The story of one neglected Daytona

Finally got some work down on the bike today, my wife was out with my sister yesterday night so today when we were dining at my moms I snuck out to the garage for a few hours





The new shorty levers went on without much of a fight, put some NLGI grease on and around the bolt holes to assurre good lubrication, the clutch lever seemed pretty sticky at first until I realised it`s actually the cable that`s sticking, gotta try to lube it up if it would start sliding properly.



I also tried fitting the steering damper, took a few rounds of trial and error to find a position where the damper doesn`t restrict the movement or hit any of the wires or hoses but eventually did find it.



Made a crude fast preliminary mock-up bracket for now, didn`t want to spend the whole day making a proper one just to find out the damper cannot be there, the final one is going to use both of the valve cover bolts so any sharp jerks won`t nudge the bolt open, and will be made out of stainless steel.





When the bars are turned all the way to the right the rod does stick out pretty far just as expected, but still nowhere near my leg,and the situation where the bars are turned like that is a) very rare b) always happens either one leg down or the whole guy flying, I don`t see it as a problem at all. Specially on the latter case, a sticking damper rod might just be one of the lesser problems...



When turned to the left the travel is just barely enough, just out of curiosity I loosened the clamp and tested, there is about 3mm of travel left in the damper





Also took the cbr out, filled the tank with fresh gas along with some PRO Honda Fuel Stabil so I don`t have to take the carb battery out in the spring, fired `er up, ran the carbs dry, filled them with stabilised fuel and ran it some more before pushing it back in, man it felt GOOD sipping on a cold beer and listening to the purr of a motorcycle engine for the first time in a few months! Oh how I would have wanted to take it for a spin but decided not cause it was my second beer...

Yesterday I phoned my local parts shop for a new chain and sprockets for the Daytona, and ordered a set of RK Gwx "superlink" 530 racing chain kit in blue, the price of almost 300EUR made me swallow a few times but I think that the chain is the worst place to cheap out on, especially with a bike that has almost 150HP, that can rip a cheapo chain in pieces, and probably take out the engine case with it -in the best scenario...

Oh! also tried fabricating the new headlight but only made a hell of a mess and had to find that my metal fabricating skills are not on the level to make it pretty enough for my standards so I ended up ordering a ready kit I found on eBay, bums me a bit cause I already have the lights and now had to order more of the same ones but I rather pay up that look at a bodge job light, curse myself and probably end up ordering the ready one anyway...

BTW: need your guys opinion on one thing: As some of you might have already figured out from the parts ordered the color scheme of the bike has been decided: Blue fairings around and orange frame. What I cannot seem to make up my mind of are the "Triumph" stickers in the tank. I have a sticker shop order form open in another tab but cannot decide do I want chrome or orange stickers. What do you guys think.

 

Then again what doesn`t he...

Made a few totally sweet deals over the past week.

My friend`s little sister is working at this hardware/convenience store, and phoned her brother that there is two tool trolleys about to hit the skip if no one from the staff cashes them, conveniently enough I`ve been planning to buy one for a few months to my new garage when we move so we instantly told her to buy both, of which I took the other one.



Absolutely nothing wrong with it, not even any dents or scratches, they just hasn`t sold and the owner wanted them out. Not a bad deal to pay 40 EUR for it IMO.

The second one occurred at work when one of my friend`s (the same one) employers managed to break the release lever from a brand new pallet truck, and again, I`ve been meaning to get a new one for ages so I`m gonna cash that too, it can be glued so it won`t matter.

And the third one, actually linked to the bike, I go to this one powdercoating shop every day at work to bring and take stuff and know the owner very well, we`ve all been waiting for the old POS forklift to finally break down beyond repair which it graciously did a while back, and the workers have been complaining that the new one doesn`t have lights. Well, I`m an electrician by training and have a shelf full of barely used work and fog lights at the garage, so I proposed to the owner that what if I hook lights to the forklift and he paints my frame, swings and rims for it, he was like "well, if I can get away with THAT then sure!" didn`t say that it`s me who`s getting away as I inspected the forklift: it has ready holes for everything and even a prewired light switch ready, it`s gonna take me two hours MAX, with a coffee break to bolt four lights to the truck and get the parts powdercoated for free!

