Not a Teaser! 1983 VF750F resto project

Yessir, they are the 140403's. You can make out the "3" on the end of the number on the right coil in the pic you quoted.

 

Whew, that's good. If you use the incorrect one you will get flames coming out of your spark boxes. Seriously!

 

Yep, did my homework on that one. I'm using NGK endcaps at the plugs, Accel boots at the coils, and blue Accel 8mm wire in between. Nice solid ignition system. :thumbsup:

Degreeing the new Megacycle cams and trying to fiddle with the ignition is going to be fun... once I'm finished anyway!

 

Ok, left side pod is done, reassembled and all. The 1000RR start/kill switch(same as 900RR) looked daunting at first, but is actually going to be easier. I was thrown at first by the extra wire in the VF start button, but now that I have the differences in the switch figured out, it's going to be easy. All I have to do is cut the harness plug off the 1000RR switch, add 9" of wire(stolen from a rashed up CBR switch, which all the same color wires!), and then reinsert the pins into the proper slots in the VF plug.

I'm proud of myself for getting over that hump! No really, I'm pretty damn pleased! Just one more hurdle - the fuse box. I'm wiring in an F4i unit, and it also has to find a new home behind the front fairing.

I'm going to test the newly configured switches on a friend's bike on Sunday... cross your fingers for me!

I have new pics, of course, and they will be up tomorrow.

 

It's always nice to make progress, even if it's small. You are still beating me, none of my VF's have been out of winter storage yet. Yes, I know it's July. I wish I could say that it's been because I've doing a lot of work to them, but it's just not the case.

I can't wait to see the pictures!

 

And here's the pics to go along w/ the work I did on the switches...

For the left side, I had to completely disassemble the new switch and the old switch, so I could swap the wires over.





It was tedious, but now I have a plug & play switch with new styling and better controls:


I cut the locating tabs off the CBR600F3 clip ons and bolted them in place, then threw the switches on to get an idea of how they'd look:


Then I added another workbench to the garage:

Gotta love it when the company throws away perfectly good stuff!!

Now, the right side. At first it looked like it was going to be difficult, but in the end it was just a matter of extending the 1000RR wires by 9" and leaving the actual switch alone.

First I took both old & new apart to see what I had going on, because I counted 7 pins in each harness plug, yet the VF switch pod had 8 wires coming out of it... hmm...


Turns out the extra wire in the VF pod was due to a difference in the configuration of the starter button - the VF switch has 4 poles and the CBR switch only has three.

CBR:


VF:


So the VF has an extra wire, fine. Now all I had to do was make the wiring longer and put the VF plug on the end! Luckily I had a rashed up F4i switch "in stock", and lo and behold, all the wires in it are the same color too, save for the brake switch wires. Those are BL/Y & BL/Gr vs the Gr/Y & Wh/Gr of the VF.

The harness plug is even the same, except for color:


Cut the wiring and rubber sleeve to the desired length, and removed the CBR plug:


Splicing the extra 9" to the 1000RR kill switch:


Also added 9" of protective rubber tubing from the pod that donated the wiring, so now it looks like a factory finish:



I tested the switches on a friend's bike yesterday, and they work great!!

And I'm happy w/ the new worbench, so you guys get to see it again!

 

Another big step completed yesterday - I got the carbs in. It was much easier than I thought it was going to be. After installing the throttle & choke cables, it took 5 minutes to prep and 5 min to pop the carbs in. I'm pretty sure it can be attributed to the new carb insulator boots, they're so much more pliable than the hard-as-nails pieces that came off so long ago...

Taking a step back, I started my afternoon prepping the coils. The Accel coils have a pair of threaded studs on each coil where the OEM's have male spade connectors. Also, with the OEM setup, the input connections are on the right side of each coil, the new coil setup puts all four inputs in the middle, which means I had to extend the right side wires. I also soldered spade connectors to the coil studs.

Not sure how well it will work yet, I can always melt the solder back off and install ring terminals on the wires...







Next order of business was the throttle and clutch cables - more of a headache than I bargained for... the throttle side of things went ok, I had a brain fart about which end to connect first but got over that quickly and moved on to the choke. As you know, I am not using the original choke lever or the original left side control... and that's where the headache started.

Upon closer inspection, you will note that the original choke wheel(flanked here by a pair of '98 VFR parts) wraps the choke cable around a much smaller diameter, while the 98 parts have a larger diameter for the cable pull. Secondly, the integrated hard stops which limit the movement of the lever are different. Lastly, the 98 VFR cable end is narrower than the VF cable end.



To solve these issues, I cut one of the stops back on the VFR wheel as shown above, then later cut a bit more off. I also drilled a new hole and cut a new slot closer to the stop, giving the cable more slack. I had to grind on the VF cable end to get it to fit and move smoothly in the VFR housing.

I will try to get another picture of the final version of the modified wheel for reference in case anyone else wants to try this. With the wheel modified the way I have it now, the choke operates smoothly, closes all the way with the lever up, and is full open with the lever down.

