...

Two peices of the Jigsaw puzzle...

The Yamaha is being getting the final parts required to make it road legal.

Two key parts are still required and hopefully by the end of this week I'll have the parts.

The bike will be far from stock, and will retain the Harris air box for the flat slides, as well as the Dymags. Although I may swap out the front for the original front wheel in-order to fit the speedo drive. But we shall see. I'm also taking the easy way out with regards the radiator as despite having two radiators at the moment, for the road bike I feel it would be easier to fit an original set-up with fan.

Think that would only have indicators and mirrors as the final parts on the shopping list...

The plan is to retain the Harris alloy tank and buy the Lucky Strike GP sticker set to complete:-

one of the faves..

 

 

 

 

took out one of my favourite builds yesterday and still loving it! I've never seen another Iroko wood bodied schecter out there, I'm sure they exist, just haven't seen one. Mixed with a reverse-head neck and FATBOY vintage plastic, she's a cracker I reckon.
And yes, I know the lampshade has to go...

Some things just bug me..

So, initially it took me months to find an original OW01 seat.
Then, another huge amount of effort and too much cash, had me an airtech foam seat and replica bolts for the rear seat unit..
But when it arrived...it was pearl...not white...and that has bugged me ever since..

So: had to be done:

found in Japan. Right colour and complete.

adding parts to OW project

found this rather used and abused set up, perfect to finish off the front as I never had a bracket or idiot lights. I'll replace the speedo with a KM/H speedo I have that I bought for the ZXR.

These came up as well, so all I have to do is get the rear Öhlins serviced and then put it all back as it should be.

really happy about finding the parts at a fraction of the cost of what you'd expect.

Sunday and the OWl leaves the shed..and sets off alarms due to its' decibels...

60 bucks and the K gets some parts..

missin er...

Tough gear found for the OWL

turn key of the OW01

One step forwards...

It's been the never ending story trying to get the fuel pump to work normally.
If I wire up the pump directly to the battery, it worked. If I connected into the harness and turned key, the pump never worked..
So tonight , for the first time, I swapped around some of the relays and tried again.
I swapped the 25G-01 for 3GM relay and this time on turn key, the pump worked...and kept working without switching off...
Looking around the forums is also a real head scratcher...there is a lot written about the 25G on the Virago forums...half state it's the relay for the side stand and the other half for the fuel pump....

So, common sense here: the racing sprint harness that came with the bike only had a 3GM blue relay in the harness and no white based 25G. So I'm presuming I've wired it up wrong and I've fitted them into the wrong places in the harness. The positives are of course, that I can finally get the behemoth outside and start her up!

expensive sounds...

After the initial start-up of the OW01,
I haven't had time to get back down and see if I could get the bike running longer.
Tonight I went down to the bike and had another go.
This time, she started up and I managed to keep the bike running for a few minutes.
Everything seemed to be going well, but suddenly a really nasty sound was heard. A really high pitched screech, but it wasn't a constant.
I took the cam cover off and couldn't see any issues. But there is an issue for sure.

By all accounts I'm guessing it's going to be a proper issue....no idea what as head, but I reckon step one will be to whip the head off.

As I've never heard that sound previously, I'm clueless as to what the damage could be.
Facts are:
a) the sound wasn't there until after I kept her running for a few minutes.
b) the sound wasn't there any other time when turning over the engine- until she started and ran for a while.

it's only happening at a certain degree of when the engine is turning over...

Valve? Piston ring? spring? seized something?

Brough Superior on the salts at Bonneville

Great to see teams still competing with these vintage classics on the salts at Bonneville. Obviously brings back memories of Burt Munro and his Indian, which is a fantastic story and film about his assault on the world record.
Also shows the rest of us that there are years of tuning, bike riding and building on the way :)

hailwood...what a racer!

The bike most wanted back in the day as it was ridden by the legend and carried his name..

..course nowadays you'd probably be surprised at the weight of the beast, but back in the day I used to marvel at this bike at Better Bikes in Edinburgh...

Cams in...fuel pump primed....

Right then...

why did the cams have to come out you ask? Simple...I fucked up...infact, by the end of this I fucked up twice..very frustrating..

..so, first of all, there she was, put together, fuel pump attached to a battery to fuel up the fcr's just to make sure that there would be fuel in the bowls..

turn key..and...nothing..then a couple of huge back fires that would make a dragon proud!

however..on closer inspection I noticed water droplets dripping down the front cylinders...dammit! I realised that I hadn't torqued the head nuts properly and now I was paying the price!
..so..off came the radiator and plumbing, off came the FCR's and of course the cam cover.
Out came the cams...
..torqued down the heads...but before I put the cams in I checked the timing against the T mark..it was at this point I felt the timing wasn't as it should be..
..mistake number two coming soon..
to get the timing where I felt it should be..I unbolted the cam sprocket and moved it a few degrees to ensure (or though it was to ensure) the timing would be more correct.
..cams back in, FCR's back on...radiator and plumbing and of course all electrics..

turn key...wiz wiz CRACK!

..it was at this point the front part of the magnesium cam cover cracked off and spat itself over the floor...the changing of the cam sprocket had caused an ever so slight kink in the cam chain which simply snapped off the front of the cam cover...
..and..
...there was nobody to blame but myself however I tried to dismiss the fact that I had fucked up..
..so..
..off came the ...you get the idea..

Obviously by this time I was pretty pissed off at such a basic miss on my behalf. Luckily I had the original cover from the OWl as I had used a yzf750 cover as it had a better gasket.

oh yes..fitting of the rubber gasket to a magnesium cover..1 hour of fun..as it falls off when your turning it over to fit it..

Another look at the timing, including putting back the cam sprocket to exactly where it was, getting the TDC on the first cylinder, getting the lobes in the suggested area of O/C and then ensuring the timing marks were set, and it was back on with everything.

This time everything turned over as it should..no kinks...

primed up the carbs again and hit the start button..

..she was struggling to fire up and seemed to only be "making some noise" on the cylinder 4.
Right enough, only pipe 4 was getting warm.
opened the mouths of the FCRs several times and suddenly, on the starter, she fired up!

Obviously the FCR's are extremely temperamental with regards start-up it's gonna take a wee bit work to ensure the settings are correct. The tick-over setting hasn't been set and I'm not currently convinced the fuel pump is actually working, but will soon find out.

Next on the agenda is to get the bike outside and see if I can get her started again and get some idea of where we are with the FCR's. No water appearing anywhere which was the first major issue sorted out. Part II will be sooner than later...

..you put your ex cam in, your inlet out, you do the hokikoki and you...drive yourself mad!

Two of the greatest road racers captured in tandem! Hizzy and Joey!

Best job in the world must have been a grease monkey in the Lancia Custom Shop..

Heavy clouds currently infest the yami ow startup..

Owl blood transfusion and cover change

Today and the Owl got a blood transfusion. After having discussed the oil requirements I discovered that the Motul 300V fully synthetic oil was NOT the way to go with an Fzr750r Ow01. Now what was useful was the 3 litres of Mobil Super 2000 semi that I bought for the Zxrr before it was stolen...
...And after the discussion with the Ducati mechanic, apparently the best oil for the 748s Ducatis is the Motul 300V..win win!
This was also a handy time to take the advice from the same person and change the clutch cover to a version with an oil window as the Owls are very sensitive to oil levels and also burn oil quite fast. This was a pleasure as the original looked pretty poor.
Before:

After:-

Epic And Supercharged :)