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...

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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:

Catchup...

It's been a while since I've provided an update for a few reasons, firstly my inane ability to procrastinate, but also because progress has been a little slow. Allow me to explain and bring you up to date on the various bits and pieces.

Steering Rack

Home made tool

The steering rack as you may remember needed disassembling so that a new rack and pinion could replace the standard Sierra bits. The new parts make it a quick rack, so basically less turns from lock to lock which will make the car a little more nimble on track.

The problem was that Ford decided to make just about everything that needed to be removed to require a custom tool. Obviously I didn't have a custom tool, so Steve at work used his wily brain and sorted things out. Fast forward a few days and I just needed to get the bearing off the old pinion and remove the spring system to allow to rack to come apart.

The bearing was on tight, tighter than a camel's bum in a sandstorm in fact. Luckily I had access to a big vice and an even bigger hammer. Bosh. Sorted.

Brand new but rusty,
going in the bin anyway

The spring system required some welding to make a tool to do the job. Of course, I'm not allowed anywhere near something like that, so Steve sorted it out while I hummed the A-Team soundtrack in the background. Once we had the tool it was easy work.

The rack was swapped out for the quick rack, but it was worth noting that even though the original rack was brand new, it still had signs of rust on it despite it never been used and covered in grease, it just shows what the shelf life does!

This is where the plastic nut needed to go. That's filings in
hole from work done to get it back in (don't worry, it was
cleaned out before put back together.

Putting it all back together wasn't simple either, the nut holding the spring system in was plastic and was easy to damage, mainly because Ford had 'knocked' in the metal around it so that it wouldn't slip. So a little bit of filing and lathe work and it was back in. It was prouder than before which was a worry to begin with but as the pinion it was pressing against was wider, that made sense.

The pinion cover that was tough to get off was tough to get back on too, Steve again sorted this as I don't think he fancied me throwing his tools through the window!

With that sorted I could do the rest at home. Now that probably doesn't read to hard, but as I did it at work, it was hard to get the time, and Steve's a busy man too, so it took a few weeks bit by bit, and my thanks do go out to Steve I'd probably have given up and kept the original rack!

Steering Column

The universal joint that connects
the column to the rack.

Ah, the column. I was dreading this as I read the instructions for it some time ago. It basically involved stripping the existing column, sawing a bit off, welding some bits together, then judging if it was right, then welding it again. I showed it Tim as he made this sort of 'hmm' noise, so we decided to put it to one side and come back to it later. Well it was now later.

Now, remember that the instructions that I'm following are for the Tr1ke, not my actual car, but this bit was all the same in theory as the front end was the same. That may be so, but Road Track Race (RTR) have made things easy since then by doing the cutting and welding already. I didn't realise this though for some time, so much so that I'd told the good folks there that I was missing a part but when Harry from RTR dropped in one evening he put me right. Doh.

So with that sorted, it was kind of easy. Ok lining up the rack so that the wheels were straight as well as the steering wheel is a little more difficult, but I got it close enough for now.

Fittings and Fixtures

A collection of nuts'n'bolts. Lets hope there
are none left over at the end.

In my last post I moaned a little bit about having run out of nuts'n'bolts, as well as a bunch of parts. Well the very next day harry from RTR turned up with some more bits. It was mainly pipes and hoses as well as the Power Commander (which looks a bit complicated, but I haven't had a proper look yet). He was able to answer a bunch of questions that I had as well as looking at what I was missing. He then put together a list of bolts and they arrived in the post a few days later.

This meant that I could swap out all the odd sized bolts that I'd been using to get things in place. One wishbone for instance was held in place by a pencil and a cable tie.

So there we have it, the steering now works, plus lots of little bits have been able to be finished properly (like the brake pedal, wishbones, etc).

Next up, stripping the bike for parts....

Hayabusa

Small progress...

Not too much progress on the kit itself. I started assembling the rear corners, with the correct way of putting it together being the last one I tried. I've now officially run out of nuts and bolts that RTR provided with my kit, so I'm waiting on them before I can continue with that part.

The steering rack hasn't got much further either, I've been too busy at work to pop to the workshop to get the bearing off the rack pinion, it's stuck on pretty firm! I definitely want to get that sorted this week so that I can get the quick rack in and on the car. However, I can't finish up the steering column as I'm waiting for some parts for that from RTR too.

There is something I can crack on with now though, I've just got back from collecting the donor bike. It was quite a journey, after spotting it on Preloved a week ago I contacted the owner who was in Edinburgh (I'm in Birmingham) and after a couple of chats decided to fly up to see it. I'd booked a one way ticket, so it was really all-eggs-in-one-basket as if I didn't like it when I got there I'd have to hitch hike home or something.

So this morning I started the journey by driving to work, leaving my car there, got some odd lucks because I was in my biking textiles and boots, and walked to the train station. Two trains later I was at Birmingham International, so a quick mono-rail journey to the terminal and I got on the midday plane to Scotland.

At the airport, Gary, the guy who was selling the bike met me. I was initially confused as his description of himself was 'big guy wearing glasses and t-shirt', although when he eventually found me (not many people get off a plane in biking gear), he wasn't wearing glasses at all (they were in his pocket), so I think I can be excused from that :)

I parked next to a bin, that isn't a top box.

Turns out that Gary is a sound bloke, not only did he pick me up from the airport, we had a good natter about biking before going out on a test ride. He was on his TL1000 and i was on the 'Busa. There was a little issue with the front brake sticking as it had been stood for a while, but who needs brakes on a 200mph bike huh? It's not like I was planning on a 5 hour ride home on it or anything...doh!

Back at his place and we got the business done, I insured the bike but couldn't tax it (it was SORNed), as the DVLA couldn't see the insurance as it had just been done. So I decided to ride home tax free.

I hit the road at about 3:30pm, along some great roads which eased me into the bike a bit. It was nice and dry for the first 45mins but then the road got damp and after an hour I stopped for a comfort break. Just as I got inside, the rain broke and tipped it down, but stopped as soon as I went outside again, good timing!

Onward to the motorway, which is where the bike really showed its legs. The Hayabusa's are legendary for being a quick bike and up til then I was a little disappointed with the performance, compared to my KTM it wasn't that quick at lower speeds. On the motorway though, it was a different story, it went from 70mph to ..urm... 71mph (I'll let you use your imagination!), very quickly. The speedo reads up to 220mph and although I didn't get it anywhere near that, I could feel the potential. Best stop for fuel.

Another stop and another well timed shower and I was back on the road, full of KFC (mandatory on a long UK road trip) with just 100 miles to go. My luck of dodging the rain ran out at about Stafford, but still it was only light rain, but at night it really made it hard to see where I was going and for some reason everyone stopped indicating and driving like an idiot, so I eased off a bit and tried to get some circulation back in my body.

Finally I was off the motorway, and back in Birmingham, just a short trip down the A38 and I was home. However, I soon had that horrid thing in my mirrors, the blue lights of a Police X5 flagging me down. 

For the record, the officer was very pleasant

The policeman said "Mmm mmm mmmmm", so I took out my ear plugs and asked him to repeat that, and it turns out that his computer had told him that I didn't have insurance. I explained that I'd just riden back from Scotland five, I mean six hours ago (good catch), and showed him an email from my insurance company providing that I had insurance. He was fine with that and off I went.

So there we have it, a car journey, 2 trains, a monorail, a plane, another car, and a 5 hour bike journey later and I was back where I started but with a Hayabusa in my garage.

The 'busa in it's new home

My KTM is still off the road since the nice lady with the Land Rover pulled out on me, so I may hang fire for a couple of weeks before starting to take it apart.