From the desk of Robert Strong, confessions of a possible NC-21 resurrector

Discussion in '1st & 2nd Generation 1983-1989' started by Robert Strong, Feb 20, 2020.

  1. Terry Smith

    Terry Smith Member

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    "'What is covering the left hand side of the crankshaft?"

    30 years of accumulated filth?
     
  2. Captain 80s

    Captain 80s Member

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    He's being coy. I'm fucking very close. He either wants me to say "FZR400R SP EXUP" or my year guess is off. Or it's a race bike that we should "know" about.
     
  3. Robert Strong

    Robert Strong New Member

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    heya all

    Terry it's one thing to hear dumb say dumb, but it is entirely another thing to hear smart say dumb.

    i'd say Captain 80's won, based on the fact he would appear to be most knowledgeable caractor here.

    The correct answer to the question of what is object is?: 'The last motorcycle Robert Strong built.'

    It's a 3TJ FZR400RRSP, fitted with a 96 thundercat 600 cc engine and a 97 yamaha factory racekit.

    Completely obsolete today, never did a lap on a race track, I only used it on road and in 97' till the end of 99' when i stopped using it , nothing ever got close to getting close to it.

    Cheers Robert
     
  4. Colddevil

    Colddevil Member

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    I got the manufacturer and genre correct. If you were expecting more, well, thats on you. I knew it wasn't a 600 but looked close so I saw it had the 400 frame. If you were expecting any more from peasants like me, that's your fault.

    Goddamn lockness monster.

    *edit-I might have been a little blitzed last night when I wrote this.
     
    Last edited: Apr 11, 2020
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  5. Captain 80s

    Captain 80s Member

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    That bike is not completely obsolete today. It's fucking rad. I'd LOVE to have that, it's still a weapon.
     
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  6. Robert Strong

    Robert Strong New Member

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    I haven't used it in over 20 years. It's been buried in my wood shed for alot of that time. Now it's sitting in my dodgy tent/carport and i don't know what to do with it. And upon appeal I have decided to award a silver medal (figuratively) to Coldevil, well done.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

     
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  7. Robert Strong

    Robert Strong New Member

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    Heya All
    I have two questions for the knowledgeable here, and you know who you are.

    1) Does anyone have any experience at using FCR 37mm MX keihin as carburetion for a VFR400

    2) Or any experience with using knock off Chinese 33mm FCR Keihin repops. Please don't reply if you hate china or your information came from a mate who saw some comments on the information super highway about them. Please just comment if you have been close enough to touch them and have some actual experience with them.

    Thank you

    Mr Strong

     
  8. Robert Strong

    Robert Strong New Member

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    Heya All

    Option 1: I can get FCRMX 37mm for around $US80 each inc freight . $US200 for a set of FCR's. The negatives are how ever substantial. The needles and jets will be completely random as they come off mystery dirt bikes. An aftermarket kit to service and standardize them is $US70 plus $US30 for an accelerator pump kit, plus $US20 freight and %15 New Zealand goods and services taxes: = $US120 x 4 = $US480 plus GST @ 15% = $US552

    so the cost of 4 recon'd 37 FCRMX carbs is a minimum of $US552 + $US (80 x 4) = $US872

    And they are still at least 4mm in diameter to large for the motor.

    Option 2: $US2,885.84 band wait 2.5 months plus USD https://japan.webike.net/products/23176256.html

    Option 3: $US1,972.00 inc fright and NZ GST https://www.ebay.com/itm/Keihin-Fcr...rentrq:a5586fb51710abc2f2af6cc5ffd141b1|iid:1

    Option 4: $US874 including freight and NZ GST for 4 chinese knock offs of a Keihin FCR 33: https://www.ebay.com/itm/FCR-33mm-C...858578?hash=item3b41412412:g:PjEAAOSwFbdeMs4X

    Cheers

    Wobert

     
  9. Robert Strong

    Robert Strong New Member

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    Looks familiar
     
  10. Robert Strong

    Robert Strong New Member

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    Hello to the three people that read my blathering ramblings.

    When I assembled the FZR(shown in a previous episode), it was built as a formula two race bike.