 

Mrs. Mattson packed the baby and the dog and took off to visit her parents overnight, a perfect opportunity to pack all my stuff in peace with proper thought after work for the move, so as soon as I got off I headed straight to the garage :biggrin:


I`m expecting the new front light unit to arrive this week so I was in a bit of a hurry to get the Koso gauge fitted before that to avoid any clearance issues.



The gauge`s original leg is just fine, only a wee bit short and the bolt holes are a smidgen too wide apart so I kicked the heap... krhm, scoured my stock of raw material and found a sheet of 2mm aluminum whereof I started fabricating a new longer leg.



Don`t have a...bend bench? so a piece of angle iron and a rubber malllet will have to do...



...lucky aluminum is such a soft metal it obeys the hammer pretty well.





test fitting and some fine tuning...



Made a few little bends to strengthen the structure. The end bits are a little unfinished yet...





...because the leg is still a bit long but I didn`t want to cut it too short before I can test it with the headlight so nothing will hit or rub, you can always cut it but stretching it is a bit harder...

 

Now THAT was fast! I ordered this last friday noon from the brits, cannot fathom how it possibly can already be here! I was pretty stoked to see it has already arrived as this is one of the key factors that defines the whole outlook of the entire bike. I didn`t have time to test fit it today so I just unboxed it, quickly slapped it together and strapped it on with a few zipties so by no means it is NOT on it`s final place nor position.























Have a few little problems with it, first of all the fixing points are made for the maximum width of 200mm, my stanchions are 210mm apart so I gotta try to bend the brackets a bit and file the slots a little to "cheat" the extra 5mm per side from somewhere, the next one is that it needs to come up but as expected the ignition lock is seriously messing with my zen thing! Gotta try to figure that out somehow too cause it can`t come forward enough or it would look stupid...






My chain order came today too, got JT sprockets, anyone have any info on those? seem solid but haven`t ever heard of them before, for the chain I got the RK 530Gwx "superlink", cost me 280EUR but should be able to cope with whatever the bike has... The only problem is that instead of 108- it`s 120 links long...




...so I got a good excuse to buy a "pro" chain rivet tool kit :biggrin:

 

Right, anyone ever noticed when you receive a shipment, and there`s this little white piece of paper inside, it says something like FITTING INSTRUCTIONS. Anyone ever actually read it? Me neither... Instructions...who needs them... :biggrin:

The front end looks still a bit messy because all the wires and cables have to be bundled and/or re-routed but it`ll get better eventually when I assemble everything after painting. Thought I might leave the front shock sliders aluminum color cause I`m using the black and silver as effect colors on the front end as most of the parts (clip ons, lights, mirrors etc) are already black/silver. The triples are going to get "oranged".

So, I took a look at the little note today after work, and turns out when I assembled the light yesterday in haste, I managed to do it upside down :tongue:








Me gusta! This is how it looks when assembled right :biggrin: thought that lower light stuck out a bit too far... I did manage to bend the side brackets a little bit outwards to get a few mm:s out of them, didn`t get them quite as nice as I had hoped cause the corner of the table where my vice is fixed is cracked and flexed when I tried bending them so I ended up having to use a big rubber mallet and hitting with the exact same force many times in a row is slightly tricky... The legs fixing the whole thing to the stanchions are still a bit crooked inwards but you have to know it to see it, might try to get the brackets prettier later when I get my new workshop built as they need new paint anyway but I`ll worry about that then.

Earlier I wrote about worrying if the upper light clears the ignition. Well:




There`s precisely 0mm of free play between them :biggrin: The light does point ever so slightly upwards ATM but when I relocate the steering damper I am able to drop the whole light structure about 8-10mm lower which will take care of that. Also measured that the gauge cluster has space to come backwards another 15mm but had to leave the modifying of the bracket till the next time...

 

I`ve been hearing a lot of hearsay that the Daytona gearbox is very specific about the oil used, and would like to know what kind of stuff you guys use. I`d got a gift certificate to a parts shop that carries Motorex oil, anyone have any experience from them? Think it`s a Swiss brand...

Got a new (used) front sprocket cover from the mail today, man it looks BIG on it`s own, gonna see tomorrow if I ordered the right one. Prolly gonna get the gauge fitted too and possibly some little things...

BTW if anyone would have a spare rear brake pedal I`d be interested, can`t seem to find one for a reasonable price...

