaps a bit of grit? I also cleaned up the plugs, re-gapped them and made a coolant overflow (was removed, something to do with racing regs) The whole bike came race wired, already had glass fairings and was stripped of everything not required for the track. It also has a ZX-6R rear wheel with a 180 rear, this is the part that could have killed me, I had decided I wanted to run the bike through the gears strapped down on stands but the chain was dangerously loose, in the process of adjusting the chain I noticed when torqued up properly the rear wheel was seriously binding and was difficult to rotate, so naturally I just backed it off until it would spin freely and pinned it through all the gears until, all there, no probs except the weird issue with the rear wheel.. It also didn't want to idle and was a bitch to start requiring full choke and was intermittent at best. I needed new tyres and chain anyway and it was about a week out from our track day on the 4th so with a bit of encouragement from Jubby I book it into a place called Motorcycle Mad for new tyres, and a chain, They offer to come pick the bike up from my house after work, great! Mick from Motorcycle Mad comes to pick up the bike, we get talking and very quickly it's apparent he is the real deal and also has quite a bit of experience with 400 imports as he saw a lot of them come through his shop back in the day when they were racing them. So I ask him to give it a tune up and have a look at the strange issue with the rear wheel as well.
Jubby and I arrive at Motorcycle Mad 5pm, Friday afternoon, day before the track day. Everything is done except the rear wheel issue and there is not only bad news, shocking news. When you fit a ZX-6R rear wheel to the 400, it is a relatively straight swap, except the bearings on the sprocket side need the correct spacer installed to suit the axle, This had not been done.. I wish I took a photo of the munted mess that came out but some absolute fucking retard, had simply cut a peice of ALUMINIUM pipe that just happen to be the right size to fit snugly between the sprocket bearing and the axle, leaving the sprocket side wheel bearing just..doing nothing all the weight was on the sprocket bearing, which was completely fucked, wheel bearing was like brand new cause it had been doing sweet fuck all.. the piece of aluminium was a munted..oval it wasn't even fucking round anymore. I'm new to bikes but this seems like the dumbest fucking thing a person could do to one... I mean that rear wheel would have eventually locked at some point, not to mention it had to been robbing power, rear wheel was VERY difficult to turn when torqued to spec. Guys in the shop say mate it's not gonna be ready today I'm sorry, I said I have a track day tomorrow? Without another word he wanders off, comes back in what seemed like a couple of minutes with a new sprocket bearing already pressed in and is now searching for a spacer that will work. He finds one that will work but is just a little deep, they machine it down, throw a new tyre on and it's being wheeled into the dyno cell not even 30 mins after telling me it wont happen. You may think lazy ass should have just done it and stopped complaining? It's well after closing time now so full credit to them for pushing on, it's also amazing what one can achieve in a short amount of time with the motivation of just wanting to go home on a Friday. The bike had already been tuned "by ear" and was simply going on the dyno to check the AFR's. This is when we found out that taking the speedo off a ZXR enables a 10,000rpm rev limiter.. Yep.. for real.. you may be aware of the speed limiter built into the clocks on these grey imports but unplugging it all together results in a rev limiter being enabled. It gets run up anyway and this is the result:
Not much to see here, but who doesn't like a dyno video?
![]()
Not really worried about the numbers, pretty happy with how the curve looks, it's screwed up coz I threw it in the bin given it's pretty much a wasted run because of the limiter being enabled. We didn't realize the speedo was the culprit until we got the bike home. Plugged it in and it revved to 15k no problems. It had previously been dyno'd a few months before I purchased it and made 62bhp with that binding rear wheel. What's important is It start's pretty much instantly, first go with no choke from cold. Idles well and was reliable and ran hard on the track day. It was really nice to not worry about the bike on the day and just focus on the steep learning curve I was on, I could not recommend the guys at Motorcycle Mad enough, Jubby and I are heading back there for a dyno day on the 24th so not only will we get to see what it really makes, but also what his 2 stroke lawn mower makes... In all seriousness Jubby has done a great job of tuning the RS and im tipping it's going to make a genuine 60bhp with a fucked up AFR coz it exhales oil and he is still going to have no idea how fat or lean his tune is haha.
