What did you do to your Vmax today? Part 2

[Bill Seward]

Got the bags kinda semi mounted.... A bit more fooling around, then I'll remove any excess strap material. I'll make sure the straps don't loosen by using a black zip tie near the buckles. Get them tight, and nothing should loosen.

I may try to work out getting the straps across the saddle to go under it. then, refueling would be easy, and they'd be "permanently" mounted.

Signals should go right on, and wire up easily.

 

[tothemax93]

Bags look good on there Bill.

 

[ninjaneer]

repaired broken and bent pilot screw orings in hopes that they were contributing to my idle problems http://www.vmaxforum.net/showthread.php?t=27620

Regards from my Taptalking Hercules Android

 

[CrackerRican]

I agree!! I've been wanting to change headlight style for a long time, but nothing really turn me on. Then I saw a tread about it and I fell in love with it. Had to have it. I still have to wire it up in the morning

Finished wiring the Vrod headlight. Also added blue LED to the parking light & gonna tie into the LED accent lighting later. Also put on some ISO Kuryakyn grips with Trident bar end mirrors. What a difference!!! I can see at night now with Vrod light & be seen during day light hours & see behind me now.

Safety upgrades

 

[KJShover]

Backed the Dodge out of the garage to make some room for working on Archangel. Damn I love that truck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN1v...c=7ab83KDogjSPfM0LO0qx36Hj4T-4m4-T95sB11kWaSo

I have a week off for spring break, so I'm getting things together to put the Archangel back together.
Come on summertime, I now can't wait for the snow to melt.

Will toss some pictures of her up later on this week as she goes back together.

 

[jagco1]

New Shinkos front and rear. First set ever....MAJOR difference.

What size tires you had install front and rear, what model tires.
How do they ride on the bike.

Thanks

 

[jagco1]

I painted the rear dust cap and brake arm, install the zombie foot pegs, change oil and filter, change rear gear oil, clean up the bike.

 

[KJShover]

Finished wiring the Vrod headlight. Also added blue LED to the parking light & gonna tie into the LED accent lighting later. Also put on some ISO Kuryakyn grips with Trident bar end mirrors. What a difference!!! I can see at night now with Vrod light & be seen during day light hours & see behind me now.

Safety upgrades

Turned out factory looking sweet

 

[timscues]

First test ride after the rebuild, everything was great the ufo quazilla are a little louder than I thought but think that's due to the 1500 Tour master, liking the bar end mirrors and no more speed wobble
Suspension is a little on the stiffer side but will learn to enjoy it more IMO . How do I post a video on here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaqLP7b1bhc&list=HL1363015106&feature=mh_lolz
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Tex85]

Charity ride today in central Florida for the local Shriner chapter. I counted up the non-Harley bikes and I was 1 of less than 10... Definitely the only VMAX present All said and done it was a good time and I scored a door prize as well!

 

[Fire-medic]

Some things I did today to use-up stuff I had lying around including things I never made time to do:

• relocate horn so I can remount my crash bars (they're still not on!)
• new headlight (CAUTION!!! Component is from The Dark Side)
• Superbrace mounted

Headlight first.

I bought an EMGO 7" headlight bucket, seal-beam & bezel on a closeout deal from my local shop in Dania Beach FL 33004, Competition Cycle Center. Anyone who's been around bikes since the '70's-'80's will recognize the style, it was common on Japanese bikes of large-displacement. I stored the seal beam it came with and installed a halogen headlight/bulb in the EMGO bezel, it fit just-fine. I bought it off a guy who was changing the headlight on his Harley Dresser, it was used from the dealer to the ride home, and put onto a shelf, so, brand-new. The guy also had a Nissan GTR in the garage sharing-space w/the Harley.

I ordered some 43 mm downtube rubber-insulated headlamp mounts and ears off ebay when I couldn't find anything in the Parts Unlimited catalog I liked. They are black and double clamp on the downtubes, and come w/black anodized hardware, but I swapped the bolts for some longer ones. What I like is the downtube bracket/sleeves have ~3/16" thick rubber gaskets for vibration protection.

I dismounted the top triple tree to slide-on the headlamp mounting brackets, and the 'ears' use two-6 mm x 1.0 machine screws and nylok nuts to bolt everything up. I had to mount the headlamp brackets just-above the bottom triple tree to clear my stock Yamaha flyscreen at the top of the headlamp bucket. I used vise-grips (jaws wrapped w/tape) to pull together the brackets so I could use shorter bolts for securing the 'ears'. Some of the ears/brackets I saw aren't rubber insulated, or use a cheesy captive-tongue in a mating slot, and are held in-place w/only one fastener. "Pass!"

The only thing different from the stock headlight is there is no room inside the bucket for the turnsignal wiring & etc. usually found there, I am going to use a length of bicycle inner tube to surround all the electrical connections, and use a couple of Zip ties to cinch-down the ends of the bicycle tube to make the connections weather-resistant. Kinda like making sausage.

