All for Racing - CBR Build/Crash/Rebuild

[Spec-ECU]

Originally Posted by number_6

looks cool. buy yourself a bench to raise that thing up on.

Echoing this. Love my folding steel work table whenever I'm doing any kind of dabbling on the bikes.

[stangmx13]

end of sunday update....

today was a bit of a scramble. i scheduled a dyno tuning session for tomorrow morning, so i had to rush to get a new Bazzaz Z-FI and Z-Bomb installed, while also taking care of removing the PAIR emissions stuff so i could get a good map.

but before that, i completed the fiberglass work on the upper and installed some buttonhead Dzus fasteners.... way better than leaving a huge gap. i may primer it before the race, i may not. pics of the whole bodywork to come tmrw AM when i load it up.



getting down to the valve cover to remove the emissions was a bit of a pain. i was shocked when the upper injector fuel rail just popped apart and all the injectors practically fell out. Honda traded the bulky metal rail on my 04 for plastic parts, not sure how i feel about that.



finally got down there and installed some PAIR block-off plates from Dan Kyle. heres one plate on the L and the original piece on the R for comparison.



after all that, assembly was kinda scary. the first time i had everything connected and turned on the key, fuel sprayed out from underneath the fuel rail on one of the injectors. had to remove the rail, fix the o-ring on that injector, and re-install everything... thank the moto gods that it worked fine after that.

after all that, the list is a bit shorter. Penske shock is in (though the res isnt mounted) and the front brakes are bled. so really, all i have left is:
- safety wire entire bike
- swap chain/sprockets
- coolant -> WW
- make bracket for Penske Res
- install brake pads
- revalve and respring forks
ya, plenty to do still, ha.

Originally Posted by sinncere

Echoing this. Love my folding steel work table whenever I'm doing any kind of dabbling on the bikes.

def will get one sometime. itd be nice to be able to sit on a stool and work low instead of on the ground

[Spec-ECU]

Originally Posted by stangmx13

def will get one sometime. itd be nice to be able to sit on a stool and work low instead of on the ground

I'm six feet tall; trust me, nice is an understatement.

Will PM you some info.

[stangmx13]

id say this bike has at least 10-15HP more than my old one. the old bike didnt even have a PC let alone an exhaust on it. not sure im going to know what to do w/ all that midrange power. oh, and just to be clear, the baseline run here is already w/ the Akra full exhaust and the Bazzaz running its preloaded slip-on map. the tuner said 101-102 is normal for a bone-stock 600RR.

[stangmx13]

another update. getting very very close

my Penske res mount... not bad for a piece of AL angle, a dremel, and a drill


new springs on the way, should be here tmrw. these forks were def more difficult to take apart than my last pair.


and heres some of the magic in the forks... the compression stack. i havent yet decided how much im going to modify this shim arrangement, but most likely itll be a dramatic change. im actually surprised the OE stack is as stiff as it is. ill prob go to something maybe 3x as stiff for starters. ya, im making a 10% change in springrate and prob a 300% change in stack stiffness, hehe.

[firstbuell]

Originally Posted by sinncere

Echoing this. Love my folding steel work table whenever I'm doing any kind of dabbling on the bikes.

I've been drooling for 1 if those tables since seeing the Graves setup @ Sears Point AMA Pro

what brand do you have? cost?
would you recommend yours?

[Spec-ECU]

Originally Posted by firstbuell

I've been drooling for 1 if those tables since seeing the Graves setup @ Sears Point AMA Pro

what brand do you have? cost?
would you recommend yours?

Mine's the Powerstands Racing folding table, cost me about $170 picked up locally. Yes, I would recommend it.

[stangmx13]

oh man, i rly could have used that folding table last night. essentially sat on the ground for 3hrs drilling and safety wiring.

Originally Posted by number_6

how do you know what the change in damping will be?

are you planning on keeping the stock internals and changing only the shims?

i really dont know exactly what the damping change will be. making the stack 3x stiffer wont produce 3x the damping. but rly, my change to the stack stiffness is essentially an educated guess. ive based it off of what kinda worked on my old bike, how the new bike felt in stock form, what info my tuner has offered me, what i can find on the internet from reputable sources/tuners, and other "better" shim stacks from Ohlins.

for example, w/ my old bike, the compression valve had the same port sizes as what Ohlins sells in the FPK kits, so their shim stack was a good starting pt. it was 12x stiffer than the OE one. i made a stack that was about 10x stiffer than the OE one and used the mid-valve (back side of the rebound valve) to generate some more compression damping. the new bike is a little more difficult because the compression valve is dramatically different... big holes vs small holes.

it was actually pretty ez to feel on the new bike that there was not enough high speed damping. with the low speed compression adjuster screw all the way in, the forks felt wooden when pitching forward from braking, but the second u hit a bump, the forks would blow through their stroke.

but ya, ill be using the OE valves and replacing only shims. im also going to disable the hydraulic lock to gain 20+mm of useful travel. bottoming can easily be controlled by damping and air gap, no use for a hydraulic lock in racing.