The Track:
I'm trying to keep this "introduction" and short as possible and I think he has a few more photos of the day so he can drop a few here if he wants. So as I mentioned previously I literally have not ridden a sports bike. Or a bike at all realistically. This became apparent to once we had got our bands and signed on for the day, It was time to head down to scrutineering, the first time I had ridden... I looked at him and said "so....you pick your feet up pretty quick as you set off huh?" all he said was "fook me man you weren't kidding were you?" or something to that effect, offered no actual advise. So I set off ride down pit lane, bike passes no worries, I somehow ride back without stalling or looking like a retard and alerting people to the fact I'm a noob. Before I know it red (noob) group gets the 5min call, I gear up and warm up the bike, I'm sitting on it for what feels like an eternity, Then I hear the news, oil down and three bikes down. Big cleanup then it begins to rain as they call red group again. I sit the first session out as it's pouring. Second red session and it's stopped raining, the track is still wet in places and I have unscrubbed brand new tyres. Against everybody's advise I head out onto a partially wet track, with brand new A13Z tyres and no experience. It felt hopeless but remained determined to get to know the bike, I teach myself how everything works on the bike (including my reversed shift pattern, not that hard when you dont know anything else!!) by the end of the session my tyres are scrubbed-ish and im starting to pick up the pace. Long story short first session my quickest lap was a 1:42 or something pathetic, had moved to green group and put in a 1:18 when I was absoluteley spent at the end of the day. I am utterly hooked and itching to get back in the saddle!!!
Some footage of me hassling a 600 in I think my 2nd or 3rd session Jubby? Slow rider on the 600, quite the drag racer though
Jubby was kind enough to come down from blue when I went up to green so he could get some footage which has been really handy, Have had some really positive feedback from experience riders after reviewing the footage, but it's also shown me what I was doing wrong. Too upright was my first though, confirmed. I am meters away from the ideal line at times, which is a perception thing, It didn't feel like it at the time but after watching it, it's apparent I can get the bike alot closer to the apex than the mind believes which comes down to the massive difference between the position of your head relative to the tyres. I will get there and carry my humble, but slightly more experienced attitude into the next track day. Maybe I'll even see some of you there?
Cheers :beer:
I work with jubby and he has dragged me over here, we are of a similar vintage and arguably equally insane.
Early February this year I started tossing up if I was going to modify my Focus ST or buy a bike. I dont have a bike licence AT ALL and my experience on bikes amounted to about 2/5 of fuck all as it extended to a blat on a couple of dirt bikes, never even owned one. So modifying the ST was looking good, I wont go into how many car's I've had and how much I have blown on them here but needless to say, it's my bread and butter and I felt more comfortable going this route. Then Jubby start's talking track bikes, for about a week he's sending me links to different bikes for sale and i'm all "meh" I dunno. Among them was a ZXR400 that had taken my fancy, it was different, we knew a bit about the history of it, it was pretty well setup for the track (was actually a competitive race bike back in 2012) only needing what would turn out to be, a little, but critical TLC.
So a about a week goes by and the idea is all but gone, Im sitting on my porch reasonably drunk at this point, and I think, oh stuff it just have a go, so I start texting the guy and before I know it we have made a deal on the ZXR and I'm picking the thing up the next day. So my mate and I set off down the gold coast and meet a really top bloke named James who took the time to give me the rundown on everything he knew about the bike, threw in a bunch of stuff like spares, steering damper, a wheel chock. He even gave us noobs a hand tying the thing onto the ute. Bloody legend. So we get it home and I do this within about 30 minutes of it being off the ute:
I have turned a tyre or two (mostly two ) in my time... What better way to find out if it will break right?
