Engine In

Bit of a milestone this one, but the engine is finally in. It's been mostly in for a since December, so just under six months later and job done.

Not to get too excited of course, it's just in place, it's not running yet, lots to be done before that can happen.

So why so long?

Well... there are six engine mounts, two at the bottom which go all the way through the engine block, and four at the top that just bolt into the chassis, two each side of the engine.

Back in December, Paul and I wrestled the bottom two mounts into place just to get it roughly there. This was the easiest way as it would allow us to pivot the engine then to line the others up. The two bottom mounts were VERY tight and it took a lot of careful manoeuvring (aka hitting shit with hammers) for them to fit. 

We then lined up the other four mounts with the holes and found that they didn't exactly line up, I could partly get one of the bolts in...

Can't. Quite. Fit. If only.Could. Just...

And that's where it stayed until today.

I'd decided that making the holes bigger was going to be a pain, so I'd been doing other things, but really, I need it sorting, so after various thoughts on how to do it I had a 2 min chat with Mike at work. A few mins later Mike appeared with his Dremel.

So I set about expanding the holes and boy did sparks fly. Now I don't own any safety goggles so I wore my MX helmet as that has some goggles with it (I could have just taken the googles off, but they they'd have needed adjusting to fit without the helmet, that all sounded like effort so I just wore the damn helmet).

A few minutes hours later and all four mounts were in. The spacers that were provided with the kit don't quite fit, so I'll need to mod them, and because of that the Hayabusa engine mounts aren't quite the best length, so I'll need some washers and some different length mounts, but all in all, a good job done. 

Not sure now why I put it off 6 months! Which reminds me, I know a good joke about procrastinating, but I'll tell you that later...

DIFFicult

A long, long time ago in a garage far far away, I started building my car. Well, after a very slow going winter I finally have some progress. If you thought I was going to say that it was finished, have you learned nothing from my previous posts?

Tonight I did some work on the diff, the clue was in the title, I did a play on words thing and changed 'diff' into 'difficult'! You've missed these posts haven't you... I'll get my coat.

Where did I leave off? Oh, I haven't even talked about the engine have I yet... well that was fun.

The car looked very pitiful when thrown on the floor.

Tim and I had great fun getting the engine in place, you see the engine has to come in from under the car, so I took the opportunity to turn the car 180 degrees (not that way! I mean so that it was facing the other way!).

The engine was then hoisted in which was interesting trying to keep it level. We got a couple of mounts in place and called it a night as we hit a slight snag.

Check and check again. Did it your side slip? No, did your
side? No. Up a bit more? Urm... let me check again first.

You may remember that one of the engine mounts was screwed and needed re-tapping. This was a fairly simple affair with thanks to Steve for lending me the taps and Paul for showing me what to do during an hours *ahem* lunch break.

It looks tiny. Hopefully it'll be underestminated ;)

So with the mount sorted, Paul and I decided to get the engine in place. Tip of the day: If you're reading this before you've done it, do the two bottom/rear mounts first, you can then pivot the engine much easier to get it at the right angle for the top/front four.

Millimetres make a big difference in this game. Typical,
the mount that is furthest out is the one I had to re-tap.

Oh if only it were that easy, you see the chassis doesn't exactly line up with the engine mounts. It was a real pig getting the bottom two in as things were so tight, but with the force of some Icelandic strong men, we made it work. The top four don't exactly line up though and I'm going to have to get creative with the holes in the chassis to make it fit.

Never-the-less, with the engine in place, I could crack on. I did some other bits which I'll make separate posts about and fast forward to tonight's work, and the title of tonight's post; the diff.

The diff comes in three parts, two mounts and the diff itself. It's a fairly heavy piece of kit, holdable in one hand but really two's needed to lift it. When all three bits are together it looks a bit like a Tie Fighter.

I originally put the mounts in place and then tried to slide the diff in, but the gap was too tight as part of the diff inserts into the mounts. Fair enough, so I assembled the three parts and then tried to slide it in, but it didn't fit, the gap was still too narrow. Hmm.

So I got out the ol' measuring stick (aka a ruler), and found that the diff with the mounts was 17.7cm wide (that's 177mm for you engineers). The gap however was only 17.0cm, so if my maths can be trusted, the gap is 7mm shy of what it needs to be. Just for completion's sake I measured the gap at the bottom, this was bang on 17.7mm, so it looks like the top is definitely out. As it's part of the chassis this was already assembled by Road Track Race so it wasn't anything I could have done wrong. I was going to drop them an email (they've proven very helpful and responsive in the after sales department, so don't let me lead you into thinking that they're a bunch of cowboys who just sit in the factory counting my money).