    It was all about what I thought would be a good package.

    I'm not sure what factory race kits cost now, cause i got mine 23 years ago.

    And while it was more than the bike and the engine cost me.

    I had learned that you could lose your mind or worse trying to improve on what was there by throwing random parts at.

    I was 25, looking back now i surprise myself how i sometimes I made a couple of really good decisions and a pile of not so good ones.

    The kit was great, full credit to yamaha. I do have a couple of issues with the New Zealand distributor, namely i was informed after paying for it the kit, that the exhaust system wasn't going to be part of the kit and would cost additional, i wish i could remember what they wanted for it I think around $NZ3000, but it was massive and i had blown all my dough to get to this point.

    Months go by, the distributor rings to inform of it's arrival and that the New Zealand dollar had at the point they paid for it, compared to the point in time when they quote for the kit which had been paid for in full months and months before it's arrival dropped. And I had to pay the difference before they would release the kit. I can't remember the dollar value now, somewhere around 15-20% extra sounds right.

    They rung me about 18 months later and said the exhaust system had been sitting on their shelf and would i give them $100 for it, cause i suspect it's next stop was being recycled. The reason i know they had told me it was part of the kit i was getting is because they had ordered it with the kit i had requested. The only order kits after being paid in full, which is not surprising really.

    A factory race kit exhaust system and muffler for $60, of course there was always going to be a problem. The muffler and collect we not part of this offer,so it was headers and and all the wizardry to get those massive thin walled tubes mated to cylinder with machined collars and fitting, and some bitching looking springs.

    I made a collector out of some galvisized sheet and tube and a fitted a muffler with simply 'carbo' written on it. Deem were da days, back before flux core devastated the quality of welds from budget M.I.G units.

    The VFR is going to be very very different.

    The path so far has been very twisty, the VFR400 motor is actually the 3rd motor i've intended to put into the chassis. But at the same time i never intended to put the VFR motor into the NSR chassis when I brought it. The FZR was planned and completed as i had intended to from the start. This thing keeps evolving. There is no way when i brought the NSR chassis that I had any idea of where i was now.

    I hadn't really done alot of mechanical work on bike over the last 20 years. I sort organically got asked to sort some wires out and maybe adjust a few things on friends bike, normally I don't involve myself in other peoples problems, i'm not really smart enough.

    I don't think i got the job because of my mechanical reputation. I thought it's probably been hacked at by anyone who possessed an adjustable wrenching tool from here to the other side of Rotorua. I spent hours, usually with loud music in the back ground admiring the subtle but finely appointed design features. I think my favorite mod was that during custom wiring loom build the artist had decided to go old school and use only one fuse for everything i never found another fuse anywhere on it. It was in one of the like a short pencil shaped plastic fuse holder that splits longitudinally for fuse access. But the was a problem I suspect all the fuses they fitted kept failing, so they jammed one of those gold plated blinged out monster stereo fuses in there, but the fuse was to big to close the case so they just wrap the whole thing in insulation tape.

    Me with a few wires. (he's a handsome devil).

    [​IMG]

    Where it was when i stopped working on it.



    Going for a lap.



    Looking back now it was like as if I knew i was rusty, not that i was much when i wasn't, but i think it was working on that GN was sort of got me back in the game for more serious things in future even though i had no real plan. Except I felt that i needed to get more motorcycle in my life.

    While there have been errors and misteps along the way, i'm sure working on that thing and a friend of mines CBR250, has made the VFR easier. So far the total loses due to being mentally disadvantaged come to a paltry: finger nail and a lower steering triple clamp.

    Next time either: fuel injection or the design brief (Mark XXVI)
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2020
  11. Robert Strong

    Robert Strong New Member

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    Yarr

    I got some bits in the mail. No idea if they are of any use, but total cost including freight around US$70.

    [​IMG]

    Everything is worn, but that is generally only reason i get anything.

    I'd like to if i can fit a two radiators in like on an NC-30 and ditch the oil cooler.

    Does anyone have an opinion on keeping the oil cooler? It just seems like a lot of weight and complexity for the amount of cooling it offers.

