The Toys are back in the pram… but only just

Posted on April 20, 2007 by admin

The saga of my rear handbrake calipers continues. As my paddock buddies are off racing this weekend I’m stuck in the garage fitting brake calipers. The new calipers are really my last option so they better fit.

A trial fitting off the caliper inside the rim of the 14″ wheel shows that these new callipers don’t scrape the inside of the wheel. This is the first success I’ve had with this piece of kit so worth a small whoo Hoo!

The second success is that the Hi spec hand brake clapper is a direct bolt-bolt fit for the old Ultralite 2 caliper.

However when I came to fit them to the car things got much tougher. With the calipers in the correct position with the bleed hole at the top. They clear the inside of the wheel nicely and the handbrake mechanism clears the upright but the wishbone obscures the handbrake actuation mounting holes and so there is no prospect of the mechanism operating. The alternative is to swap the units on each side of the car and fit them upside down, but in this orientation the bleed holes are at the bottom and so the callipers have to be removed for bleeding which is just a pain in the arse. However in this orientation the mechanism fouls the upright so they can’t even be fitted anyway. Aaaargh! (The picture BTW shows the final fixed solution)

So now I have some callipers that do fit inside the wheels and which I can fit to hubs but which will not operate, or some callipers that can’t even be fitted to the car!
At this point my toys were about to achieve escape velocity from the pram, the earth and the hold damn solar system.

However engaging brain, rather temper revealed a lateral thinking solution. In the same way that the callipers are “handed” on each side of the car, the actuation lever is also handed and I wondered if I could disassemble the callipers and swap the actuation levers between the left and right side callipers. This would have the effect of moving the lever away from the wishbone that was blocking the cable hole.

I reasoned that surely any sensible piece of production design would have standardised components that could be interchangeable in order to reduce the number of unique parts that need to be manufactured.

My hunch was right! I can swap the levers, and at last I have a rear brake calliper that I can fit under the wheels, one that can actually be mounted to the hub and to which I can attach both a brake line and a working handbrake cable. Now that calls for a beer and good on you Hi Spec.

I’ll complete the fit up tomorrow.
Posted in handbrake calliper, hi spec | Leave a comment

Sump and Sprockets

Posted on April 19, 2007 by admin

At last I seem to be taking two steps forward and only one step backwards. Firstly I’ve fitted the baffle plate to the engine. That was a straightforward if messy process, because there is no such thing as a sump gasket on a CB1000RR and the sump flanges are sealed using blue gasket compound. When you fit a baffle plate you have too make two gooey gaskets (one on each side) in this manner. Still it was pretty straight forward. While I had the sump off I also fitted a new cap to the swinging sump which Graeme at Nova had made up for me (apparently it needed a 3 degree undercut on the connection tube and this had been missed on the original), and I also checked that it was indeed possible to remove the oil filter despite the close proximity of the exhausts. It’s fiddly but possible.

When I collected the sump bit I also collected two new rear drive sprockets that Graeme had also made me . I now had a range of 34,35, 36 teeth at the rear which when coupled with some 14,15,16,17 front sprocket give me a diff range of 2.9 to 3.9 in 10% increments.

So a week of moderate success for once.

Posted in sprockets, swinging sump | Leave a comment

What is wrong with this picture?

Posted on April 16, 2007 by admin

The more observant of you may have spotted that the engine bay is now sans engine. One of the (few) benefits of missing the first few meetings is that I can use the data gathered by others also developing CBR1000RR engine installations. The key pieces of information established so far are

The CBR1000 RR swinging sump works effectively but only if fitted with a sump baffle plate.

The correct oil level is to fill the beast to the standard max fill line in the sight glass and then add a further litre.

Graham at Nova has also provided an upgraded internal component for the swinging sump.

The upshot of all this knowledge is that I have to remove the engine and crack off the sump. This took the grand total of two leisurely hours on a hot Sunday afternoon. Punctuated by many a bottle of larger and a couple of ice creams. This is quite good news as it probably means we could do an engine swap in about 90 minutes in the paddock if we really focused.

With the engine on the bench again it give me a chance to inspect the great work done by Tony Law in fabricating the exhaust headers. Considering these complex curves are formed by something no more complex than a skilled eye, a hammer and some heat the work is quite exceptional with virtually no distortion of the tube.

Taking the engine out also allows me to access the oil filter. This one is damaged (possibly in the original bike accident) and I need to replace it, I also need to tie it in place to stop it working loose with the vibration.

However access close to the exhaust pipes looks a bit close. and talking of the pipes I need to tighten the nuts and wrap them in heat shield before refitting it to the car.

Posted in Exhaust pipes, oil fill level, oil filter | Leave a comment

Some Brakes Progress At last

Posted on April 16, 2007 by admin
Well I’ve returned from holiday keen and eager to make some progress. I have some nice new rear brake disks from Hi spec and so I crack on with a trial fitting. Unfortunately this was as much progress as I was going to make on the callipers. The Wilwood handbrake callipers with the actuation levers on the circumferential edge will simply not fit under the wheels. Aaaagh!

