Le_Fromage_Grande wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 9:53 pm
Your paint looks a lot "Neil, Neil, orange peel" in the photo, alloy brackets look good, one size up on main jets isn't much, if it has a race pipe I'd be going two sizes up.
"Shut up you fascist!" ( my paint doesn't BTW, but that's likely only as I haven't put any paint on it yet )
As for the jetting, well, I'm not you, and I'm leaving them in there and seeing what the A/F probe on the dyno makes of it before I change anything
Le_Fromage_Grande wrote: ↑Thu Jan 04, 2024 9:53 pm
Your paint looks a lot "Neil, Neil, orange peel" in the photo, alloy brackets look good, one size up on main jets isn't much, if it has a race pipe I'd be going two sizes up.
"Shut up you fascist!" ( my paint doesn't BTW, but that's likely only as I haven't put any paint on it yet )
As for the jetting, well, I'm not you, and I'm leaving them in there and seeing what the A/F probe on the dyno makes of it before I change anything
I'll do a fuller update over the next few days when I have more to report, as at the moment the old girl looks like this.
I guess it doesn't look a lot different from the last time I posted, but I have been making progress with mainly small jobs and cleaning etc, although the extreme cold weather has meant no rattle-can action over the last few weeks, so it's still in the primer it was in the last pics- I've just balanced the tank and seat on for the moment to keep them out of the way, and also to encourage me as it makes it look as though it's more finished than it is
Having said that, we're not that far way- the carbs are now rebuilt, and back on the bike with new throttle cables, QA throttle, and new (SH) airbox, and I've also checked the valve clearances (none needed adjustment, which is good), treated it to a new set of plugs ( ones that came out looked good), sorted the hideous orange gasket mess on the clutch cover, and wired in and mounted a sequential shift light.
The forks are also ready to go back in, albeit I haven't painted (or stripped) the lowers, which I think I should have and is niggling away at me, so maybe I will. I also need to strip, clean and paint ( or maybe just strip clean, and touch up ) the front calipers
The blingy new rear shock will be here this week, so when it arrives I'll get the back end of the bike built back up, exhaust on, and see how she runs. In parallel with that, I'll also be breaking out the rattle cans
Will take more pics as I go from here, as I've been a bit tardy on that on the last week or so - the plan is to have it all together and painted by the end of next week so I can get it on the dyno in the next couple of weeks before it's first planned shakedown outing at an Oulton TD on 24th Feb
Just got home and postie has dropped off a couple of packages today- yum-yum and cheers @Couchy
I doubt the Bandit will get any attention for the next couple of days as tomorrow is a day of sawing/chopping and stacking logs followed by some essential maintenance on the orange bike ahead of a day out on the lanes of West Berks and Wilts on Friday, but the plan is that it'll be full steam ahead on the old girl this weekend
The swinging arm and nice spangly new shock are now back in, and a bracket mounted to secure the remote reservoir that still allows me to get to the damping adjuster easily.
Everything on this bike has been pretty grubby including the rear brake caliper, so that’s had a bit of a cleanup, and as soon as new pads arrive, the rear wheel will be going back in with a nice spangly gold race chain for good measure.
I’ve also re-fitted the exhaust system, and of course fired it up- unfortunately it still ran like a dog, taking far too long for revs to drop when you closed the throttle and not ticking over when it eventually did die down, so off came the carbs again.
When I’d previously had the carbs to bits, I’d noticed that the pilot jet in No3 carb was pretty much stuck in there, and whoever was in there before me had damaged the slot in it trying to get it out.
As it hadn’t wanted to budge for me with a moderate amount of force using a fairly weedy screwdriver, I’d taken what I’d thought of as the pragmatic view at the time, left it in there, and just soaked it in carb cleaner and given it a good blast with the airline before putting them all back together.
So this was the first place I headed
As you can probably see, the pilot jets are buried quite deep down a passageway which doesn’t help, but after a good soak in PlusGas and grinding down one of my more sturdy screwdrivers to fit with the best possible purchase, out came the pilot jet and after a good soaking in carb cleaner and some gentle filing to restore the damaged slot, back in it went after another good blow out of the carb air passages.
On went the carbs and airbox and I fired her up- things were definitely better but still, it was hanging on to the revs for far too long after closing the throttle before eventually dying- a typical symptom of an air leak or lean pilot mixture, but at least now it seemed like it was always running on all 4.
I was reasonably sure that I didn’t have any carb-to-engine air leaks but gave it a good spray around with the motor running to double check, which was all good.
The temperature of all the exhaust headers were within a few degrees of each other, so I was pretty confident it wasn’t a specific cylinder, but I did a compression check just to be sure, but mainly as I hadn’t done one yet and was interested to see what it was- dunno what a good reading for a Bandit is, but the satisfying thing for me was to see that they were all within 2 or 3 PSI of each other at 160-165 |PSI, so no need for any further leak-down etc. checks IMO.
After all this, as it was picking up and revving cleanly once off the pilot jet I was reasonably confident that I should be able to adjust it out with the pilot mixture screws, and that’s what I did- when I’d rebuilt the carbs I’d set them to what is the baseline setting of 1 ½ turns from fully closed, and as they are fuel (rather than air) screws on these carbs, to richen the mixture you turn them out, and that’s what I did, ½ turn at a time until it went past “the point” when I turned them back in ¼ turn, ending up at 2 ¾ turns out.
Feck knows why I’ve had to deviate significantly from stock, but it matters not as now she’s ticking over and picking up nicely, and my sequential shift light is working nicely
So we’re getting there- I’m waiting for a few more odds and sods to turn up, but tomorrow I’ll at least get the forks back in and get started on the paint.
But ahead of that, after one of the skubster’s recommendations earlier on in the thread and a little chat with a (no-names) fellow RTTL-er ex-racer and general good-egg last week, I got thinking and have purchased this for the princely sum of £4.99 , slid it onto the LH bar where my thumb can reach it and wired it in- is my secret weapon that will undoubtedly be worth seconds a lap! ( well either that or blow the thing up )
Over recent weeks I have questioned myself a bit on this build and specifically, the number of hours I’m putting into a bit of an old shitter particularly as a few "race-ready" Bandits have come available through the club recently, but when I put my sensible head on I know that they very likely wouldn’t be a lot different than this one and I’ve have ended up going through whatever I’d bought when they are as old as these bikes are, but I am at last finally starting to feel that it’s coming together, which is a good feeling, and the good thing is I now know just about every nut and bolt on it.
Anyway, woffle over, the next gripping installment will follow shortly!
Quite a lot of activity on the old girl over the last week or two, and I’m 9/10 ( or probably more accurately, the bike is ) ready to race, yay!
So what have I done?
We have a quick-action throttle !
In keeping with the budget/team thrifty nature of this project, rather than waste the cost of a tyre or more on a nice blingy one, I’ve replaced the OE Suzuki throttle tube it was wearing with one from a 2017 R1, which until a couple of months back I’d had on my ZX6.
It just needed a small amount of metal removing from the standard Bandit RH switchgear housing and the outer end of the “pull” cable as the part of the tube that the cables sit within is a larger diameter and snagged a bit, but Mr Dremel sorted that out in no time
It’s a nice easy and cheap upgrade that has reduced the amount of throttle travel from the best part of 180 deg to 90, which of course was the main objective, and has allowed me to keep the standard RH switchgear and use standard length cables.
The forks are also now back in ( albeit wearing the same slightly tatty paint they came to me with), and it’s sitting on it’s wheels for the first time since I bought it.
I’ve also fitted the M1000RR front brake master cylinder ( with one of WavyDave’s nice little stainless reservoir brackets) and bled the brakes up.
I was wondering if this MC may be slightly too large a bore with the relatively low fluid capacity two-piston standard front calipers, but lever feels nice which bodes well, but I’ll only really know once I get it on track and start using it- if it is a bridge too far, then the (far less blingy) ancient OE one will go back on
I’ve also replaced the monstrosity that was the previous shark fin with a much more aesthetically pleasing cast black one, and drilled and tapped the underside of the swingarm to properly secure it- a definite upgrade over the self-tappers that the old one was (barely) attached with
And how it looked before, just for comparison- lovely eh
It also now has a rain light, wired into a switched power source with an extra little switch on the seat unit so it will only go on when it rains
And the tank, front mudguard and seat have been rattle-canned by me, which I’m not happy with either in terms of the colour combinations I’ve used, or the quality of finish, but well, as my brother Mart said, there will definitely be worse-looking bikes on the grid and I suspect he’s right, so it’s now painted and will start the season how it is now.
And now that the tank and seat etc are painted and on there I was able to run it down to my local friendly dyno men this morning to see how it ran, or of course didn’t- It was a good day and spent a very pleasant couple of hours chewing the fat with Gav and Dan and the bike didn’t disgrace itself either
I won’t be posting the dyno graphs online (walls have ears and some people don’t need to know how much it is or isn’t making ), but suffice to say I am very pleased with its performance- the motor picks up nicely, is fit and healthy and not using any oil, and nothing fell off or went bang either
We did a good few runs with the baffle / Db killer in and out, with only a 2hp difference at peak with the baffle in, which is great, and quite unexpected, but I guess it is a fair-sized can for a relatively weedy motor.