Anyway, before emailing them I sat and had a little think and decided I'd try and push the diff in from the bottom rather than slide it in from the top. I knew the bottom was wide enough, so maybe once it was mostly in, I could flex the 5mm aluminium mounts or something.

It probably would have been a long easier with a second pair of hands, but it was still light outside so I wasn't giving up, besides, yesterday's F1 race kicked ass so I was dreaming of getting the damn thing on the track.

It went half way in ok with some jiggery-pokery and the three parts were assembled at this half way stage. After that I tried getting into the gap at the top and it wasn't playing ball, 7mm was too much to flex.

So, so tight. (Stop sniggering)

The chassis is powder coated though which is a couple of mil, so I sanded that back, which still left about 5mm to make up.

Luckily I own a hammer. So doing my best Jeremy Clarkson impression I did some light taps and just about got both sides inside the gap. From there, I could gently tap it further into place until it actually fit. Hurrah!

With a certain sense of accomplishment, I unboxed the drive shafts and temporarily slid those in and everything seems to turn like it's meant to turn and is decidedly more car like now.

Excuse the wonkyness of this picture, I was stood on a chair
with the camera above my head. Believe it or not, this was the
best of three photos.

Tunnel Vision

It's been about a million years since I've posted an update. To be fair, I've started a few posts (like this one), but not finished that section so held off posting. As a general update, progress has been very slow. I've been waiting for bits and generally stumped. There was soooo much I wanted to get done over the Xmas break, but in reality pretty much nothing happened. As a way to get things moving again, I visited the Road Track Race factory to check out a 99% complete Mevabusa that they had there. It was a very useful trip, and as always the staff there were very helpful (thanks Harry and Pete), who patiently answered my raft of imbecilic questions and let me take about a petabyte of photos. Anyway, work has started again...

__________________________

I thought I'd start work on the tunnel/centre console today while I was waiting for other bits. As per most things, I hadn't really a clue about what to do or where to start so I started with listing everything that I thought needed to go in the tunnel, so far I've come up with.

• Hot and cold water pipes
• Small pipe (don't know what this is for yet)
• Wiring loom
• Handbrake & cables
• Rear brake cables
• Clutch cable
• Throttle cable

That's quite a bit of stuff to cram in. There were a couple of pieces of criteria that I wanted to adhere to also. Firstly I wanted the tunnel to be easily removable, so nothing should be attached to the outer tunnel shell. Secondly, I wanted the tunnel to be flush with the floor. This might sound obvious but looking at pictures of other people's builds and some have it raised off the floor sitting on top the chassis. Having it raised is easier, you don't have to cut it around the chassis and you get 2.5cm more space in there.

The lower shelf

Part 1
I had a good think about how to approach it, what brackets to make and so forth. I decided to cut out a shelf which sits on the centre part of the chassis, this would allow me to fix other brackets and also attach the pipes to it directly.

The mock tunnel. I was careful to watch out for X-Wings

I had some off cuts of aluminium from the floor, so I made a 100cm long strip. I had some P-clips to fasten the pipes but I was wary that when the tunnel cover was in place that it wouldn't fit over the pipes so I made a mock up.

This showed that even without flexing the tunnel the pipes and P-clips would fit, held by a single bolt in the centre. Now it was time to put it in place.

The hot and cold pipes in place (sort of, they need to
move forward a little bit, but good enough for now)

It was easier than expected, I thought that I'd need octopus fingers to get the P-clips and the pipes together via a single screw but it wasn't too bad. This way I could use the same screws that I used to hold the shelf in place to hold the P-clips also (I don't know why I'm insisting on capitalising P-clips, the P is the same shape whether it's caps or not!).

Part 2
I held off doing any more work until I had the handbrake as depending on how that fitted, things might have to change. It's a good job I did as things need to change.

The problem was that the handbrake is about 2mm too wide to fit between the pipes. I thought about modifying the handbrake but it wasn't ideal and there was great scope for me needing to buy a new handbrake if I did that. I can't really move the pipes a little bit either way either because the frame is quite narrow, so a rethink was on the cards.

The solution was to mount the pipes vertically rather than horizontally, so I needed a bracket to do this. I settled on some 70mm right-angled brackets and then boggled on how best to fit the 3 P-clips together to fit in the space without crossing the centre line.

The mock bracket showing the P-Clip layout. The middle
hole on the bottom of the bracket is what attaches to the
middle of the shelf.

The solution was to attach one large P-clip and the smaller one to the bracket and the third would be attached to the shelf, but at different intervals so that the bits of rubber weren't fighting for space against each other.

This worked well when it was assembled and there was just enough room. The only adjustment I need to make is to get smaller bolts as the 15mm ones I was using stick out too far and foul the tunnel housing, so I'll get some 5mm ones which should do the trick.

The three pipes in place with the handbrake.