With that taken care of, I tightened up all the cable connections and installed the rack!

Ready,

Set,

Pop!


That's just gorgeous!


It brought a big smile to my face when I grabbed the throttle and gave it a couple twists, feeling the resistance of the springs and the tap of the butterflies closing was great! It's really feeling like I might ride it soon!

Coils in:



Rear wires done:


Fronts set up:




I need to confirm the routing of the left front wire, then I can finish those up.

I had a few silicone "donuts" left over from cutting excess off the boots, and I found a couple neat uses for them...

I put one under the chassis ground wire connection to 1) Keep dirt away and 2) To support the wire and keep it from *potentially* breaking off from the seat pushing on it. Could be complete B.S. on my part, but it was getting late and in any case it looks neat...



The other use I found makes more sense at least; I needed a spot to mount the new little fuse box, and two 1/4" sections of the silicone fit the bill nicely:



Busted out the Dremel - I still thank my Dad for buying me the Dremel for Christmas over 15 years ago!





See where I'm going with this?



I'll use two zip ties to secure it once it's wired in, even with one it felt pretty secure but I'm not taking any chances.

Hopefully more to come very soon!

 

Thanks for the pics and the update! That bike is so nice, you are doing an excellent job!

 

Geez you are making me envious, I dream of my first gen being half as good, haha. That is going to be a helluva bike when you are done.

 

I really want to finish it soon so I can ride it, but I just can't bring myself to rush any part of this build. It's been such a labor of love that I would just shame myself by cutting corners and rushing now!

 

I agree, you've done such a good job on it so far that it would be a shame to see you not complete it fully. My personal favorite part is how you've integrated new parts yet kept the original flavor of the bike.

 

Good to hear you say that, that's exactly what I was going for! :thumbsup:

 

hey Seb, is there a trick to getting the carbs back on?

 

There sure is:

http://www.daughertymotorsports.com/howto/carbs/carbs.html

.

 

haha thanks man i will try that as soon as i can :thumbsup:

 

I think the best trick is to use new carb boots! They're so nice and pliable. I also used a very light thin smear of vaseline on the lips of the carbs, and I was able to get them in by hand - fronts first, then pryed the rears in by levering against the frame rail and the carb body with a screwdriver, protected with urethane pads. It was literally a 5-10 minute affair.

 

Ok, pic update.

Here's what I started with for the fuse box:


Open both wiring diagrams, start studying, cutting... somewhere in the middle you get a mess:


In the end it wasn't too bad, I had to pull some extra wires from a second spare modern fuse box. The VF uses 4 fuses, so 4 wires plus 1 common wire. The VFR box is just a clusterf__k, thin wires, thick wires, everything is connected to something, etc. So I pulled all the wires from the VFR box, and a few extra from my spare CBR box to gather 7 individual wires, plus 1 wire that had a double connector on the end.



I put the double and 2 singles on one side of the box, and the 4 singles on the other. Soldered the 3 wires into an extension to run into the harness connector as the common wire, and connected the other 4 to 1 wire each at the harness connector.




So I effectively went from this, with glass fuses,


To this, with nice mini blade fuses:



Also replaced the stator and clutch cover screws with stainless bolts. Much better, yes/no?

 

Installed the new fuel filter, and got all the new fuel lines cut, sleeved, and installed. The high temp sleeving came from Mcmaster-Carr along with the bolts. It was pretty cheap too, $1.36 per foot.




I need to find a tee for the crankcase breather hoses. I looked at Advance and Home Depot today, will check NAPA tomorrow since they were closed by the time I got out of the garage today. I picked up a cheap breather filter at Advance during the week in anticipation of doing this:


Plan is to tee in the hose from the airbox just below the top of the shock mount. That way both lines feed into the filter, and I get to ditch the gnarly puke box that used to live under the seat. I'm not sure yet if I should enclose the filter somehow, or should I just check it frequently to keep the bike from getting all spooged up?

 

& trying to take control of the situation is tough sometimes... my lovely Rizoma mirror idea is not working out. This is after my CBR F3 clip on idea failed too. Right now I have a set of 4th gen bars on there, which do clear the fairing:





Using the VFR left switch control and the RR radial clutch master doesn't leave room on the bar for any extra 7/8" clamp mounts... so I have to get creative in mounting the mirror. I bought some chinese aluminum parts in hopes of making something work:







But alas, it's too tall and will hit the fairing when the bars turn.




Plus, it just doesn't look right. I don't want to mount it on the fairing. I'm hesitant to use bar end mirrors, since 1) I like this one, and 2) I don't like using the bar ends, they're too far out of my sight line so I have to take my eyes off the road longer to check them.

I might try to lower it a little tomorrow, not sure that will help.

 

I need a taillight sensor box, anybody got a nice one? It's the box that has a harness plug + 3 bullet connectors; it lives under the taillight between the 2 sparkboxes...

Thanks!