    One of the radiators i got looks made in a local shop, it's soldered with brass tanks, weights maybe 4 times the aluminium ones but looks serviceable.

    My first flat slide arrived, I like flat slide carbs, to me it's the difference between driving stick or a slush box. They way you can really use them badly and make the motor surge and bog down, the rattle, those ridiculous jets of fuel from the accelerator pumps. So much more interesting than a well set up vacuum carb.

    Avast
     
  12. raYzerman

    raYzerman Member

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    I personally would keep an oil cooler, expecially a bigger one like that appears to be... coolant temp is regulated by the thermostat, and is lower... if these bikes don't have a systemic cooling problem, why ditch the oil cooler.... and what's driving a second rad.... just my thought.
     
  13. Robert Strong

    Robert Strong New Member

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    Hello

    It would appear that with this project we can only measure it's success by measuring the improvement of constants of it's life.

    There was no constant in either the physical or philosophical aim. This motorcycle is the president's axe.

    What exists now has 4 different engines and 2 different chassis.

    As far as i know there are parts from 5 things of those 6 things on the bike as it is now. the exception being parts from klr650,
    but who knows for sure about that, maybe there is a nut or a bolt in there somewhere.

    Why am i doing it?

    If you ever find your self asking yourself 'what is this guy actually trying to do?", I can without fear of contradiction and with complete confidence say that I too ask myself the same question.

    What I do know now is that it is an absolute, it has to have Keihin FCR flatslide carbs on it.

    I get that it is with much merit and also entirely reasonable to ask 'why bother?, You have a set of carbs with a few issues that will run the bike, why bother with an extra layer of complexity?". I could throw the CV's on it, bodge up and exhaust and doing some laps this afternoon.

    No, gentle reader. There will no laps this afternoon.

    I, at this point want an alternative to the system supplied standard by Honda as OEM to control the fueling of the engine.

    I'm fond of flat slides. But they were no matter any of the options I considered even close to being within the budget for what is nothing more that a frolic.

    I can get cheap 37mm FCRMX carbs, but the service and turning costs to make them work even close to the performance of the standard CV carbs is well beyond the available funds for this.

    Even before one of these flat slide I brought turned up, I knew 4 x 37mm Keihin FCR MX carbs could never fit in the space and function that the standard CV carbs currently occupied.

    Just looking at the shape of the space were fuel is stored on the carburetor you can see the design effort required so everything fits without any inference.

    If you consider the horse output of each carb I want to install, it gets even crazier, a 37 FCRMX carb on a single cylinder 250 makes around 45hp.

    So i want to install the carberation that is required to produce 4 x 45 hp = 180hp in the space of what was require to make 50-60hp.

    Apart of physical space issues, there was that the throat of the carburetor was what is considered far to large with such a small flow (ie from a 250 cycylider to a 100cc cylinder) to generate a large enough constant amount of vacuum to allow turning that was forgivable of the differences in variable atmospheric conditions.

    The cheapest aftermarket injection computer I found was NZ$775, their a local crowd. And support can be the most important issue. So i'd go local for that. But it needs a bunch of other components. That NZ$775 is a basic computer a few wires and a basic tune. You need all the other parts to make inject system work.

    The more I think about the costs associated cost required the worse that idea appeared.

    Meanwhile i'm trying to selling the hyosung GT250R engine package that was one of the four different engines that at some point sat inside that chassis.

    So from the GT250R, I have all the parts required to run a fuel injected two cyclinder 250 cc four stoke engine.

    Like it say, it takes me along time to work this stuff out, this was an option. And I knew all those parts worked together. A totally functional wiring loom that was completely correct. That is beyond just a fairly solid starting point, for what is to me of no cost and apparently of little demand to others.

    I don't know where i am technology wise, i don't own a mobile phone. But i'd played with technology before, so i know a little in certain areas of it.

    I wonder might be possible to modify a hyosung GT250R injection system to run a fuel injection system on my VFR400?

    I had never really considered the various as black boxes with electrical connections on them that controlled the engine management on the engines i'd owned as programmable by me. It was as if i viewed these controllers to only to be used as it's manufactured intention.

