Inconsequential ramblings of an Old Git

[mangocrazy]

Looks like you've sorted the cable runs too which is where a lot of these types of conversions go wrong.

Having the extra elevation afforded by the risers helps a lot with that. You're not trying to jam lots of cables into a small space. And thankfully Aprilia provided generous lengths of OE cables, which helped a lot. I needed new hydraulic clutch and brake lines made up, but that was to be expected. I even managed to incorporate a dry-break fitment into the front brake line, which means I can separate the master cylinder from the rest of the system if needs be.

[mangocrazy]

Back in April 2022, this was weeksy's reaction to my earlier attempt at raised bars...

Ummmm words, I can't find any.

At all

Anywhere!

It rather seems that is still the case...

[mangocrazy]

Well, it's been a while...

The top fairing finally came back from the painters in mid-August and I fitted it pretty much the next day. I was very relieved to find that all the mounting points lined up as they should, in marked contrast to the crash damaged and repaired one I'd tried previously.. This particular painter turned the work round in a little over two months, so much better than the previous guy. I was even more relieved that with the top fairing on there were no clearance issues to the screen. Clearance was tight, but we had clearance, Clarence. What's your vector, Victor?

Once everything was fitted and roadworthy it was MoT time. I always take the bikes to a little scooter emporium a stone's throw from the Sheffield Utd football ground, as they have absolutely no interest in doing any 'remedial' MoT work and I know I'll get a fair test. They are also very relaxed about exhaust noise... The bike passed with flying colours and as I was due to sail for France very soon, it was time to load the bike on the van and fit all the other stuff I needed to take around it. It always takes me 2-3 days to establish the optimum layout and make sure everything is secured and can't move around.

So the first time I actually rode the bike with its new bar layout was in France. And within 100 yards I knew that the new layout was just what I wanted/needed. Low speed manoeuvering was so much easier and the riding position just felt absolutely 'right'. I'd only gone a mile or so when I realised that I'd stopped thinking about the riding position and was just getting on with the business of riding the bike. If something is completely unobtrusive, it generally means that it's working correctly. Things only intrude when something is wrong.

There were a couple of niggles, but nothing serious. Because of the rush I'd been in I hadn't managed to fit the fancy (and very effective) anti-vibration system to the bars that is standard on the Falco (and probably all other V60 v-twin bikes in the Aprilia range). Instead I'd fitted a pair of generic eBay bar ends that rely on expanding a rubber sleeve inside the bars. Worse still, I hadn't torqued the LH one up enough and it promptly disappeared into the undergrowth somewhere. So vibes through the LH bar were very noticeable, vibes through the RH bar less so but still present. There was also the fact that I'd changed the bar material (steel vs. OE aluminium) and layout so was entering the realms of the unknown. So I need to re-work the bars to fit the OE 'mass damper' system, but that will have to wait for next year as the Falco is staying in France and the VFR is being repatriated, having served its tour of duty.

The other difference (and one I was expecting) was increased wind blast due to the screen being substantially shorter and lower than OE. This was an inevitable consequence of fitting bar risers and different bars. It wasn't excessive, but it's enough to make me try 'plan B' which is the fitment of a Bob Heath fairing screen extender. No end of TT racers use these, so they must give some benefit. Here's the link:

https://www.bobheathvisors.co.uk/produc ... extenders/

I've bought the larger of the two (go big or go home) and will be fitting it later on today. I've already fucked up the OE look of the bike by hacking the fairing and screen about, so I figure I might as well go all in.

So earlier today I made my way through some very pleasant French countryside to the seaside town of Mèze. Aside from being a very pretty and largely unspoilt town, it also has the draw of a Sunday open-air market, and one of the stalls there sells nothing but olives, tapenades and sun-dried tomato products. The olives there are piled high and you can buy as many or as few as you like. I availed myself of a couple of kilos of 'olives noires à la Grecque'. We'll probably work our way through that lot and need some more by the time we return next April/May. Here come the obligatory photos...

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[mangocrazy]

Today I have been mostly riding my bike, and in lovely sunny weather. I decided to head off on my 'local loop' which encompasses about 30 miles of some of the best roads in the region. The loop starts in Roujan, heads through Neffies and towards Cabrières on a section of road that can only have been designed by a motorcyclist; it's just plain bonkers. And the scenery (if you've got time to take it in) is pretty cool as well. Cabrières is also home to some of the best quality and best value red wine in the region. This pic was taken on the other side of the village heading out to Clermont-l'Hérault.

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The big rock in the picture is one of 'Les Deux Rocs' that dominate the skyline in the area. If you look closely there is a small building perched on top that I believe is a chapel. The French do like to do that sort of thing. it's not uncommon to see hang-gliders circulating around the rock, playing with the thermals, in the company of birds of various sizes. And of course, the vines. Lot of vines. And a close-up of the Falco.

