jon haney

LOL. Thanks. That explains why the pins on that plug are so tiny. ALSO, pretty sure you make (a lot) more money than me.

With a special charger I bought from Ballistic. It has two clips for positive and negative posts, plus a special plug for the balance part. This special port is on the top of the battery in between the posts. Mine had a black vinyl cap over it. You were probably wanting the electrical engineer's explanation, but I'll have to leave that to someone who makes more money than me.

I have had two Ballistic batteries and one Shorei. Can't say one is better than the other, but the Ballistic was a better fit in the Bird, IMO. What I recommend is to look up whatever size battery the manufacturer recommends for the bike and buy the next size bigger. An 8-cell Ballistic will start my Bird fairly easy in warm weather. When it gets cold, you may have to turn the key on and wait awhile before it will crank fast enough to start. The 12-cell version will spin it like it's 24 volt. The 18Ah Shorei is in my Triumph. Now that I think about it, it did not seem to have as much oomph as the 12-cell Ballistic. I believe amp/hours were about equal between them. Hope this helps, and good luck.

Thank you, Oscar. I just have a Haynes manual. Was thinking of looking through the online version for that diagram. Gotta really look close to find the by-pass on the cooler half of the pump.

Just took a closer look, and there are two rotors. The first one appears to go directly to the cooler with no relief valve. After the cooler, the oil goes into the outlet side of the second pump and I guess is combined with the second pump's output. If the cooler line gets plugged, where does that oil go? The pump appears to be undamaged. WTF. Even if there is an internal by-pass for the pump, does that mean I've been pumping half volume to the engine all these years? Maybe it by-passes to the other pump? There has to be an explanation. I'm not that lucky. Stan, where are you?

At worst, I would think the extra oil would just run over the relief valve, robbing HP and further heating the oil. Since the Bird only has a single rotor oil pump, I'm assuming there is an internal orifice that limits the amount of oil that can go to the cooler, and the rest goes to the engine. If all oil goes through the cooler before it goes to the engine, this thread would be 8 years old by now, and would likely had to rebuild an engine. Basically, I'm replacing the trans on the Drag-Bird to a stock unit, and re-installing the balancer shafts. As I'm cleaning the lower case half, I pop out the seals (or so I thought) for the oil cooler lines. Then I remember there were already o-rings on the tubes. What I pulled out was a couple of top-hat style rubber plugs like you might use to keep out dirt and debris, while you do other stuff. Both plugs are completely intact, and the cooler line connections never leaked. Being a race bike, I never ran it long enough to over heat the oil. Crank bearings (factory original) look fantastic. IDK

What would happen if you removed the oil cooler from a 99 Bird, and just blocked the ports on the engine cases? No by-pass, just blocked, and no other modifications. Aside from higher oil temps, what else would or should happen in the engine? Yes, it appears I have tried this, accidentally. I'll fill in the details of this, um, um, accident, once I hear some responses. 🙄

Quit your whining. I paid you $20 for it. 😘

Make sure it's RTV type silicone. I lost the small left one the first time I went to the track, because I used bathroom silicone. It gets soft (no holding power) when the frame warms up.

Didn't even think about single-sided swing-arm. That does add some visual appeal, but looks like a fair amount of work and money.

New fork internals will do wonders on the Bird, but I think it's better to change the whole front just to get much better brakes. Hard to go wrong with Busa or ZX-14 parts. I don't think much can be gained, performance-wise, by swapping the swing-arm. A more modern arm will be longer, and increase the wheel-base, making it turn slower. A fully adjustable aftermarket shock? Definitely better. If you go the Busa route, I do have some parts from a 2006 I recently built into a drag bike. Need to sell (freshly powder-coated front wheel, rotors, left-side caliper, handle-bars).

In Kansas, we just try to ride with the wind hitting us from the right to even out the wear. Worked like a charm coming back from Colorado.

You suck. Bought my 99 in August of 2000 for $9500. Tried to get it for $9200, but they wouldn't budge. It was worth it.

Check the bank-angle sensor. All I can think of at the moment.

Thanks. Having trouble connecting. Is your server down? Could be because I'm on my work computer. I'll try at home tonight.