    That changed over time, i started to mix and match different parts from different models of motorcycle, and at the same time because manufacturing began more generic, it has in my mind become even easier to successful connect different parts together and for them to work functionally than ever before.

    So i owned a complete fuel injection unit from the fuel filter before the fuel pump to the injectors, it's everything required to run the injection of half a VFR standard.

    Form what I can gather it's possible the injector pump for the GT250r is the same as on the gt650r, I don't know for sure, but if this is a possibility, then if so it's rated at well beyond the maximum required fuel flow for a the honda's 400 cc engine. And maybe I could fire the four injectors as two pairs rather than as two singles in standard for the 2 cylinder hyosung.

    So physically, i'm just the hardware required short of whats needed for the fueling of two additional cylinders of the honda and a way to adjust the computer that runs everything.

    How easy/difficult is it to modify the program that controls engine management computer so it run a different engine type/size?

    It's a Delphi MT05

    Bye
     
  14. Diving Pete

    Diving Pete Member

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    you are in for an interesting time - lol..

    Now there is a fuel injected 400cc motorcycle - think the CB400SF Hyper VTEC Revo from 2008 was so.
     
  15. Robert Strong

    Robert Strong New Member

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    Chapter 7: War stories

    When i think of war stories, i think of pulp fiction. The only person i knew who had 'actual' war stories never told me a single one and we spent alot of time together.

    It's a bit of a trend as of late, I known a few people that have past, that had some quality stories in them, real stories. But instead of sharing them, they made what would would be in my world as a loud mouth, a considerable effort to take those stories untold to the grave.

    I think i'll tell a story next post. One that doesn't have to be taken to the grave.

    Chapter 8: Carburation "kɑː(r)bəˈretəɪʃ(ə)n/"

    Does it really matter how the air and fuel is mixed?

    Short answer: Depends.

    Longer answer. Only if you are a dork.

    Chapter 9: Russian Hackers "ruh·shn ha·kuhz"

    I must of spent a number (of unspecified) hours searching for information on the informational super highway on the engine management system from the hyosung GT250R I had.

    Two reoccurring search results:

    1: A software package, (well as far as i could work out 2 software licenses (bitedit and bit'somethingelse') and two dongles) to allow you the owner of said and bespoke delphi mt-05 engine management to possibly change some variables.

    But with terms and conditions that the purchaser of said and bespoke software(s) and or dongle(s) may be changed by the manufacturer at any point of ownership without any reservation.

    2: A self professed Russian hacker. (And at this point i was about to get schooled on engine management systems). I knew this day was coming, even the noblest of warriors must eventually give serious consideration to the darkest of dark arts. Those little black boxes all over the place.
    His premise was simple he had a delphi mt-05 equipped motorcycle, it developed a fault and he had a play with the ecu and developed a system to get information from the system in real time, or record it for later review. For free. He may of claimed more, but all i was interested in was how to communicate with the program that made the sparks and sprays happen, i keep my expectations on the D-low and am seldom disappointed.

    So i have purchased the plug and cable to connect a non-OBD2 complyant device to a blue tooth OBD2 reader (also purchased).

    I have to mount the GT250r engine up, connect everything, get it running so i can see if i can get info from the delphi's ecu as it happens using the russian's instructions and plugging in the various devices.

    And wait for things to turn up from different parts of the planet.

     
  16. Robert Strong

    Robert Strong New Member

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    Chapter 10: What I can remember,

    Isn't the idea of remembering funny, it's one thing aye?, nar it's at least 2 'things'.

    This thing happened to me at least 23 years ago, maybe more i can't remember.

    What can someone remember from that long ago? I don't know what i did 13 days ago, yet i think i can remember what happened 23 + years ago.

    I have absolutely zero evidence to back this 'story' up, i'm pretty sure of that, you just have to trust me that the events I claimed to be true happened.

    Unfortunately for legal reasons, nothing described after this point ever occurred and all names have been changed to protect the guilty (c) AC/DC
     
  17. Robert Strong

    Robert Strong New Member

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    I've built my green house now it's time to return to the NSR/VFR
     

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