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Not too shabby for a 15 year old bike, no? The road from Cabrières intersects with the D908 which runs from Clermont-l'Hérault to Bédarieux (and further) and which is a glorious biking road. it has a billard table smooth surface with recently laid grippy tarmac, fast sweeping bends and great views. One section has 70-80mph corners which flip flop between left and right handers for a couple of miles. No intervening straights, just pick the bike up and flip it on the other side of the tyre. Fabulous. A bit later on there are a couple of corners that feel like they cover more than 360 degrees. Obviously they don't but it feels like it. And when we get close to Bédarieux, this is what greets us:

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Yes, giant metal ants. Nothing out of the ordinary here, all perfectly normal. The roundabout is signed on the the map as 'Rond point avec des fourmies géantes', so that's all right. They've been there for 15 years that I know of, so they are officially part of the scenery. As I can only add 3 attachments to any of my posts (no idea why), I'll have to show a closer view of one of the ants on a following post.

[mangocrazy]

And here is a closer view of one of the local wildlife, with my Shoei helmet for scale. The creator of these ants has thoughtfully added a convenient seat for photo opportunities. How sweet.

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[Skub]

Howling wind,cold and heavy rain here. You can keep all that blue sky,lovely day rubbish.

[mangocrazy]

It's called 'doing a Yorick'...

[mangocrazy]

On the subject of 'weird things you see on French roundabouts' I submit this for your delectation - a giant privet dinosaur...

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And just to give an idea of the bar position as the Falco left the factory, this pic from the same French trip:

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[DefTrap]

Quite a lot of roundabout entertainment round our way

The paper boats one was always popular for my kids because it signified we had arrived on our holidays.


And this one a bit further up the road.

The figurine is about 15ft or so high.

[Taipan]

Re french structures, I liked this one in Salbris...

[mangocrazy]

We returned from La Belle France last week and I've spent most of the intervening time getting over the drive back (800 miles door to door, excluding the ferry crossing) and catching up with stuff from the last 4 or 5 weeks. The VFR was ferried back in the van and is now sitting on the Skylift awaiting investigation of the front end 'clonking' issue. I'm not in any hurry to start...

Today I took advantage of dry weather, blue skies and mild temperatures to wheel the Duke 690 out, warm it up, change the oil and paper filters and inspect the gauze filters. All seemed in order - there was a slight build up of fine metallic swarf on the magnetic drain plug, but nothing excessive. The oil had only done about 1500 miles but was looking a bit dirty, so it was worth changing it. I replaced the mega-expensive Motorex oil that KTM recommends with some only slightly less expensive Motul 10w60. I really like Motul oils and as the Duke's engine only takes a paltry 1.7 litres of lubricant, it pays to use the best. This stuff was a quite dramatic burgundy-red colour and the engine was noticeably quieter than before once the oil had circulated fully. It's probably not fair to compare used oil with new in that respect, but there was a noticeable difference.

It's now getting to that time in the year when you wonder if every ride will be the last for a few months. I'd like to get out for one last blat on the Duke before it goes on SORN. One odd thing did occur while I was warming the bike up prior to dropping the oil; for no real reason I just pulled the clutch in a couple of times and the bike started surging from tickover up to 3-4000 rpm and then back to tickover again, over and over. I tried opening the throttle, but it was completely unresponsive, it had obviously been over-ruled by the ECU. So I hit the kill switch, left if for 5 seconds or so and then started it again and normal service was resumed - very odd.

Has anyone had any experience of this?

[weeksy]

Nopes. Fraid not sorry.

[Supermofo]

Nope never had that on mine either

[Taipan]

I have had some weirdness on a few bikes before and turning off and on again has cured it. I guess the ecu doesn't get the signals it expected at the right time and has a brain fart?

[mangocrazy]

It's now getting to that time in the year when you wonder if every ride will be the last for a few months. I'd like to get out for one last blat on the Duke before it goes on SORN. One odd thing did occur while I was warming the bike up prior to dropping the oil; for no real reason I just pulled the clutch in a couple of times and the bike started surging from tickover up to 3-4000 rpm and then back to tickover again, over and over. I tried opening the throttle, but it was completely unresponsive, it had obviously been over-ruled by the ECU. So I hit the kill switch, left if for 5 seconds or so and then started it again and normal service was resumed - very odd.

Has anyone had any experience of this?

I'm sure I remember a KTM tech telling me that if you leave your bike on tickover for a long period without touching it then the bike recalibrates itself, IIRC I had to do this when I replaced a TPS. I'm sure it was something like leave it on for 15 mins and between 5-15 mins it recalibrates, but the cycle only starts at the 5m point, so it doesn't do it every time you start the bike and ride off.

When it's doing this you're not supposed to touch it, so perhaps it was mid calibration and it didn't like you pulling the clutch in and it sent it off on one a bit until it gathered it's senses.

