PROJECT NINJA
It’s alive! And it’s not boiling over. Rob tells us more...
This month has been another busy one, albeit not doing all the jobs I was hoping to get done. The adaptors I need for my oil cooler were out of stock so I haven’t been able to finish that off, the aluminium I ordered to make my rear calliper hangar got lost in the post and my little ultrasonic cleaning bath has decided to stop working so my carbs are still minging. In light of all of this and with the weather being so nice I decided it would be great to get out of the garage and socialise with other human type people. I chucked the bike in my van and popped over to see a good mate of mine, Rich, and his big tool (a hydraulic pipe crimping thing) to get some braided hoses made. I could have measured the lengths and angles I needed and just emailed my order over but I find with non-standard things there’s much less chance of having issues if things are made with the bike present.
As usual we spent more time drinking coffee and talking bollocks about bikes than it actually took to make the hoses. First thing was which colour to go for? Bright pink may not be the usual choice but there is a reason to my madness, it will tie in perfectly with the ZXR decals I am going to use, or at least I hope so. Colour decided, the next step was to put the end fittings in place and put the required bends in them, then came time to play with the long pink hose, temporarily fitting it to one end and cutting it at the required length and checking it fitted at the other end. Once happy with all four hoses it was over to Rich’s funky machine to crimp all the ends on permanently. Job done. A huge thanks to Rich for a top quality job as usual.
Now back in my garage it was back on with other tasks. The aluminium I ordered to make my oil cooler mounts turned up so it was out with the good old angle grinder, drill and files. I made a simple top and bottom bracket that bolts to the cooler and the original frame mounts. The most time consuming bit happened because I didn’t have a drill bit big enough to do the holes for the cooler fittings, so I had to chain drill them and then file the holes round. Don’t worry, it all looks pretty neat fitted. Seeing as I had the grinder out I then attacked the sprocket cover and cut it down to save a bit more weight and add to the race bike look, I fitted new 520-pitch front and rear sprockets again to save a bit of weight and make sure more of the crank BHP gets to the wheel; I’ve gone for standard gearing to start with as I think the tuned engine will be lively enough as is.
Next up I dug out the ZX9-R Harris rearsets to offer up, the mounting holes were very similar but not quite the same. Luckily the ZX9-R uses 10mm mounting bolts and my ZXR uses 8mm ones, so I made some small dowels to sleeve the top hole down to 8mm and bolted it up tight in place, which allowed me to drill the lower frame mount out carefully to 10mm through the rearset which made it all line up. To see the job through good and proper, I made some
ZXRS ARE A PAIN IN THE ARSE FOR BOILING OVER WHEN YOU COME TO A STOP
longer dowels to sleeve the whole thing down to 8mm and fitted a longer bolt with a nut on the inside and you can’t tell they weren’t made for the ZXR in the first place. Bodge of the year, for me. I just need to sort a gear linkage and rear master cylinder to finish the job off.
Also squirrelled away in the same box as the rearsets was my Brembo radial master cylinders originally from a Ducati 999. I fitted these and the new front brake hoses and the clutch line; the ratio of the clutch master makes the lever really light and is much better than stock. The brake master will also be a big improvement combined with the radial callipers.
I managed to get the radiator fitted last month and I’ve now started to fit the rest of the cooling system. My previous experience racing old ZXRs showed they are a pain in the arse for boiling over, normally at the exact point when you come to a stop but haven’t had time to get off the bike and you get completely covered in rusty, boiling water. It’s not a good look. To help prevent this I stripped and cleaned the thermostat, before cutting out the unit’s piston to help the bike stay a bit cooler overall. I don’t just remove the thermostat entirely as I found the coolant flows too fast and with nothing to restrict flow actually makes the bike run hotter and more likely to boil over. I bolted it all back together and fitted a new rad-cap with a higher pressure relief spring to help hold the coolant in the bike for longer.
Fingers crossed I now won’t be getting any more brown stains. The thermostat housing fits to the top fairing bracket and I found the new bigger yokes fouled on it a bit. I managed to drill new mounting holes slightly further forward to get enough clearance but this meant the top radiator hose now was too short, which I got round by cutting the hose in half and using a bit of metal pipe to extend it. I fitted the rest of the main pipes and blanked off the carb heating pipes as they aren’t required, given that my days of freezing my tits off riding in the cold are way behind me. Finally I filled and bled it all, and so far it has managed not to spit anything back out.
Lastly for this month I turned my attention to the cockpit. One of my favourite things about H1s is the giant retro rev counter and large simple warning lights that’ll burn your retinas out if you stare at them too long. The new front end doesn’t have a mechanical speedo drive and I’m planning on using a simple battery powered speedo on the yokes so I cut the clock bracket down, gave it a clean-up and painted it before putting it all together with just the rev counter, temp gauge, oil and neutral lights.
Once fitted I think it looks really clean and gives the look of a period race bike. Just because it’s something that I fancied, I’ve also removed the right hand headlight from the plastic holder and fitted it to the fairing bracket which gives the endurance bike look I’m a big fan of. That about wraps it up for this month, as for what’s in store next your guess is as good as mine, I’m just going to take it as it comes, what I do know though is the more this project moves along the more I can’t wait to get it finished.