There is no additional bracket to hold the headlight aimed correctly, I am gonna run w/it & see how it holds-up, maybe I'll have to fab something to hold the headlight in adjustment. If you look at my pics, you'll see where I used some rubber & cloth-reinforced thick fender washers between the headlamp bucket and the 'ears.' That allowed me to gain an additional bit of vibration-damping for the bulb elements, and should hold the adjustment I set the headlight at for up & down trajectory, we'll see...

I also installed a Superbrace fork brace, purchased from another forum member, sorry, I forget who it was, but it came in great shape & included the SS allen-head screws. Since I installed my UFO 4/1 "Dragstar" recently, I 'lost' my centerstand. I used a floor jack at the front of the engine & a piece of board under the sidestand to maintain the bike's equilibrium while I removed the front axle. I had to remove that and the right FZR1000 4-pot caliper to get enough room to remove the fender. I didn't see any need to remove the wheel from the fork legs, removing the axle allowed me enough room to remove the fender mounting bolts to swap-out the stock brace for the Superbrace. I installed the front fender to it and then re-installed the axle and torqued-down the Superbrace SS allen screws last of all, to prevent binding from a misalignment of incorrectly tightening the SUperbrace before the front axle/wheel was remounted. There is a shot showing the right caliper removed to be able to remove the wheel, and a shot of the tightening the Superbrace w/the axle/wheel installed.

I have a WOLO Bad Boy airhorn, a copy of a Steibel, Harbor Freight sells 'em, I think they're about $40, a good investment, as it's self-contained, and I initially mounted it in-place of my left carsh bar. Today I made a bracket from an aluminum L-angle of about 1-1/2" and mounted it on the left "V" between the cylinders, in-place of the vanity covers over the VBoost plumbing. I soon saw that I was blocking the idle-adjustment screw, so I merely-swapped it to the right side of the engine, same place, leaving the idle screw free for adjustment. I did have to fabricate some short 'jumpers' from the stock horn leads as they were too-short; I used the encapsulated ones for the spade terminal ends. Yes, I'm gonna paint the bracket to make it 'disappear,' maybe some 'lightening holes' too for that steampunk/competition appearance.:biglaugh:

So, that's it.









Today's work:

• new 7" headlight
• new Superbrace
• new airhorn mounting
• oh, I touched-up the rear flat black rear of the front fender while it was off, I used the same paint I did the engine with recently after a sandblasting of the engine

And this is all on-top of:

• a fresh valve job
• undercut transmission
• new OEM gaskets/seals
• clearanced crankshaft
• Gannon's COP's conversion
• Dyna 3000 ignition box
• Dynojet Stage 7, complete install
• UFO Dragstar 4/1
• replaced stator and coil pick-up
• Ballistic Li-ion vanity battery
• new regulator/rectifier
• 17" X 5.5" Kosman rear wheel
• new Bridgestone radial tires
• new OEM front brake master cylinder
• FZR1000 4-pot calipers
• Russell SS braided front brake lines
• 298 mm OEM rotors
• 1993+ 43 mm front end, complete. I still have a set of Race-Tech springs & some RICOR's to install
• new clutch slave cylinder
• PCW extra-friction disc clutch kit, w/new OEM Yamaha friction discs and the PCW heavy-duty diaphragm spring
• fresh MOTUL full-synthetic motorcycle oil

Adding all this up, w/o actually pullling my receipts, just from recollection of prices, I came-up w/"halfway to a good, used 2009 Gen II." Looking at it like that, I almost wish I didn't spend the $. I could have parted-out my bike or sold it outright and that would have been even further-along to that Gen. II. Oh well, what-else are ya gonna spend your $ on? The kids are thru college and giving us grandsons now. Besides, when you find the right place to crank-'er open, that's a nice feeling. :biglaugh: and the bike is probably better than when I bought it w/1700 miles on it from the dealer, barely a year-old. I've had it for 21 years now, so it looks like I'm going to be hanging onto it. If I returned it to stock and sold it, I might get $3K for it, plus whatever I could get for the stuff I removed, so looks like it's time to enjoy my equity. :rocket bike:

I'm still on my first tank of gas since dropping-in the engine after the head work. I probably don't have 10 tanks through it since all that stuff listed above was done, about half of it was done within the last month.