I tried the handbrake in place and it fits along the centreline also which is ideal, although it's not in it's final resting place, it proves that it'll fit there.

So that's one side of the tunnel done, the other side will use the same angle brackets but as it's 'softer' cables running there, it'll cope with going around the handbrake a bit easier.

Bulk head and engine movement

It's been a while, even though, don't expect a picture of the car on the road just yet!

Progress has been split between three different stages; stripping the 'busa, engine work and assembling the car.

One wheel on my wagon

I'll start with the 'busa strip. It's probably as stripped right now as it's going to get. With the engine out, I salvaged a few other parts that I needed like the dash, rectifier and the brake/clutch pots.

No dramas here really, the excellent Suzuki manual tells you everything you need to know with good diagrams and lots of arrows. I still don't have a manual for the Mevabusa that I'm building, but hopefully it'll be of the same ilk when it shows up.

The rear subframe and wheel are off now and the bike is as light as a feather. I don't have a socket to fit the front axle yet, but it's practically at the stage where I can just throw the remainder into a corner now and dust off my eBay account.

Not quite a one man job it turns out

On to the engine work, if you remember one of the exhaust bolts sheered off when I was taking apart, so I opted to take it to work so that Steve could work his magic and voodoo it out. I'd been lent an engine hoist so when Tim and Tommo came over to plan next year's bike trip I got them to lend a hand and hooked the engine up (also cheers to the Moss man for lending me his hoist gear).

Once it was hoisted up I could winch it into the boot (americans: This means trunk) of my Focus, although in reality I couldn't get the hoist close enough, so I gathered some troops and came home one lunch hour to man handle it in. Paul and Sam were the unlucky helpers but it was fairly easy, the engine isn't that heavy, so even when it came to getting it out the other end it was fairly easy.

The replacement stud is just under the rightmost port.

I left it in Steve's capable hands who drilled the bolt out and replaced it with a stud that was glued into place with some atomic glue or something! Sam and Paul once again gave me a hand getting the engine back to base and I gave it a clean once the rain held out. From the engine side, it's now ready to go in I think...

Which brings me onto the car assembly. There's been some discussion and work on the corners getting the bearings and brakes sorted, but I'll put that in a separate post once they're done.

So in preparation for the engine going in, I've put the rear bulkhead in place. Although mostly cut to size by RTR it did need some remaining cuts to get it around the diagonal engine braces on the chassis. They're also sided so I had to be very careful with the measurements. After the cutting I tried it for size and found I'd been too accurate (check me out), where the diagonals meet the main chassis there are blobs of weld so I had to adjust my slots to take those into account.

I wanted to fit the bulkhead with rivnuts now that they're my favourite thing, plus I wanted to get good return on investment on my rivnut gun. It also has the side effect of making it removable which I'm pretty sure I'm going to need for some reason that I don't know about yet.

Those holes in the floor are meant to be there!

Three quarters of the chassis that the bulkhead connects to is curved which makes life difficult so extra care was taken to hit the centre of the curve (I completely missed on one side, but made it work). With that done, I vinyled up the cabin side of the bulkhead and put it in place only to realise that I'd applied the vinyl to the wrong side. Doh.

The chair in shot isn't part of the final build, I opted
for bucket seats instead.

Not a problem, the nice people where I'd got the vinyl from had given me way more than I'd asked for, so it means that both sides of the bulkhead are carbonified.

I'm quite pleased with the results. It took a lot longer than I imagined, but then everything seems to! I'm also two bolts short of being able to attach it properly, so I'll pick a couple of those up tomorrow to finish it off.

Engine out

Today a major milestone was achieved, with the help of Tim, the engine is out of the bike!

The bike in the background is actually
quicker than the Hayabusa right now

This weekend was mainly spent doing that, with the last few bolts being a bit of a pain. Luckily I'd read ahead in the workshop manual and saw that a special Suzuki tool was needed to get some of the engine mounts out. Looking online and these go for about £90 which seemed a bit steep to me, so I looked on a few forums and a bunch of people make their own out of a long socket and an Dremel (note, it pains me to call it a Dremel, that's like calling a vacuum cleaner a Hoover, but still, everyone knows what I mean if I say Dremel). However, I don't have a Moto-Tool Dremel and it looked difficult, so eBay helped me buy a Chinese knock off version of the Suzuki tool for a fraction of the price, God bless the Chinese and their lack of acknowledgement of international copyright.

"I'm gonna make you great again"

To be fair, the tool worked well and all but one of the engine mounts came off quite easily, there was one however which took some leverage and I was pooing myself a bit that it was going to snap off as I was using a 2 foot scaffold to help turn it. It was all good though, it came out eventually so then it was a case of lowering the engine out and popping it on the side for a clean, oh and that damn exhaust manifold bolt needs extracting.

