1994 RVF400R Build Project

You got that right.

 

The fix is in for the water pump. It will take a little machining of a couple pieces, but should end up with a new mechanical seal set installed with the impeller shaft now riding on hybrid ceramic bearings. Should be a cool process. hoping to be able to document the process. Mechanical seal set in hand, waiting on the ceramic bearings, NTN low friction oil seal, and OE sealing o-rings.

 

How much was this setup?

 

The bearings were $70 including shipping - Boca Bearing
The NTN seal was $20 including shipping - Motion Industries
Two sets of o-rings were $34 including shipping - CMSNL
Two sets of mechanical seals $79 including shipping - Seller on Ebay UK

So, if you were only going to do one pump, the parts are $146.50 including the shipping.
If you are going to get an extra set of mechanical seals and o-rings for stock, the parts are $203.00

On the machining part, that is going to vary wildly. Because I have a friend who happens to have a fabricating shop, it will be cheaper than just taking it to someone you don't normally work with. I never know how much the machining is going to cost, until Rob is done. The kicker is that you can't buy the pump anymore, long discontinued. So you either develop a method, or you leak coolant all the time. If I can get away with $300.00 total, I will consider that a win, because it will be easy to rebuild it in the futre, should it ever need it. If I could have bought a new pump, it would have been a little north of $200.00. I couldn't even find a used one and then it's hit or miss with what you get.

 

It's starting to come together, the bearings for the water pump arrived from Boca Bearing today. I also received the water pump cover and housing o-rings from CMSNL...no poster, but a kick ass gold CMSNL dude keychain for the collection.

Boca definitely kicked down with the swag for this order, they sent along a sweet gel work bench pad and a nice set of stickers, so I kind of have to give it up to Boca Bearing. Their service is awesome and they got me the bearings in 4 days. The bearings were shipped to my fabricator, Rob. He said that he seriously considered just keeping the bench pad for himself



So the two 12x28x8 ceramic bearings are here, just waiting on the 12x28x8 NTN oil seal, which is supposed to show up tomorrow. I really hope it does, as it's the last piece Rob needs to confirm his measurements so the machining can start. The bearings were perfect.

I also received a piece that I have really been waiting for, the custom fan switch. I have tried two different switches so far, and have not been happy at all with either. Dropped the coin this time and had Bike Sport Developments out of the UK make me one. Got tired of fucking around. It mounts to the clutch lever clamp lower bolt location. Their attention to detail is awesome, as they even laser etched the "FAN" text so that it would be right side up when the switch is mounted in the down position off the clamp. 100% happy with this and their service is awesome. Four days and it was here.







I went with the blue button. You have a choice of like five colors. The issue with the other buttons was the clearance, they took up too much space on the bars and seemed like they were crammed into a place they shouldn't have been. The new GSXR bars are even a little shorter, so I had to make a change so that it didn't look forced together. This should work perfectly.

Hopefully, I will have some pics of the water pump machining and completed piece soon. My guys are going to finish the GSXR rotor/stator install and get the water pump back in place and perform some charging checks. If all is well, it will be ready for the bodywork. Just need that oil seal...

 

Cool pad they gave you. Be careful with that blue button, might be the gateway to the Matrix!

Looking good, the finish line is getting closer.

 

I hope that blue button is the gateway to finally being done with this project Where have I heard that before.....

 

There was no joy in RVFville, shaft seal did not arrive. So, no progress on the water pump. They are telling me 04.04 for delivery now. Time is slipping away and it's going to take some work and cooperation to get it all done next week. Still haven't given up.

Did get over to Cycle Terminal and order up some new connectors, some for stock and one specifically for connecting the new fan switch. Have a brand new Brembo RCS17 front master from when this slow boat to project hell initially pulled away from the dock. Considering the possibility of mounting it up, now that the faux intake tubes are gone and there is room for it. It will require new brake lines....which means more fucking around, so I'm not exactly excited about the prospect of more fitment dickery.

 

Thanks for the update. Never ends, does it?

 

Sure seems that way. It is a function of available time to invest. If I'm not around to push the rope up the hill, I'm never in a hurry about it, then I have time and it's impossible to get every little detail handled in a "needed it yesterday" fashion. All of the people I need to lean on to get things done, also happen to have a whole bunch of folks doing the same thing. You can't build effective relationships by being unreasonable.

I have decided to not even pull the Brembo box out of parts storage. It has to end here and the only one that can make it stop, is me.

 

LOL, how true, "It has to end here and the only one that can make it stop, is me." Been there many times, sometimes I get a bit obsessed.

 

There was a famous director that said "a movie is never really finished, you just have to walk away from it"

Sounds true here.

 

Seal for the water pump showed up yesterday. So, I went over and met up with Rob this afternoon and he started doing his thing.

Rob had already machined the spacer for between the two new bearings and bored out the impeller housing to 28 mm from 26 mm to fit the new ceramic bearings and seal, before I showed up. Of course, Rob went all in and made a pretty cool piece that is super light. The interior is tapered on both ends to give the part some strength and to also ensure that the inner race is free to spin and not bound up on the spacer. He machined it out of 7075 T6.



Next he went to work cutting the two clip lands into the impeller shaft



We ran into an issue with the clips that we purchased from McMaster-Carr yesterday...of course, going way too smooth. It ended up that the clips were too big to fit through the mechanical seal and the outer clip had to go through the mechanical seal....So, we went around the block to Evan Steel Performance and those guys hooked us up. As it turned out, Evan looked at it and immediately said he knew what would work...12mm spring clip off of a Showa cartridge. He just happened to have a few used oem cartridges that customers had left when Evan had upgraded their forks to Ohlins cartridges. Evan was able to disassemble a cartridge and pull out the clip for me.

It fit perfectly and also cleared the mechanical seal. The bearing inner race taper helps to compress it and hold it in place when the bearing is pressed onto the shaft. The two inner grooves are where the old plastic caged rollers used to ride. These are now bridged by the thicker ceramic bearings. The outer one's are the new one's for the clips. New ceramic seal installed on the back side of the impeller, this is what the mechanical seal rides on to create the actual seal.



Got the bearings and spacer pressed in and all the clips in the right places. Turned out that the rebuild idea actually had some merit, rofl. Haven't tested it in the real world yet, but I'm pretty sure it is good and I know it's rebuildable, because Rob accidentally pressed the old mechanical seal into the housing and we only figured it out when I saw the new one in the bag laying on the bench. It came apart easy enough and the seal was replaced in about 10 minutes. This is the completed inside bearing assembly with the clip installed. Right now it is calculated to have 0.5 mm of preload on the mechanical seal spring and the impeller to pump housing clearance is exactly 1.5 mm, as it was oem.



Installed the oil seal and it's ready to go back into the engine and get tested. Perfect clearance.



Went back to Evan and Phil and dropped off the pump. Phil said he might be able to get everything done by the end of the week. Told him not to worry too much about it...headed back to work and won't be able to do anything with it anyway. They are going to store it for me.

 

So close now.......

 

So very cool.

 

It looks cool....so far. Won't know if it is actually a success, until it gets tested with the engine running and it gets some miles on it. If it doesn't end up working, it will be disappointing. At that point I'm going to have to buy a couple blocks of aluminum and a block of stainless steel, have Rob do a design in CNC language and machine a billet housing and impeller and a new shaft. I have looked all over the world for even another used pump, they just don't exist.

 

Couldn't help myself. I felt that the rebuilt pump was a little "tight" when manually spinning the impeller shaft. So today I got with Evan and Phil at Evan Steel Performance and my fabricator Rob and we are going to do away with the mechanical pump and install an electric water pump. Rob will be the point man on the CNC machining of the engine plug plate/pump mount and Evan and Phil will be working with Rob to get the hoses configured and to get it mounted and operating. I'm going back to work, so there is time now to do this R&D side project.

The pump I ordered is the Davies-Craig 9050 kit with the EBP23 pump.

https://www.partsforspeed.com/davie...oster-water-pump-kit-12v-universal-ebp23.html

Evan is stoked about doing it, as they have been discussing doing electric water pumps on MotoAmerica engines for awhile, but haven't done it yet. I already have baseline dyno's, but Evan wants to dyno it with the mechanical pump and then dyno it again with the electric pump to see what kind of HP gains can be realized with the electric pump. Rob is going to be starting the design and CNC programming code for the engine plug plate/pump mount, as soon as the pump arrives next week.

 

Is an electric pump lighter too?

 

What a great Idea!!
You may be setting a trend for the prototype race bikes and later all the old motos that the manufacturers don't want to hasssle with anymore,..... like most of the owners on this forum.

My '98 might just have that 150hp output that I've always hoped it would

 

Actually, electric water pumps have been a thing in the 250 SX and MX classes since Honda started using the pump on their factory bikes last year. Now everyone is doing it. I have been looking at them and wanted to steal Honda's idea and bring it to street motos. Electric pumps have also been a thing on drag bikes.

We are still working out how it's going to actually work. The biggest question is how to control the pump when the thermostat is closed when cold. We still have to see how it works on cold start up, as the pump will be pushing 4.3 gallons per minute against the shut thermostat. The capacity of the entire system is 2.5 quarts with the oversize radiators. Unrestricted, this small pump is rated to be capable of pushing the entire volume of the system through the rads about 6 times a minute, or once every 10 seconds. The flow rate won't be that high with the thermostat in place. There is no information available from Honda as to the OE pump output.

These are the numbers for the OE thermostat:

Thermostat starts to open 176 - 183 degrees
Thermostat is fully open at 203 degrees

Phil's idea was to have a switch for the pump, so on start up it would be off, but as soon as the water temp gets high enough, and the thermostat starts to open, flip the switch to power on the pump. The other potential option is to remove the thermostat and have a digital controller that controls the pump speed based upon the actual water temperature. The switch idea is a good one, because the pump circuit is powered on as soon as the key is turned on.

It is going to be a trial and error thing, but we really want to see if we can make it work. There are other issues that will need to be addressed concerning the hose routing, but Rob can fabricate aluminum coolant tubes to make the necessary bends, like HRC did with a lot of their V4 cooling systems.