A fitting ending to my unfortunate dyno dilemma :damn angry: of awhile ago. Now to ride it for a bit, and then I'll strip it down the the frame, have it sandblasted and powdercoated. Daytona is beckoning this coming week, I hope to be there TH-SU. unk:

Also here's a pic of the guy's bike Kyle scored some wire wheels for his drag bike off-of. I think he may have swapped the guy a Venture engine for the wheels. That's what it had in it, a 1300 Venture, w/VBoost. I saw him at Competition Cycle Center while I was out for a shake-down cruise. He had a Kerker 4/1 which sounded good, even though I believe it's a Venture engine. He was riding w/his wife who had her own smaller Ninja. My UFO sounded louder though! He said he heard me approaching while he was still in the store, and came-out to see what was making all that noise.:biglaugh: I tried to depart at the same time he & his wife did, but he seemed in a hurry to leave before me. No opportunity there.

 

[tothemax93]

Got in the 60's today. Went on a little 50 mile run around Western NY. Went up near Dennis's (Dman) place in Hamburg. Didn't see him though. He never did give me the name of his road.:hmmm:

 

[CrackerRican]

First test ride after the rebuild, everything was great the ufo quazilla are a little louder than I thought but think that's due to the 1500 Tour master, liking the bar end mirrors and no more speed wobble
Suspension is a little on the stiffer side but will learn to enjoy it more IMO . How do I post a video on here?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2

I have quadzillas on mine & I thought the same thing when i installed them, louder than I expected. Made my ears ring. I wear ear plugs on long run. BTW your bike looking good

 

[2manyhobbies]

My Vmax project (1988) has been in storage for a little over a year. A couple days ago I got it out and found that the carbs needed cleaning. So yesterday I did that and changed the oil. Today I installed the cleaned carbs with new boots, cleaned the plugs, found a bad coil connection on #3 cyl. then got it running! Took it for a spin around the neighborhood - it was 60? and beautiful. Went to sync the carbs and found that most of the mercury substitute in my manometer had evaporated. Guess I will get some new fluid!
Next - rebuild the forks, install some new used parts then onto the cosmetics!
Brad

 

[tothemax93]

My Vmax project (1988) has been in storage for a little over a year. A couple days ago I got it out and found that the carbs needed cleaning. So yesterday I did that and changed the oil. Today I installed the cleaned carbs with new boots, cleaned the plugs, found a bad coil connection on #3 cyl. then got it running! Took it for a spin around the neighborhood - it was 60? and beautiful. Went to sync the carbs and found that most of the mercury substitute in my manometer had evaporated. Guess I will get some new fluid!
Next - rebuild the forks, install some new used parts then onto the cosmetics!
Brad

http://www.vmaxforum.net/showthread.php?t=11514 post #11 and #29 will be very helpful in rebuilding forks.

 

[hijacker]

Reinstalled all the aluminum parts that I had powder coated today.
Then I took it for a ride! unk:



The before pics...

As it looks now...

I'm really liking the black and yellow. Not sure I'm going to paint the bike now.

 

[timscues]

The headlight looks killer, I likey

Some things I did today to use-up stuff I had lying around including things I never made time to do:

• relocate horn so I can remount my crash bars (they're still not on!)
• new headlight (CAUTION!!! Component is from The Dark Side)
• Superbrace mounted

Headlight first.

I bought an EMGO 7" headlight bucket, seal-beam & bezel on a closeout deal from my local shop in Dania Beach FL 33004, Competition Cycle Center. Anyone who's been around bikes since the '70's-'80's will recognize the style, it was common on Japanese bikes of large-displacement. I stored the seal beam it came with and installed a halogen headlight/bulb in the EMGO bezel, it fit just-fine. I bought it off a guy who was changing the headlight on his Harley Dresser, it was used from the dealer to the ride home, and put onto a shelf, so, brand-new. The guy also had a Nissan GTR in the garage sharing-space w/the Harley.

I ordered some 43 mm downtube rubber-insulated headlamp mounts and ears off ebay when I couldn't find anything in the Parts Unlimited catalog I liked. They are black and double clamp on the downtubes, and come w/black anodized hardware, but I swapped the bolts for some longer ones. What I like is the downtube bracket/sleeves have ~3/16" thick rubber gaskets for vibration protection.

I dismounted the top triple tree to slide-on the headlamp mounting brackets, and the 'ears' use two-6 mm x 1.0 machine screws and nylok nuts to bolt everything up. I had to mount the headlamp brackets just-above the bottom triple tree to clear my stock Yamaha flyscreen at the top of the headlamp bucket. I used vise-grips (jaws wrapped w/tape) to pull together the brackets so I could use shorter bolts for securing the 'ears'. Some of the ears/brackets I saw aren't rubber insulated, or use a cheesy captive-tongue in a mating slot, and are held in-place w/only one fastener. "Pass!"

The only thing different from the stock headlight is there is no room inside the bucket for the turnsignal wiring & etc. usually found there, I am going to use a length of bicycle inner tube to surround all the electrical connections, and use a couple of Zip ties to cinch-down the ends of the bicycle tube to make the connections weather-resistant. Kinda like making sausage.