An interesting bit for me was that it was a little rich (A/F of 12.5-12.7) towards the top end so if I were inclined, there’s potentially a little more power to be had by going back down to standard-size main jets, but I’ll not be doing that as it’s making decent numbers and there is a lovely pretty much flat peak from 10 to 11.5k
So, what’s left to do then?
Sort a small oil leak from the ignition pick-up cover which we noticed at the end of the dyno sessions- at first I thought it may have been a cracked engine case as it is showing a bit of crash damage there
But on removing the cover, I can see there is no damage, and it is just a badly re-fitted gasket, it needs the gasket faces cleaning up and the (broken and bodged up with silicon) gasket replacing and the job’s a good ‘un.
One advantage of taking the cover off is that I was able to see that the motor is running the OE ignition rotor, which is good, as any non-standard ones ( the ones that advance ignition by 4 or 5 degrees apparently give really good gains on the 600s) are illegal, so is nice to know I’m legal
Apart from that, I need to set the rear sag to work out whether I’ll need to use a lighter spring (don’t think I will but until I try to set it I don’t know), and I still need to paint the belly pan and most importantly make some decent brackets to fit it to replace the cable-ties that previous owner was using.
I also want to change it to race-shift pattern for which I need to either turn the existing lever over if it’s possible, or if not, obtain an angled linkage boss for the gear change shaft so it will clear the bottom frame tube
Other than that, I’ll just be adding a few stickers, and getting on it, ride it, and see how I get on
Le_Fromage_Grande wrote: ↑Tue Feb 06, 2024 9:34 pm
Can you just turn over the bit of the gear linkage that clamps to the gear change shaft (I'm not convinced that makes sense but I know what I mean)
No, as I mentioned above, it would foul the lower frame tube so I ideally need to find a suitable linkage shaft clamp that has an outward offset to enable it to clear the frame tube, albeit no luck finding one so far.
Something like this would do it if it had a different spline pitch- Suzuki seem to use a coarser pitch than everyone else which is annoying as all the Suzuki versions of this I can find are straight down like my current version, i.e don't have the required offset
Anyway, we will overcome- probably with something like a lever from an old Suzuki shopping or trail bike with a bit of heating and bending, the toe part hacked off and a rose joint added- that would do it
One mod we used to do on the GSXR 600’s 750 and Thous etc of the k6 era was fit the R6 2c0 throttle tube as that reduced the throw from 90° to 60°, best mod for £20 or so, you have to dremel out some material from the switchgear housing the throttle cam to clear everything but that doesn’t take long.
wull wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 12:21 pm
One mod we used to do on the GSXR 600’s 750 and Thous etc of the k6 era was fit the R6 2c0 throttle tube as that reduced the throw from 90° to 60°, best mod for £20 or so, you have to dremel out some material from the switchgear housing the throttle cam to clear everything but that doesn’t take long.
Yup, sounds the same as what I've done, massive difference to the throw
Dunno how the previous guy raced it with that throttle - standard Bandit ones twist a looong way !
A little bit of an update on this in case anyone is interested – race shift is now sorted
It all ended up being straightforward as the boss on the lever pressed out easily and there was still clearance for the rose joint inside when I turned the lever upside down, so although we don't have the (pretty?) milled front face of the lever showing now, we are all sorted
Before (road shift)
And now- (race shift)
When that was done, I set about trying to sort some proper mounts for the belly pan- as I previously mentioned, it’s been secured with cable ties only to date, which I guess is fine if you use enough cable ties ( and have a good stock to replace them for when you remove and refit it), but it’s less than ideal IMO as it means the fibreglass of the belly pan itself it pulled hard against the frame tubes/engine cases, with the obvious resultant chaffing/wea, and well, it’s also just a bit shit too IMO.
The ideal solution would be to weld a few brackets to the bottom frame tubes and river Dzus sockets into them, but mainly as I don’t have a MIG welder I took the quicker/easier (for me) route and have fixed it by nuts and bolts.
Basically, to do that I’ve replaced two of the front engine mounting bolts with studs to provide the front two mounts and used some stainless steel and rubber P-clips at the rear- it meant that I had to make a couple of little ally brackets and it is a little Heath-Robinson, but the important things (to me) are that the belly pan is now completely secure and not in contact with the frame tubes, engine, or exhaust downpipes, and is easily removable in a couple of minutes by undoing a few nuts
Tomorrow or Saturday the belly pan will get paint to match the rest of the bike, and I think we should then be just about ready to roll - a track day is booked for next weekend for the shakedown/set-up ( in addition to the bike, and I’ll be also shaking down new leathers and lid etc) , so will report back after then- wish me luck for decent weather eh
Oh, and I’ve even made that one specific special tool for it that no club racer (can ever be without, so we're sorted!
)
- standard Bandit ones twist a looong way !