[ThumperX]

[tonedeaf]

this is my dream. good luck rob, i'm liking the updates!

[stangmx13]

Friday morning... not much time left. would u say im cutting it close?

simple bolt-on


less simple bolt-on. always a pain getting a stator cover off without prying the seal edge. theres a big casting tab on the left of the stock cover that i pried with my tire lever after pounding on the cover w/ a deadblow hammer to break the seal.


the rebound valve


those 2 little grooves in the rod are where the hydraulic lock was clipped and peened on. it actually wasnt that difficult to remove it... w/ my dremel and a cutting wheel. thankfully, i didnt mar the rod. even if i had, that part of the rod never makes it into the tube.

everything on the left of the valve is the rebound stack. ive removed that little tiny shim to stiffen it up considerably. anyone know why removing THAT shim would stiffen the stack, where as normally ud ADD shims to stiffen? i also replaced the 2 largest shims of the rebound stack w/ 1 thicker one, also stiffening the stack a bit. one .15 thickness shim is actually stiffer than two .1 shims

all the shim on the right side of the valve is commonly called a midvalve. it generates compression damping in the way most people think shocks make compression, by moving through the oil. (obviously, the compression/base valve doesnt move through the oil, so how does it produce damping... something to ponder). supposedly, if u produce more than 50% of your compression damping here, the fork will cavitate. the holes in valve for this are huge and there are 4 of them, so i felt comfortable going stiffer. removing the tiny shim prob produced almost all of the stiffness change.

here are the stacks:

OE Stack	New Stack
Nut+Spacer	Nut+Spacer
12 x.2 (3x)	12 x .2 (3x)
8.2 x.2	removed
15 x .15	15 x .15
16 x .15 (2x)	16 x .15 (2x)
17 x .1 (2x)	17 x .15
Valve	Valve
17 x .1	17 x .15
16 x .1 (2x)	16 x .1 (2x)
15 x .1 (2x)	15 x .1 (2x)
8 x .2	12 x .15 (2x)
12 x .2	12 x .2
Washer	Washer

once my fork springs come in around 1pm, ill assemble the forks and front end, throw on the bodywork, and load the bike. thankfully, AutoClub is the closest track to me, so leaving at 9pm still gets me there pretty early. hopefully it wont take me that long to put everything back together.

[stangmx13]

Originally Posted by number_6

I think you are refering to the shim with the much smaller outer diameter. I think you probably can't say across the board that you add shims to make the shim stack stiffer. A shim like that that has thickness but won't add any appreciable resistance to his neighbot to the right is probably in there to make the stack less stiff. It should give the shims some room to displace before they contact the others (shown further to the left in the pic) at which point there would be more stiffness.

I couldn't find the exact thing again, but I think I've seen/read about this in a Penske car shock user manual I found online. It

@ sad face

ya, you correct that i cant say categorically that adding shims makes a stack stiffer, esp since i just told everyone i removed one and the stack is stiffer hehe. adding shims to the face of the valve or below (closer to the face) will always make a stack stiffer, but ya.

pretty close as to why the stack is less stiff w/ that shim.

the space that shims can move only really affects damping at really high shaft speeds (if we are talking about the entire stack, and we dont have any gap shims or two-stage stuff), maybe a huge pothole on the freeway. i bet, with this valve, the ports will choke before the shims are limited. so rly, the stack would be practically the same if there were three 8.2's behind it.

however, whats more important than that is the fact that the smallest shim represents the radius that all the other shims must bend around. i like to call that shim a "clamp" shim. w/ that small shim, the 17 shims have 8.8mm to bend (17-8.2). by removing it, now all the shims must bend around the 12mm shim, so only 5mm can bend. in simple beam-bending concepts, a shorter beam is stiffer... less displacement for a given force.

[neocryte]

Awesome thread, eager to see the finished bike and hear how the race goes.

[tonedeaf]

hope it went well today!

[stangmx13]

well, it sure was an interesting weekend....

i managed to finish putting the bike back together around 430pm Friday. printed some shitty numbers at Kinkos, loaded, packed everything for the weekend, went to Rubios for dinner, and left San Diego a little before 9pm. i still had a few things to do Saturday night before racing on Sunday, but the bike was perfectly capable of a trackday. popped a tent and went to bed around 1130... earliest ive been not working on the bike and into bed all week.