 

Well, neither really. I've ordered a new fiberglass tail fairing from Airtech Streamlining, USA that is for most parts the same as the original but is a one-piece part and has an integrated rear seat cowl, I will remove the passenger footpegs but am not entirely sure what to do with the tail light/plate holder area until I see how the new tail is made, in my honda the tail light section was covered which made it easy to install two round lights into it, I'll probably do the same with this one. No tail jack-up, first of all they look ludicrous, I cannot understand why anyone would want to make one of those duck tails in their bike, looks like they've been rear ended by a soccer mom's SUV, and second of all as I wrote earlier I have RSI on both of my wrists and could never ride one for long, that's why I got the clip on riser set.

Nothing fancy with the paintwork, ATM I'm probably using RAL2004 "pure orange" for powdercoat color on frame, rims and such, a Vw golf/polo mk4 blue on the plastics, you know, the one that has a whisker of purple on it, and black+silver for accent colors. I'm trying to not make too spesific plans cause you only know what looks good when you see everything in their places...

 

I did thought about it but decided not to, the parts have just enough room to be where they are.

Got a bit of free time at the garage today so I decided to swap the old Kawasaki muffler...



...to the original but ran into a bit of a snag:



It doesn`t fit. Either the pipe coming from the manifold, or the mid section going to the muffler is too long.



I could always cut an inch away from the pipe, but it baffles me why an original muffler won`t fit into the original manifold. Something`s amiss and before cutting I`d like to find out what because there is a bend in the pipe where the clamp is gonna be and it can be hard to get it to seal properly. When I removed the old can I found it had been sealed with red gasket seal! Really? what else? The deeper I dig the more idiotic things I keep finding...

Also found something I would NOT have wanted to find:



The right rearset is damaged and looks awful. This explains why the brake pedal hits the pipe when pushed to the bottom. *sigh* another money hole...





I did manage to shorten the gauge bracket to measure, it could come a little closer but I thought better to leave room for the key to be turned with a glove. I also removed the steering damper and dropped the headlight a bit, it can still come down another 15mm if need be but it doesn`t touch the ignition anymore so I left it there for now.

Also ordered aluminum brake fluid reservoirs, and packed and sent the hugger, infill panels and chain guard to be hydrodipped to HydroGraphics, Acaster Malbis, York, UK.

 

Whaddaya mean WILL be? To me the building is a good part of the fun :biggrin: The overall cost of this would easily buy me a newer bike but that's not the point at all, it's making the ride your own. Meaning I don't want anything too flashy or tasteless but it has to stand out enough that to find it from a parking lot I don't have to look at the plates :upyeah:

 

I got the handle bars back from the machine shop yesterday when I was taking stuff to them so I couldn`t fight the urge to go spin some spanners :biggrin:


The ends of the tubes had to be bored to 17mm to get the mirror adapters in, there were two different sized expanders on the adapters, a 13mm and the 17mm and wanted to do it right instead of some tape spun around the smaller one so they would sit tight and straight.



Every now and then it`s good to own a chain hoist. I had to lift the front end into the air to get the original clip ons off without removing the top triple, still have that nut to tackle in the future...



Drilled the holes for the tabs in the switch housings, when I first saw the bare bars in the bike I was like Whoa Nelly! Those things are sooooo long I`m gonna have to get me a "wide load" plack on me back! Luckily that was mostly just an illusion cause in reality the bars aren`t much longer than the regular ones, but a little still.







...but with them mirrors attached, wowwee it`s wiiide like the Mississippi river! :biggrin: Doubt I`ll even get it outta there without taking them out! Dunno what you guys think but to me that looks GOOOOOOOD! Precisely as I imagined it will only I didn`t expect it to look that cool! Imagine what it`ll look when all painted and polished! Those riser bars really make a huge difference into the position, the stance is now wider and more upright, much friendlier on my wrists and more comfortable to ride too. Pity the pictures fail to deliver how cool it looks IRL standing by it... Some may have noticed the absence of the brake fluid reservoir, and the reason for that is that the original plastic one is being replaced by a billet aluminum one when they arrive.



This is basically the only problem so far apart from that I`ll be needing a new longer clutch cable. I would have wanted to fix the bars to the same angle where the originals were, but had to widen them a bit cause otherwise the horn button is hitting the tank.

Don`t know when there`s gonna be more progress, possibly not until the move is complete but I just might sneak in if I come up with something to tinker :biggrin: