Project FZR: Left Hand Side

After a bit of waiting a left hand side fairing panel came up for sale on ebay. It wasn't the cheapest but I decided to take a gamble and buy it. When it arrived I was pleasantly surprised by the overall condition. Besides the one scrape I knew about the paint it pretty much flawless.

As the scrape is at the bottom it's not a disaster. I will get this painted next year when I have other pieces done.

Annoyingly there are two holes in the fairing where the indicator is places. One of them will be covered up by the indicator rubber, whereas the other one will need covering with a small piece of white vinyl.

Overall I am really happy with it as the fairing on the bike has quite a few marks, probably from being dropped.

Project FZR: Hibernate

Well, the time has come and the bike is now in storage until the warm weather starts next year.

Project FZR: Down and Out

My downpipes arrived today for the FZR in the mail. I bought these off ebay recently as they were going cheap so I thought why not have a replacement set as the EXUP valve was included in the sale.

I opened the box and had a look around the downpipes.

My initial thoughts were promising, a bit of corrosion here and there but nothing that I felt that couldn't be sorted with a selection of wet and dry sandpaper, wire wool and Autosol.

I set to and removed the EXUP valve.

EXUP valve removed from the downpipes. 21 years of extreme hear and carbon

The EXUP cover should clean up easily.

There is a problem though, 2 of the bolts came out easy whereas one of the bolts was very stiff and then became very easy to turn...as it sheared in half.

I've soaked it and tried mole grips but I'm still having no joy removing the stud. If I have to I'll get a machine shop to drill it out and re tap the hole.

I removed the EXUP valve end plate and discovered that the circular bushing was actually an oval bushing. At this point it started to make me realise that this won't be a simple exhuast swap job but I'll have to replace the bushings inside the valve housing.

The bushes won't be hard to change as it shows in the image below, but at £25 for each bush it will cost more for two little bushes than I paid for the exhaust. The gasket needs replacing too as it has seen better days.

I started to have a look around the valve itself to see if it was usable or past it. At first glance the valve rods had a bit of corrosion built up so I clean that off.

The facing has worn slightly but you can't really feel it if you run your finger along it. One thing for sure if that the previous owner can't have ever serviced this part as there was absolutely no sign of copper grease anywhere.

I'll keep working on the exhaust and see how I get on. The downpipes came off an 11,000 mile FZR400 3TJ but in all honesty the condition is pretty lousy compared to my downpipes currently on the bike at 18,500km. Still, the part is definitely fixable and with Stafford bike show tomorrow I'll be on the look out for plenty of bits of pieces to help restore all these parts.

Project FZR: Semi Naked

Since buying the FZR I've had a lot of fun and it has proved to be a solid bike, but as the weather will be getting worse in the coming months I have decided to start taking it to bits in order to replace certain parts and give it a well deserved clean up.

At present the side fairing panels have been removed and I've spent an hour or two with wire wool trying to clean up the engine. I still have a long way to go but it is starting to look a lot better.

This is where the top fairing will need repairing.

Left hand side of the bike after a spruce!

Here is how the down pipes currently look.

After a session with wire wool and white spirits I managed to get one of the down pipes looking like this,

I have faith that I can get rid of the corrosion and get these looking next to new again. I removed the Coerce end can as well.

Here is the EXUP valve with the cover off. I had a go tightening the EXUP cables and it still rattles. Having had a play around with the valve if you get two fingers behind the mounting face you can feel play in the valve. When the engine was running I put pressure on the end face and it stopped the rattling, when I removed pressure it rattled again.

The answer? I've bought a set of replacement downpipes with the EXUP valve included from an 11,000 mile FZR 3TJ. When the downpipes arrive I'll strip down the valve and inspect it for any wear. I'll replace the bushes if I have to and just for good measure I'll replace all the plastics caps in the valve too. To finish it off I'll coat the ends of the valve in copper grease before I re fit it. I managed to buy some good condition EXUP cables as well as a replacement set for the future. Lastly, I quite like the unfaired look, maybe I should buy a streetfighter!

Project FZR: Up Close and Personal

I went out for a wee blast on Saturday morning with the intention of getting a few photos. I doubt I'll ride the bike much after this month is over, I'm already eyeing up bits on ebay to replace worn out bits this winter.

Here are the pics.

The jobs this winter to make the bike pretty much mechanically and cosmetically immaculate are:

• Fix EXUP valve - Either worn bushes, worn cables, lack of grease on EXUP cables
• Sand exhaust and paint black
• Find replacement left hand side fairing panel, or have bottom half resprayed red
• Have scrape on tank sprayed
• Have the headlight fairing surround plastic welded and resprayed in pearl white
• Replace screen
• Replace grips
• Service the bike and change all fluids
• Replace radiator and spray black with radiator paint
• Replace winkers
• Replace clutch spring with EBC springs.

Once all these jobs are done the bike will be in superb condition and gladly all these tasks won't cost a lot to do. The most expensive part will be the bodywork. Stay tuned for more updates.

Summers Ride in Time for October

Tonight I met up with a buddy and went out for a ride as I hadn't been out in a few days. Although I was feeling pretty lousy I wanted to have a blast whilst the sun is shining as Britain is still enjoying this record heat that has hit us over the past week. As it's getting dark around 1930hrs we set off early and had a ride around the lanes. After spending the afternoon cleaning and polishing the bike I got it ready to go out.

We parked up near Bumble Bee lane outside Sharnford so I took a few pics. I'd already discovered that as the weather is so humid the bike was suffering from heat soak.

My buddy parked up his Kawasaki 636 so I took a few pics too. It's pretty mad to think that the Kawasaki is 16 years newer than mine.

We then went for a bit of a blast around some of the finest A roads around our way that we could find. We ended up near Lutterworth so we parked up and got some more pics, as well as a couple of vids of the FZR.

My rear indicators have been slightly loose for a while now, but today the left hand side one tried to escape. Not to worry, when I got home I found some washers and put it back on. All the winkers will soon be replaced with 4DX indicators anyway.

Video time. The video below shows what the Coerce Race pipe sounds like when the engine is being revved when not under load.

The next video shows what the pipe sounds like when the bike is under load. My mate filming said that the camera really doesn't do it justice. After all, it does say '98db' on the pipe!

Project FZR: Fairing Fitted

The sun is shining, Britain is enjoying some nice warm weather, and it is October tomorrow. It's really weird as flowers are blooming but the leaves on trees have turned golden and are falling off. Anyway, this is perfect bike riding weather so expect some pretty pictures soon. Because of this I got myself into gear and fitted the new fairing that I recently revived.

The job didn't take long but it involved swapping some clips and rubbers over in order to make the fairing ready to fit. Here is the result.

It came up a treat with the Autoglym products so I'll do the same to the rest of the bodywork. I'm on the look out for other body panels, but if I have no luck I'll have the red bits sprayed up. The fairing that covers the headlight needs attention so I'll get a specialist to plastic weld that and spray it back up.

Here is the fairing I took off. I intend on having a bash at fixing the damaged areas.

The damage isn't bad, but trying to match the paint finish could be hard. I quite fancy an A16 Moto GP exhaust pipe too but I'd rather spend money getting the bike as mint as possible. FZR400RR's are getting hard to find in good condition now so I plan on restoring this to its former glory. Besides the paint work I can fix everything up myself so that will reduce cost. I already have another bike in mind next year so the FZR will have a bit of a rest then.