Saturday's trackday was challenging. overnight temps were high 20s/low 30s and 7am wasnt much warmer. i got a new rear tire mounted and still went out for the first freezing cold session. right away, i could feel that this bike/suspension was going to be interesting to dial-in. i turned a few painfully slow laptimes, finding my lines, and figuring out what i needed to change. my personal best around Autoclub is a 1:40.3, first session had me at 1:51



Session 2 was a bit warmer and i started to find some rhythm turning some 1:47s. with the extra speed, esp into turn 1, 3, 5, and 12, i was getting a gnarly amount of brake fade. so i skipped Session 3 to install the Vesrah SRJL pads that i had brought. went out for Session 4 and the brakes felt better and saw 1:45s, so i decided to start rly focusing on suspension.

for Session 5, i made a small fork rebound change and a small shock compression change.... and then i went down in turn 8 . ya, all that work for the past 2 weeks and i threw the bike away. turns 7->8 is a left/right transition, i transitioned to the right and the front never loaded, just slid. my lean angle wasnt excessive, my corner speed was kinda low... most likely i held too much pressure on the inside bar after the transition (stupid) and i asked too much of my front tire for the cold track. to myself

unfortunately, i wasnt able to ride the bike back into the pits as the throttle was stuck and the bars wouldnt turn left. heres a list of the crash damage:
- destroyed OE fairing stay, into about 6 pieces
- burned through right side of fairings a lot
- right Woodcraft case-cover scratched but did its job
- right footpeg ground down about 1"
- left footpeg bent forward at 30deg
- throttle tube destroyed
- ripped out left swingarm spool
- bent brake lever
thankfully, my helmet wasnt scratched and i didnt burn through my leathers (cept a tiny rip on top of my right shoulder), so as long as i could fix the bike....

the rest of Saturday was spent in the garage, until about 1:30am. one of my pit-buddies Moises had crashed the day before on his CBR, so he had already sourced a bunch of parts (had to pick em up at his home 35min away). paid him $100 for a new OE fairing stay and an HRC throttle tube. he haggled pretty well to get me that price . i had to dremel the stock throttle housing a tiny bit to get the tube to work, but its nice to have a 1/5 turn now instead of the stock 1/4 turn. fixed all that, drilled my caliper bolts for safety wire, installed my frame sliders, bent the left footpeg back, remounted all the bodywork... and this is what im left with. it looks much worse in person actually.



lets just say that Sunday went quite a bit better...

i started off the morning by getting a new front mounted @ 7am, wiring what was left, and passing tech. i skipped P1 to make a huge suspension change that i would have done the day b4... lowered the forks to 4mm BELOW the triple clamp and made some damping changes to the front end based on how it felt b4 i crashed. P2 was still slow but the bike was better everywhere. by P4 i was feeling much better and back down to 1:42.0. these changes solved most of the front end issues, much less headshake out of 1, 6, or 13, more stable under braking for 3, 5, & 11, more confident into 1, and slightly better on the gas out of 4, 6, & 16/17. a few other shock changes and less tire pressure improved rear grip as well as entry stability. confidence improving

i ended up being in the first race of the day, race 2A. about first call, i noticed that my brake lever was bent a bit and proceeded to try to unbend it slightly. complete brain fart... OE brake levers dont bend twice... so it snapped off. the next 5min was mad w/ 5 guys on my bike throwing on a replacement and getting me on the grid. didnt get a warm-up lap, but i made it. i got an ok start but lost prob 10 positions by turn 3 because i wasnt pushing. by the end of the race, i ended 24th out of 26 @ 1:40.7. happy cuz i actually found some speed.

race 5 and 12A went quite a bit smoother. 5 was crazy into the first real turn, #3, as one guy barreled uncontrollably across the line. thankfully he didnt hit anyone. ended the race 15th out of 19 @ 1:40.5 and only got beat by 1 novice, my buddy Luis that managed to drop 3sec switching from an 848 to an R6.... now hes just sand-bagging Novice . race 12A ended 16th of 19 @ 1:40.3. i thought about pushing harder after lap 3, but my setup isnt great yet so i just brought the bike home. i pretty much blew turn 3 every lap of race 12A, so that something to work on next Sept. also, the bike freakin' wheelies EVERYWHERE and its hurting my laptimes, i need to fix that.

heres some pics at the end of the day.

good side


not good side


overall, i was really happy w/ how my first 3 Expert races went. i didnt get last, i got to race with a few guys, and i made it back down to my best laptimes from the old bike. there isn't one single corner on that track where i cant carry more speed, so ill be pushing for better laptimes come September.

so notice in the pic above (after all the racing), that ive got a new front tire on. after my last race, i parked the bike there and popped it on stands. then, i noticed HUGE cracks in a 9" section of rubber on the tire. im not talking 1 or 2 cracks, there were prob 10 total. WTF!!! took the bike over the Dunlop and Bru confirmed the cracking was prob due to the sub-freezing temps the night before and the prob formed during practice, running all day like that!!! well, im still alive AND i got a new front tire

obviously, this thread is going to continue since the bike aint done yet. new/better parts are prob coming and ive got a lot of fiberglass and paint work to do. ill prob change the thread title too. but for now, im taking a few days break from the garage .