WRONG, because it didn't break but was still hiding a little secret that could have very possibly killed me...also this is probably a good time to point out I have 0 mechanical sympathy and have always followed the "if it breaks build it better" philosophy. We had what turned out to be a non issue where we thought the bike didn't have anything but 1st gear, Kawasaki have had a lockout in the box that wont let you select anything but 1st unless moving, since the mid 70's. Until this became known I remember thinking "well that's just rubbish if it cant handle that little bit of abuse", Not once did I feel at fault or remorse LOL.
Zero sympathy I say...
The Bike:
The following weekend I rip into the thing to get to know it and find out what's what, did a service, flushed the brakes for ages until they came up awesome, I have experience bleeding 4/6 pot calipers and know they like to hide air in secret places so just kept bleeding like a mofo. Ran new fluid through them until it was coming out clean and kept circulating clean fluid, probably running around 6 liters in total through each caliper. Took just over 500ml until it came out completely clear, then just kept circulating the clean fluid until I was happy there was no air left. Cant get the handle to the bar even under repeated heaving braking so I'm pretty happy with how they came up. To that end I have been pretty lucky in regards to seals etc, for a 23 year old bike, fork seals look good although there is just the slight film on one side, which is strange given how good the seals look, perhaps a bit of grit? I also cleaned up the plugs, re-gapped them and made a coolant overflow (was removed, something to do with racing regs) The whole bike came race wired, already had glass fairings and was stripped of everything not required for the track. It also has a ZX-6R rear wheel with a 180 rear, this is the part that could have killed me, I had decided I wanted to run the bike through the gears strapped down on stands but the chain was dangerously loose, in the process of adjusting the chain I noticed when torqued up properly the rear wheel was seriously binding and was difficult to rotate, so naturally I just backed it off until it would spin freely and pinned it through all the gears until, all there, no probs except the weird issue with the rear wheel.. It also didn't want to idle and was a bitch to start requiring full choke and was intermittent at best. I needed new tyres and chain anyway and it was about a week out from our track day on the 4th so with a bit of encouragement from Jubby I book it into a place called Motorcycle Mad for new tyres, and a chain, They offer to come pick the bike up from my house after work, great! Mick from Motorcycle Mad comes to pick up the bike, we get talking and very quickly it's apparent he is the real deal and also has quite a bit of experience with 400 imports as he saw a lot of them come through his shop back in the day when they were racing them. So I ask him to give it a tune up and have a look at the strange issue with the rear wheel as well.
Jubby and I arrive at Motorcycle Mad 5pm, Friday afternoon, day before the track day. Everything is done except the rear wheel issue and there is not only bad news, shocking news. When you fit a ZX-6R rear wheel to the 400, it is a relatively straight swap, except the bearings on the sprocket side need the correct spacer installed to suit the axle, This had not been done.. I wish I took a photo of the munted mess that came out but some absolute fucking retard, had simply cut a peice of ALUMINIUM pipe that just happen to be the right size to fit snugly between the sprocket bearing and the axle, leaving the sprocket side wheel bearing just..doing nothing all the weight was on the sprocket bearing, which was completely fucked, wheel bearing was like brand new cause it had been doing sweet fuck all.. the piece of aluminium was a munted..oval it wasn't even fucking round anymore. I'm new to bikes but this seems like the dumbest fucking thing a person could do to one... I mean that rear wheel would have eventually locked at some point, not to mention it had to been robbing power, rear wheel was VERY difficult to turn when torqued to spec. Guys in the shop say mate it's not gonna be ready today I'm sorry, I said I have a track day tomorrow? Without another word he wanders off, comes back in what seemed like a couple of minutes with a new sprocket bearing already pressed in and is now searching for a spacer that will work. He finds one that will work but is just a little deep, they machine it down, throw a new tyre on and it's being wheeled into the dyno cell not even 30 mins after telling me it wont happen. You may think lazy ass should have just done it and stopped complaining? It's well after closing time now so full credit to them for pushing on, it's also amazing what one can achieve in a short amount of time with the motivation of just wanting to go home on a Friday. The bike had already been tuned "by ear" and was simply going on the dyno to check the AFR's. This is when we found out that taking the speedo off a ZXR enables a 10,000rpm rev limiter.. Yep.. for real.. you may be aware of the speed limiter built into the clocks on these grey imports but unplugging it all together results in a rev limiter being enabled. It gets run up anyway and this is the result:
Not much to see here, but who doesn't like a dyno video?
Not really worried about the numbers, pretty happy with how the curve looks, it's screwed up coz I threw it in the bin given it's pretty much a wasted run because of the limiter being enabled. We didn't realize the speedo was the culprit until we got the bike home. Plugged it in and it revved to 15k no problems. It had previously been dyno'd a few months before I purchased it and made 62bhp with that binding rear wheel. What's important is It start's pretty much instantly, first go with no choke from cold. Idles well and was reliable and ran hard on the track day. It was really nice to not worry about the bike on the day and just focus on the steep learning curve I was on, I could not recommend the guys at Motorcycle Mad enough, Jubby and I are heading back there for a dyno day on the 24th so not only will we get to see what it really makes, but also what his 2 stroke lawn mower makes... In all seriousness Jubby has done a great job of tuning the RS and im tipping it's going to make a genuine 60bhp with a fucked up AFR coz it exhales oil and he is still going to have no idea how fat or lean his tune is haha.
The Track:
I'm trying to keep this "introduction" and short as possible and I think he has a few more photos of the day so he can drop a few here if he wants. So as I mentioned previously I literally have not ridden a sports bike. Or a bike at all realistically. This became apparent to once we had got our bands and signed on for the day, It was time to head down to scrutineering, the first time I had ridden... I looked at him and said "so....you pick your feet up pretty quick as you set off huh?" all he said was "fook me man you weren't kidding were you?" or something to that effect, offered no actual advise. So I set off ride down pit lane, bike passes no worries, I somehow ride back without stalling or looking like a retard and alerting people to the fact I'm a noob. Before I know it red (noob) group gets the 5min call, I gear up and warm up the bike, I'm sitting on it for what feels like an eternity, Then I hear the news, oil down and three bikes down. Big cleanup then it begins to rain as they call red group again. I sit the first session out as it's pouring. Second red session and it's stopped raining, the track is still wet in places and I have unscrubbed brand new tyres. Against everybody's advise I head out onto a partially wet track, with brand new A13Z tyres and no experience. It felt hopeless but remained determined to get to know the bike, I teach myself how everything works on the bike (including my reversed shift pattern, not that hard when you dont know anything else!!) by the end of the session my tyres are scrubbed-ish and im starting to pick up the pace. Long story short first session my quickest lap was a 1:42 or something pathetic, had moved to green group and put in a 1:18 when I was absoluteley spent at the end of the day. I am utterly hooked and itching to get back in the saddle!!!
Some footage of me hassling a 600 in I think my 2nd or 3rd session Jubby? Slow rider on the 600, quite the drag racer though
Jubby was kind enough to come down from blue when I went up to green so he could get some footage which has been really handy, Have had some really positive feedback from experience riders after reviewing the footage, but it's also shown me what I was doing wrong. Too upright was my first though, confirmed. I am meters away from the ideal line at times, which is a perception thing, It didn't feel like it at the time but after watching it, it's apparent I can get the bike alot closer to the apex than the mind believes which comes down to the massive difference between the position of your head relative to the tyres. I will get there and carry my humble, but slightly more experienced attitude into the next track day. Maybe I'll even see some of you there?
Cheers :beer:
will appreciate your new found endurance....hahaaaaa. boom goes the dynamite!!! Round two??
