So I got these crashbars off of a salvage bike back in July. They were chrome and had some mild rust pitting. I sanded them down and primered and painted them gloss black. Continue reading “Crashbars finally installed.”
Washing off the bugs
I thought I should wash all of the bugs and crud off of it before installing the crashbars.
Crashbars? You mean from back in July? That’s right. They’re painted gloss black now and I finally have a chance to install them. I’ll put the results of that in the next post.
2 days, 300+ miles
I had to test out the new carbs so I took off again this morning for a round trip from Houston-Galveston-Freeport-Angleton-Houston again. I took a couple of pics along the way. At the end I stopped by BestBuy and got chased into the parking lot by a Harley guy. I stopped and pulled off my helmet and he lets me know he has a Red/Black ’84 700S that he bought brand new and now only has 9,000 miles on it. Mine is 3.9 miles shy of 20,000 miles 😉
Sunshine + Iron Maiden + Motorcycle = :-)
I’m finally in town for a little while and had a chance to get back to the bike. Nick managed to speak a few words of carburetor to my bike so it would play nice with K&N. We ended up rejetting the carbs, more air more fuel I guess. You can’t argue with the final results however. There aren’t enough O’s in smoooooooth to describe how this thing revs below 5K rpm now. No popping, stumbling, or hesitation from the silky smooth idle all the way up to redline. I put 140 miles on it yesterday, both highway and about town and even some gridlock to test it out. Thanks Nick.
More K&N fun
I’m still trying to get the K&N to work at low RPMs because I’ve tasted the increase in performance at high RPMs and I liked it. I first tried cutting the yogurt cup down by about half an inch, since this reduced the diameter of the lip it reduced the height of the cup inside the cone tremendously. Before the lip of the cup was resting on the pleats and the bottom of the cup was flush with the opening of the cone. With the cup cut so the outside diameter of the lip was exactly the same as the inside diameter of the bottom of the cone the bottom of the cup sat about 3″ below the opening of the cone.
My 700 at a “car” show
I rode my 700 to the Uptown Auto Meet or whatever it’s called.
The other “cars” at the show can be seen here.
K&N filter upgrade with yogurt cup modification
I bought a K&N filter for my 700. I’ve had K&N filters on all of my vehicles and never had an issue. However on the 700 its freer flowing ways make the engine run lean. Following a tip from a friend I looked for something to reduce the volume of the filter and ended up with an upside-down yogurt cup inside the cone filter. This should reduce the volume of air, increase the speed, lower the pressure, and help the fuel atomize. The yogurt cup definitely helped the performance of the K&N. Without it it barely starts and sputters and pops and won’t climb above 4grand. Once the cup is in place it will climb ok, but the exhaust still sounds “hollow” for lack of a better word and will backfire between 4500 and 5000 rpm. Once you get it past 5000 rpm it takes off and you better be holding on tight.
So I need to tweak my yogurt cup, or mebbe fiddle with the slow-speed jets…
An audio file of the exhaust note with K&N and yogurt cup installed can be heard here. The beginning of the file is at 2K rpm, the next step up is 3K, then up to 4K where you can begin to hear popping all the way up to 5K. The rev after that went straight to 8K with no resistance.
Taking a break
I went back out in the garage to finish the crash bars, but I saw the bike sitting there, and even though it was cloudy I just had to go for a ride.
Crash bars, part like no duh
I finally got a chance to start painting on the crash bars. I got another brass wire wheel for my dremel type tool and knocked a bit more rust off the smaller bits. Roughed up all pieces with some sand paper. I originally was going to use 600 but it didn’t seem rough enough for the primer so I went with some 400 grit. After all parts were scuffed I hung the bars from string, placed the attachment hardware on a piece of cardboard, and pushed the nuts and bolts through the same cardboard and got to spraying. I’ve got two thin coats of primer on all pieces now with wet sanding in between. The sun’s going down so I’ll finish it tomorrow hopefully. The good news is I picked these up for $50 with all the necessary pieces to attach them. They need some cleaning up, but I want them black instead of chrome anyways. I just found these exact same bars, minus the U-bolt necessary for mounting on eBay going for $110. I think I got a deal.
Crash bars, so I can crash
I’ve been touring the salvage yards looking for the original forks for my bike. No luck yet, but I did find some crash bars that I wanted. As you can see the chrome was a bit rusted, I cleaned that up and made them shine, but before I put them on the bike I’m going to paint them black.