So the hi spec handbrake callipers it will have to be instead. These I’m assured by Hi Spec are dimensionally identical to my existing Ultralight 2 callipers so I trial fitted these up with the new disks. Eureka they seem to fit! Although the picture shows just how tight the clearances are.
Posted in handbrake calliper, hispec, ultralight 2 | Leave a comment

I love it when a plan comes together!

Posted on April 9, 2007 by admin

That’s because for me it doesn’t happen very often :-( .
Unsurprisingly my brake disks failed to turn up in time for me to trial fit them before I left for holiday, and this caused a realistic evaluation of the amount of work required before the next meeting at Lydden Hill. With no rear brakes, the engine baffle plate to fit, loads of tiding jobs to do and a race transporter with no MOT there is plainly no way I’m going to be ready for Lydden particularly as I’ll be on holiday for a week (crucially 2 weekends) between now and the meeting. So I’ve cancelled my entry.

Bah. Grump!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

It Never Rains but….

Posted on April 4, 2007 by admin

Typically when I’m up against a tight deadline fate gives me a gentle kicking. The race bus which has transformed my paddock experience failed it’s MOT test today with three pages of failures points.

However this I think is worse than it looks.

Basically it needs two new front leaf spring hangers and some patches to the rear box section near the rear hangers.

Plus a couple of flexible brake hoses, a new headlight and some tightening done on the handbrake lever. None if it is insurmountable and it is probably dooable in a long weekend. Unfortunately I don’t have a long weekend.

Posted in Race bus | Leave a comment

The Critical Path to getting out at Lydden

Posted on April 4, 2007 by admin

I’m really up against it now if I’m going to get the car out at the next meeting at Lydden Hill in Kent. I’m on holiday this week finishing off a few jobs around the house and trying to get the car finished

The major issue is brakes. The swap to class B and hence to 14″x 6 wheels has caused several problems, not least of which is the modification of brake rotors, brackets and callipers. I’ve made some progress on the front disks. I’m using AP racing rotors and ali mounting bells. As previosuly posted I’d modified the front calliper mounts to get the calipers under the new wheels. However I now have a second problem in that the combination of new bells and the existing calliper mounts means that the rotors aren’t running centrally in the pad grooves, I need a 2.5 mm ouboard offset of the disk. Previously I’ve tried resolving this with washers between the hub and the disk, but this simply caused unacceptable runout on the rotors. The solution is to place a small spacer between the hub (and disk) and the bearings in the hub. I’ll be getting some of these made up this week by Dave Turner. Yes you’ve guessed it another Cam7 mate.

Dave is also modifying my existing rear calliper brackets to allow me to use the Wilwood handbrake callipers. Of much more concern are the rear disks. Hi spec are making these up for me to 260mm diameter. So the most crucial component on the critical path is delivery of these disks. If they don’t arrive before I go on holiday, my chances of making Lydden will be non existant.

Dave Ts does me a big favour and has turned the parts around quickly, and I’ve today collected a bag of nicely machined Ali callipers brackets and spacers. Top work and all for the price of a couple of curries.

Posted in Winter 2008 Rebuild | Leave a comment

She Runs… at Last.

Posted on April 4, 2007 by admin
Apologies for no updates for a couple of weeks, but a fair bit of progress has been made on the car.

Firstly of course Tony Law has completed the fabrication of the exhaust, and typical of TLE it is very nicely fabricated. interestingly they hav opted for a 4-2-1 exhaust rather than the TLE thier collective experience. However if it is wrong it looks eay to convert as only a short link pipe will be needed. Unfortunately they forgot to weld a boss for the lambda sensor onto the new exhaust so I’ll need to do that later.

So with the New exhaust fitted there really wasn’t any sort of excuse not to fire the car up and see how she runs. This took quite a while to do as I hade to build up the induction gear, fill the oil and coolant circuits, connect a set of auxillery instruments and 20 other little jobs that needed doing before I could thumb the start button. However having turned her over on the start only to establish some oil pressure (a nice healthy 20PSI under cranking only) I took a deep breath and his “start”. After 20 seconds or so of cranking to pressurise the fuel rail away she went. Cold Idle oil pressure is about 24PSi hot is around 14, no oil or coolant leaks,

Fantastic. The new exhaust is nicely rumbly and it is fair to say she burbles nicely at idle. I did have a massive airlock in the coolant system though. Characterised by a rapid spike in the indiacted temperature as the water boilded in the head, and the coolant pipes not heating up correctly. Hoever I eventually managed to clerar this and even on a warm and sunny march day she sat and idled quite happily for 30+ minutes before getting anywhere near the point where the fan should cut in.
Good, it is nice to have some success at last.

The other thing I got sorted out today was, the reverse control mechanism. This operates on a lever at the back of the car. The easiest way to do this was via a push pull cable from Cable-tec.co.uk and a T Bar handle in the cockpit.

Posted in engine start., Idle oil pressure | Leave a comment