Steve at work lent me his engine hoist, so Tim and I set that up. Tim thought that we'd better test it first so he hoisted me up using it. It's good to try these things :) However, we're missing the chain to connect the hoist to the engine, so there's no trying it for size just yet.

My new cafe racer

More Busa Work

I've spent the last couple of weeks continuing to strip the bike engine.

I managed to get hold of a good workshop manual that has a step-by-step guide on removing the engine which I'm following religiously. On top of that, I'm labeling everything, although I'm labeling it with what I think it is, so as long as I still think it's that when I'm connecting it back up again, I'll be ok.

Obviously there have been a few incidents along the way, luckily there have been no more smashing lights however. In getting the fuel tank off, I had to clamp some pipes to stop the fuel spilling. It turns out that cable ties aren't adequate for clamping pipes so there was a minor fuel spillage on my garage floor. Never mind, it probably needed a wash anyway.

Next, the radiators had to go, yes, I spilt the coolant too. My garage floor is now spotless. But off came the rad and a bunch of other bits too.

I drained the oil, I'm learning, I didn't spill that, in fact I left it draining for a few hours while I carried on and then put the oil screw back in finger tight and locked up one night. Next morning there was oil all over the floor, apparently finger tight isn't good enough and there was still some oil in the system. Now you thought my floor was clean before? It could now double as a set in a Mr. Muscle advert.

Proper engine bits here!

Anyway, back to pulling bits off the bike. It's quite an enjoyable task, and it really makes you appreciate the work that goes into designing the things. It's a 14 year old design but it's also still a 200mph bike and there are sensors just about everywhere. I take my hat off to Suzuki. 

Ooops

Along the way there was one mishap with one of the manifold bolts, it kind of broke which is going to be a real pain to get out, I'll wait until the engine is out I think as it's at an awkward angle to work at.

The workshop manual has 12 pages on how to remove the engine, although some of the bullet points refer you to another section which is another 4 pages long. However, I've broken the back of it now, and I think I'm probably only about an hour away of getting the lump out.

So why stop I hear you ask?
Well, because of torque. You see, although I now boast a moderate toolkit, I don't have any BIG tools, like 32mm and 36mm sockets needed for the front sprocket and rear axle. I tried and tried and still couldn't blow the house down (sorry, wrong story) couldn't get them to budge, so I called in Tim to assist. The front sprocket is a 2 man job anyway as someone needs to stand on the rear brake which you apply brute force, but with my wiener socket wrench, we couldn't get it to move. It was the same story with the rear axle.

Luckily Paul at work has some decent wrenches and a nut cracker, and Mike has a 36mm socket which I borrowed. With these, the rear axle nut (72ft/lb) came off quite easily, but I haven't managed to get the front sprocket nut off yet (105fl/lb), but then I have been trying to press the brake myself while also using the wrench (all those years of Twister haven't paid off). So I'll call in help again probably this weekend.

So although there has been progress, it's been pretty slow, but it has been educational.

Here's a picture from a few nights ago, further bits have come off since this was taken but only little bits.

And to think I never liked naked bikes

Ninja edit: The front sprocket nut is now off too, hurrah!

Stripping

I needed to strip, in fact I spent most of the night stripping. Haha, I'm so funny, I meant stripping the bike, oh how we all laughed.

Before I got to work on it.

I needed several parts from the Hayabusa, things like the dashboard, radiator, wiring loom, mirrors, switching gear, oh and that little bit called the engine.

The rest of the bits have a date on eBay, but that's a little way off yet.

I'd delayed pulling the bike apart as I was having fun using it for my daily commute, with my KTM still being repaired from it's incident with a Land Rover  (stupid woman!), I'd only had my DRZ-400 all summer. So it was quite nice to have something with a bit more umph. Now I only live 3-4 miles from work, but it's odd how occasionally it would take me 15 miles to get home :)

A pile of plastic

Anyway, the time had come, I had to start work on it, and it was coming to the end of the month, so I needed to get it SORNed before I lost another month's tax.

The fairings came off quite easily, taking bikes apart is much easier when you don't have to remember or think about how to put them back together again afterwards. So after a couple of hours, I had a pile of plastic. The nose was a little trickier, but it soon relinquished, and it was just after taking this off when I thought that the bike was still in fully running order...

I wasn't about to blast off with a new naked version of a 'busa, but I did need to take some pics and videos. So that I knew what the startup sequence looked like, I filmed that to compare with when I had rewired it all for the car.

I then had the bright idea of firing up the engine, to record the sound of the cans so that when I sold them, I could demonstrate how good they sounded.
This is what happened:

Yes, after blipping the throttle, the bike was such a monster that the ceiling lights fell down and smashed. I think that's enough stripping for tonight!

Here's where I'm up to: