- Joined
- Oct 12, 2009
- Messages
- 11,237
- Reaction score
- 4,199
- Location
- Cape Town
- Bike
- Triumph (all models)
So I have known the Buddy a good few years already and in our conversations once upon a day it came out that he races the bike in question in the Classic racing class , great , years previously I started off racing on one as well and I suddenly started getting all sentimental , so what can we do to Buddy's bike to improve it .
When the bike first arrived at my place it looked like a standardish Z1000J with an Eddie Lawson replica seat and very green paint , look a bit closer and notice the bellmouths on the carbs , mmmm , but what lurks inside , in this case 1105 High compression Wiseco pistons :biggrin: , look a bit closer and notice the Ikon ( Koni ) rear shocks , and also the very graunched Cowley exhaust mounted way too far to the side of the bike and severely limiting ground clearance , now this will not do .
Immediate plan of action was to obtain more ground clearance so the Cowley exhaust was shitcanned and we obtained a beautiful Kerker replica silencer and to that I got the kind folk at Bosson to make up a header pipe to my measurements and match it to the Kereker silencer . At the same time I did some mods to the carbs and checked valve clearances which were all way wrong and I also noticed that the cam timing was out , I reshimmed the cylinder head and set the cams in correctly .
So time for test ride , and this is the first time I am riding this bike , up and down the road a few times to warm it up , then I gave it a bit of stick and the front wheel went skywards :biggrin: , oh well hook second gear and the wheel stays there , bliksem this is good so into third gear and the front wheel is still very airborne . Dammit , this is a classic bike that thinks it is an XR , well nothing for it other than spend the afternoon wheelying up and down the road to the delight of all the neighbouring businesses , hee ha , this is fun .
Buddy pops around Saturday morning and goes for a test ride , when he returned he was grinning so much the top of his head almost fell off , so I had to show off it's mono wheel ability once more . Buddy collects the bike for it's next outing and phones me the night before his first race on rejuvenated Eddie , there is a problem in that the bike used to hit redline in top gear at the end of the back straight and now it doesn't
, nope , now it is hitting redline halfway down the back straight , now that is a good problem . Just rev it , these engines are good and strong , bent valves only happen at 11 000 rpm ( don't ask how I know ) , and so it was that Eddie started getting his Mojo back again .
Then on race day , DISASTER , the bike is running intermittently on 2 and 4 cylinders , nothing could be done on race day so the following week I started making up a new wiring loom to replace the vrot and brittle original loom , this I hooked up to a magic set of Dyna coils and Dyna ignition , now we had steady and reliable sparks .
After that first race I happened to find a set of rearset footrests that I had made for my own bike years before and these were installed with a few modifications for comfort after all we aren't as supple as we were 20+ years ago , but the bike gained lots of extra ground clearance while still being relatively comfortable .
Next up was to work on handling , the rear shocks were good but I felt we needed more weight on the front end so after a bit of shopping around we sourced a set of rims from a GSXR750F , axle diameters were the same as original so it was a simple issue of turning out spacers for the wheels as well as the discs , the bike already had a single GSXR1000 radial caliper installed , but there was no way that the rear caliper would work so I installed a rear caliper from the GSXR750F , took a bit of machining to get it to work and we now have a full floating rear caliper . Needless to say that the changes made a tremendous improvement to handling , the bike handled as if on rails and bonus is that we are now able to obtain better tyres for racing .
We did however notice that with the improved handling and performance the brakes were starting to take strain , so the latest change was to convert to a double disc set up , once again GSXR1000 radial calipers on 300mm discs and working off an AP Lockheed master cylinder , the brakes are now up to scratch .
Future work involves bracing the frame and tring to source or manufacture a better swingarm , while all that is happening the cylinder head comes off to freshen up the valves and seats ans well as cleaning up the ports a bit . While I am bout that I am also looking for a set of sidecovers for the bike as well as an Eddie Lawson replica fairing to finish it off .