There is no additional bracket to hold the headlight aimed correctly, I am gonna run w/it & see how it holds-up, maybe I'll have to fab something to hold the headlight in adjustment. If you look at my pics, you'll see where I used some rubber & cloth-reinforced thick fender washers between the headlamp bucket and the 'ears.' That allowed me to gain an additional bit of vibration-damping for the bulb elements, and should hold the adjustment I set the headlight at for up & down trajectory, we'll see...

I also installed a Superbrace fork brace, purchased from another forum member, sorry, I forget who it was, but it came in great shape & included the SS allen-head screws. Since I installed my UFO 4/1 "Dragstar" recently, I 'lost' my centerstand. I used a floor jack at the front of the engine & a piece of board under the sidestand to maintain the bike's equilibrium while I removed the front axle. I had to remove that and the right FZR1000 4-pot caliper to get enough room to remove the fender. I didn't see any need to remove the wheel from the fork legs, removing the axle allowed me enough room to remove the fender mounting bolts to swap-out the stock brace for the Superbrace. I installed the front fender to it and then re-installed the axle and torqued-down the Superbrace SS allen screws last of all, to prevent binding from a misalignment of incorrectly tightening the SUperbrace before the front axle/wheel was remounted. There is a shot showing the right caliper removed to be able to remove the wheel, and a shot of the tightening the Superbrace w/the axle/wheel installed.

I have a WOLO Bad Boy airhorn, a copy of a Steibel, Harbor Freight sells 'em, I think they're about $40, a good investment, as it's self-contained, and I initially mounted it in-place of my left carsh bar. Today I made a bracket from an aluminum L-angle of about 1-1/2" and mounted it on the left "V" between the cylinders, in-place of the vanity covers over the VBoost plumbing. I soon saw that I was blocking the idle-adjustment screw, so I merely-swapped it to the right side of the engine, same place, leaving the idle screw free for adjustment. I did have to fabricate some short 'jumpers' from the stock horn leads as they were too-short; I used the encapsulated ones for the spade terminal ends. Yes, I'm gonna paint the bracket to make it 'disappear,' maybe some 'lightening holes' too for that steampunk/competition appearance.:biglaugh:

So, that's it.







Today's work:

• new 7" headlight
• new Superbrace
• new airhorn mounting
• oh, I touched-up the rear flat black rear of the front fender while it was off, I used the same paint I did the engine with recently after a sandblasting of the engine

And this is all on-top of:

• a fresh valve job
• undercut transmission
• new OEM gaskets/seals
• clearanced crankshaft
• Gannon's COP's conversion
• Dyna 3000 ignition box
• Dynojet Stage 7, complete install
• UFO Dragstar 4/1
• replaced stator and coil pick-up
• Ballistic Li-ion vanity battery
• new regulator/rectifier
• 17" X 5.5" Kosman rear wheel
• new Bridgestone radial tires
• new OEM front brake master cylinder
• FZR1000 4-pot calipers
• Russell SS braided front brake lines
• 298 mm OEM rotors
• 1993+ 43 mm front end, complete. I still have a set of Race-Tech springs & some RICOR's to install
• new clutch slave cylinder
• PCW extra-friction disc clutch kit, w/new OEM Yamaha friction discs and the PCW heavy-duty diaphragm spring
• fresh MOTUL full-synthetic motorcycle oil

I'm still on my first tank of gas since dropping-in the engine after the head work. I probably don't have 10 tanks through it since all that stuff listed above was done, about half of it was done within the last month.

A fitting ending to my unfortunate dyno dilemma :damn angry: of awhile ago. Now to ride it for a bit, and then I'll strip it down the the frame, have it sandblasted and powdercoated. Daytona is beckoning this coming week, I hope to be there TH-SU. unk:

Also here's a pic of the guy's bike Kyle scored some wire wheels for his drag bike off-of. I think he may have swapped the guy a Venture engine for the wheels. That's what it had in it, a 1300 Venture, w/VBoost. I saw him at Competition Cycle Center while I was out for a shake-down cruise. He had a Kerker 4/1 which sounded good, even though I believe it's a Venture engine. He was riding w/his wife who had her own smaller Ninja. My UFO sounded louder though! He said he heard me approaching while he was still in the store, and came-out to see what was making all that noise.:biglaugh: I tried to depart at the same time he & his wife did, but he seemed in a hurry to leave before me. No opportunity there.

 

[2manyhobbies]

http://www.vmaxforum.net/showthread.php?t=11514 post #11 and #29 will be very helpful in rebuilding forks.

Thank you for the link to the thread! That is a great video, and it will sure help seeing it done before I start myself.
Thanks again,
Brad

 

[vmax2extreme]

Just started to polish up my new 17" wheels. I have to get them all nice and shiny!!!

 

[CaptainKyle]

Just started to polish up my new 17" wheels. I have to get them all nice and shiny!!!

Looking good your gonna love them.