A bad day in the shop...
Is better than a good day at work. Or so a few million bumper stickers say about finishing anyway. I knew it was a bad omen when I knocked my beer of off the drill press. I probably should have stopped there, but I soldiered on and kept working. I did manage to get some work done despite many setbacks.
I needed to wire up the rear exhaust mount bolts as per the M1GP rulebook. I figured it would be an easy job and then I could get back to cleaning up the swing arm area. These bolts are through bolts so they needed a different wiring scheme. After looking at them I decided that I'd just drilled through the bolts and then I could wire or cotter pin them. This was a pain. Drilling was the easy part. Getting the holes in the nut and bolt to line up after, not so much.
This is what the easy one looked like after I was done. The other side fought me. I ended up getting the hole through the bolt to curve with the small diameter drill bit I used by going too fast. This kept the holes in the nut and bolt from lining up. In trying to enlarge it a little bit with a bigger bit, I snapped the new bit off in the hole. I tried to get it out and in the end I jammed the nut and bolt together with a shard of the broken bit, basically welding them together. I had to replace the set from my spares and start all over. In the end it worked, but a 30 minute job lasted an hour and a half.
Next I decided to take off the shock link to check the lubrication of the needle bearings in the set up as I found that the swing arm pivot was a little dry. As you can see above I ended up taking off the left side exhaust can after another hour and a half battle with stuck nuts, jammed up bolts and obstructions of every sort. I pulled the center stand which is a half pound weight loss, great news for a race bike. Once I get all of the unnecessary parts pulled, I'll weigh everything and bounce that off the specs from Kawasaki to see how many percentage points I change the power to weight ratio.
I put some scrap steel through the swing arm pivot to brace the bike up on some jack stands. Up to now I was using the center stand. Getting the center stand out of the way cleared room for the shock link to come out. A bunch of gunk is still coating the area so I have to clean some more. As I suspected, the shock link's bearings were even drier than the swing arm one's were.
I am labeling all of the connections on the wiring loom before I pull it out. Here is where a good hour of labeling and photo documentation will go a long way to getting the wiring back in place after I'm done.
Not much left to go through. The wiring is next. I'm hoping to get it all sorted by Christmas. I have to travel for work next week so I'll be gone for a couple of weeks. In January I'll pull the front suspension for inspection and paint the plastics. I'm hoping to squeeze in a road test before I go full race bike mode and remove all the lights and left handle bar switch cluster. Then I'll try to get in a track test and the next thing you know I'll be racing. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving or a good Thursday for those following from overseas. See ya!
Blue
I needed to wire up the rear exhaust mount bolts as per the M1GP rulebook. I figured it would be an easy job and then I could get back to cleaning up the swing arm area. These bolts are through bolts so they needed a different wiring scheme. After looking at them I decided that I'd just drilled through the bolts and then I could wire or cotter pin them. This was a pain. Drilling was the easy part. Getting the holes in the nut and bolt to line up after, not so much.
This is what the easy one looked like after I was done. The other side fought me. I ended up getting the hole through the bolt to curve with the small diameter drill bit I used by going too fast. This kept the holes in the nut and bolt from lining up. In trying to enlarge it a little bit with a bigger bit, I snapped the new bit off in the hole. I tried to get it out and in the end I jammed the nut and bolt together with a shard of the broken bit, basically welding them together. I had to replace the set from my spares and start all over. In the end it worked, but a 30 minute job lasted an hour and a half.
Next I decided to take off the shock link to check the lubrication of the needle bearings in the set up as I found that the swing arm pivot was a little dry. As you can see above I ended up taking off the left side exhaust can after another hour and a half battle with stuck nuts, jammed up bolts and obstructions of every sort. I pulled the center stand which is a half pound weight loss, great news for a race bike. Once I get all of the unnecessary parts pulled, I'll weigh everything and bounce that off the specs from Kawasaki to see how many percentage points I change the power to weight ratio.
I put some scrap steel through the swing arm pivot to brace the bike up on some jack stands. Up to now I was using the center stand. Getting the center stand out of the way cleared room for the shock link to come out. A bunch of gunk is still coating the area so I have to clean some more. As I suspected, the shock link's bearings were even drier than the swing arm one's were.
I am labeling all of the connections on the wiring loom before I pull it out. Here is where a good hour of labeling and photo documentation will go a long way to getting the wiring back in place after I'm done.
Not much left to go through. The wiring is next. I'm hoping to get it all sorted by Christmas. I have to travel for work next week so I'll be gone for a couple of weeks. In January I'll pull the front suspension for inspection and paint the plastics. I'm hoping to squeeze in a road test before I go full race bike mode and remove all the lights and left handle bar switch cluster. Then I'll try to get in a track test and the next thing you know I'll be racing. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving or a good Thursday for those following from overseas. See ya!
Blue
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