Good point - it's the '15 minute idle reset', and it's definitely A Thing. I had left it idling to fully warm up prior to dropping the old oil, so could have been anywhere between 5 and 15 minutes, before i pulled the clutch in. That's definitely the best explanation so far; I'll go with that.

[mangocrazy]

When we came back from France I brought with me the steel 'ace' bars, so I could try and make them work with the OE Falco anti-vibration system. Last week I dug out one of the OE bars as a reference and took that, the 'ace' bars, an M18 x 1.5 tap and one of the complete OE anti-vibe inserts and headed down to my local engineering emporium. One of the guys there jokingly suggested I ought to have a clock card with my name on it, I visit that often...

Paul, the head honcho, had a good look at all the parts, did some measuring up and pronounced that they should be able to make up suitable inserts, get them welded in and then tapped to the correct thread (M18 x 1.5, unsurprisingly) to accept the hollow mounting bolts. So that's a good piece of news to start the week off with.

But as I always like to have a Plan B, I'm also going to order in some aluminium tube in 7/8" and 1 1/8" x 10swg (3.2mm) wall thickness and make up a duplicate set of bars in aluminium. That way I can do an A/B comparison of steel vs. aluminium bars and decide which material suppresses vibration the best. Or not.

Do you find it annoying when someone answers their own question? I do...

[mangocrazy]

With the Falco bars handed over to a third party, it was now time to give the old VFR a good coat of looking at. So up on the Skylift it went and out came the front wheel and the forks. As soon as the front wheel touched the floor, it became very apparent where the clonking noise was coming from - the discs were making a right old racket. On closer inspection there was very very slight sideways movement between disc and bobbins, but plenty of radial movement ; i.e the bobbins were allowing the disc to float excessively. This is the disc in question:

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It's not yer ornery 320mm disc, in fact I've never seen another one like it. It's very definitely a Honda disc, the six M6 mounting points tell you that, but it's ventilated axially and radially and the original carriers were magnesium. It has all the hallmarks of being a kit or racing part; I wouldn't be suprised if it wasn't a RC30 kit part, as it slots into an RC30 front end perfectly. OE Honda RC30 discs were 310mm diameter, but kit parts were 320mm. The carriers you see now are 7075 aluminium replacements/copies as the magnesium items suffered an untimely demise. I'd always assumed they were aluminium, and sent them off to be plated thinking as such. It was only when I received an irate phone call from the production manager of the plating plant telling me my f***ing parts had contaminated a brand new batch of chemicals that the penny dropped. Apparently magnesium reacts quite violently to the plating chemicals they use. Here's a rim shot for all you perverts out there...

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To confirm my suspicions about radial play, I dug out the feeler gauges and started measuring clearance under the bobbin heads. Minimum clearance was more than 0.2mm and maximum not far off 0.3mm. This was in addition to the existing 0.5mm shims/washers that were fitted under the circlips. So I hit google searching for 14mm x 20mm x 0.2mm stainless shim washers and bugger me if I didn't come up with a perfect match on the accu.co.uk website. A few minutes later and 30 (2 x 12 plus a few spares) of the little buggers were winging their way to me.

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The Plan is to fit the new 0.2mm shims underneath the existing 0.5mm items, so they face directly to the disc/carrier. I'll also be putting a wipe of silicone sealant on each bobbin to further reduce any extra play. I'll effectively be converting fully floating discs to non-floating discs. Not very rock'n'roll, but if its stops that bloody clonking it will all be worth it. This is scheduled for tomorrow. What is it they say about tomorrow?

[mangocrazy]

Well, tomorrow actually arrived and the two discs have had their end float reduced by means of the 0.2mm shims and their rights to free movement curtailed by application of RTV silicone. There was an early panic when I re-used a tube of silicone that had previously been capped off using cling film, and when I applied force in the shape of a mastic gun it steadfastly refused to budge. I then foolishly poked a screwdriver into the plugged end and released a torrent of silicone everywhere. Cue frantic clean up operations and black silicone all over bench, vice, hands and God knows what else. That stuff really does stick like sh1t to a blanket...

Anyway all 24 bobbins have been done and the two discs (and more importantly the silicone) are currently sat on a living room radiator and quietly curing away. Prior to this work the discs rattled like a bag of spanners when shaken. Now they're as quiet as a church mouse...

[BBB]

I've bought stuff from Accu for the bikes and car, quality fasteners at a good price, postage can be a bit high if you don't have a big order. Fancy blue envelopes soften the blow.

[mangocrazy]

I've bought stuff from Accu for the bikes and car, quality fasteners at a good price, postage can be a bit high if you don't have a big order. Fancy blue envelopes soften the blow.

Yeah, I have actually kept the fancy blue envelope - normally it would get tossed... They provided exactly what I wanted in super double quick time, so will be using them again.