This has been a genuine case of a work in progress , and thankfully a gradually improved work in progress , it is one of those bikes that always gets me excited to work on and even more exciting when I do the occasional test ride .
So stay tuned for more updates as we go along :thumleft:
When the bike first arrived at my place it looked like a standardish Z1000J with an Eddie Lawson replica seat and very green paint , look a bit closer and notice the bellmouths on the carbs , mmmm , but what lurks inside , in this case 1105 High compression Wiseco pistons :biggrin: , look a bit closer and notice the Ikon ( Koni ) rear shocks , and also the very graunched Cowley exhaust mounted way too far to the side of the bike and severely limiting ground clearance , now this will not do .
Immediate plan of action was to obtain more ground clearance so the Cowley exhaust was shitcanned and we obtained a beautiful Kerker replica silencer and to that I got the kind folk at Bosson to make up a header pipe to my measurements and match it to the Kereker silencer . At the same time I did some mods to the carbs and checked valve clearances which were all way wrong and I also noticed that the cam timing was out , I reshimmed the cylinder head and set the cams in correctly .
So time for test ride , and this is the first time I am riding this bike , up and down the road a few times to warm it up , then I gave it a bit of stick and the front wheel went skywards :biggrin: , oh well hook second gear and the wheel stays there , bliksem this is good so into third gear and the front wheel is still very airborne . Dammit , this is a classic bike that thinks it is an XR , well nothing for it other than spend the afternoon wheelying up and down the road to the delight of all the neighbouring businesses , hee ha , this is fun .
Buddy pops around Saturday morning and goes for a test ride , when he returned he was grinning so much the top of his head almost fell off , so I had to show off it's mono wheel ability once more . Buddy collects the bike for it's next outing and phones me the night before his first race on rejuvenated Eddie , there is a problem in that the bike used to hit redline in top gear at the end of the back straight and now it doesn't
, nope , now it is hitting redline halfway down the back straight , now that is a good problem . Just rev it , these engines are good and strong , bent valves only happen at 11 000 rpm ( don't ask how I know ) , and so it was that Eddie started getting his Mojo back again .Then on race day , DISASTER , the bike is running intermittently on 2 and 4 cylinders , nothing could be done on race day so the following week I started making up a new wiring loom to replace the vrot and brittle original loom , this I hooked up to a magic set of Dyna coils and Dyna ignition , now we had steady and reliable sparks .
After that first race I happened to find a set of rearset footrests that I had made for my own bike years before and these were installed with a few modifications for comfort after all we aren't as supple as we were 20+ years ago , but the bike gained lots of extra ground clearance while still being relatively comfortable .
Next up was to work on handling , the rear shocks were good but I felt we needed more weight on the front end so after a bit of shopping around we sourced a set of rims from a GSXR750F , axle diameters were the same as original so it was a simple issue of turning out spacers for the wheels as well as the discs , the bike already had a single GSXR1000 radial caliper installed , but there was no way that the rear caliper would work so I installed a rear caliper from the GSXR750F , took a bit of machining to get it to work and we now have a full floating rear caliper . Needless to say that the changes made a tremendous improvement to handling , the bike handled as if on rails and bonus is that we are now able to obtain better tyres for racing .
We did however notice that with the improved handling and performance the brakes were starting to take strain , so the latest change was to convert to a double disc set up , once again GSXR1000 radial calipers on 300mm discs and working off an AP Lockheed master cylinder , the brakes are now up to scratch .
Future work involves bracing the frame and tring to source or manufacture a better swingarm , while all that is happening the cylinder head comes off to freshen up the valves and seats ans well as cleaning up the ports a bit . While I am bout that I am also looking for a set of sidecovers for the bike as well as an Eddie Lawson replica fairing to finish it off .
This has been a genuine case of a work in progress , and thankfully a gradually improved work in progress , it is one of those bikes that always gets me excited to work on and even more exciting when I do the occasional test ride .
So stay tuned for more updates as we go along :thumleft:
