Mithrandir

Not me. Want to bring it over on the w/e and we'll have a look at it? Do you have a spare gasket cover? If not, I think I've got a tube of gasket goo around here somewhere that I could use.

Softer seats are not necessarily a good thing for long distance travelling. The foam tends to compress and then provide less absorbtion over time. The real problem with the XX seat, as my bony arse can attest, is that the foam is too thin on it, and you end up coming in contact with plastic tray of the seat. To fix that, I got a custom seat made up (Rich's here in Seattle). The second best option is an aftermarket unit like Corbin or Sargent. If you have the readies, then a gel pad is a must - but don't expect the seat to be softer than stock. That's not desirable for long days. For the reach issues, it sounds like you need to raise the bars a fraction. Before you go out and buy Helibars, try raising the stock bars on the forks. Remove the little (useless) circlip loosen the hex-bolt and slide the bars up so that the clamping portion is level with the top of the forks. That should make the bars closer to you so that you can sit more upright. As Marc says, the suspension on the stock XX sucks. Some money spent on first fixing up the front is a good idea. You're about ideal weight for the stock springs, so they shouldn't need changing, but the valving will. Aftermarket kits are available and instructions here on how to fit them too. That should help eliiminate the jaring through the bars that screw your wrists up. Shock later on if you have the money. Fixing the forks first will remove more of the problems than doing the shock first.

I can download the map from my bike if people want. I can't guarantee it because of the dyno problems that I had. Mike hasn't called me back to come out to fix it up though. The map was optimised for fuel economy (a/f 13.5).

42 is fine. Good for long life, not so good for grip (tyre doesn't heat up well) He's just wanting to know what the minimum is, not the maximum.

30 is fine, but not recommended - you'd only drop to that if you're on the track. For road pressures, anything below 32 and the front of the bike starts to get the wanders. There's a difference though between bad for handling (and the safety effects thereof) and getting close to structural failure. In the later category, about with the weight of the XX, 25 psi.

yeah. I grew up in Camden. Lived in Perth for 3 and a bit years, then travelled the world for a couple - sorta based out of London. Settled again over here in Seattle about 8 months ago. Enjoying it mostly, except the shitty weather for 9 months of the year and the fact that I don't think the USA has heard of real beaches :sad: They're all crap! Either nice and sandy with no surf, or lots of surf and no sand (all rocks). grrrrrr....

I thought Terry went out of business? Oh well, if you're out that way, also call in to Nick Dole at Technic. He's in closer to town though - Penrith area. BTW, if you're not aware, stay away from The Old Road for the next month or two. Cops & EPA are having ahuge blitz. Stick to the Putty and other roads ( do the loop out to warragamba, then down the back of the oaks, Oakdale, Picton and back).

I'd also suggest looking at the fuel filters. They may be gummed up and the heat is allowing them to pass more fuel through as the gummy bears melt.

Righto - new pics courtesy of Scot and a bit of extra text have been added. http://www.vlc.com.au/~justin/about/bikes/...eg_replace.html

If you want to test - just put the three wires in the bottom. Then with either a voltmeter or indicator light, fire the bike up and test the two other leads. The bike will run off the battery for a period of time - more than long enough for you to check that you've got the wires the right way around. Once you've got it done, could you please takes some pics on the XX so I can add them to that page. The ones I have there are from the VTR fitment.

Yes. That's correct. The three wires coming from the stator are on the "bottom" of the plug, and the +/- DC leads are on the top.

Oh, I should actually reply to the post shouldn't eye. Yes, there is a auto connector that fits right up to it - at least based on the words of a mate of mine in Oz that did one of the conversions on a VFR. No, I don't have any details. I'll see if I can find out, but then again, the brands and part numbers in Oz are probably way different to what you can get here in the US anyway. No promises, I'll see what I can find for you though.

Hell, I am - but you lot all knew that anyway :grin:

The quick and simple way - - Take off guard, brakelines, brakes, wheel - Crack the bolt in the bottom of the fork holding in the compression piston - Undo fork cap. No need to take it all the way off - Undo the bolt in the bottom of the fork (with a big can under it to catch all the oil) - Pump fork leg up and down about 20 times - Put back in bolt - Pour oil in top - Pump up and down a lot more to remove air from the system - Put cap back on - Put wheel, brake, guard and brake lines back on - Go ride.... :cycle:

You'd want to go at least with the 1.0kg/mm springs. 0.95 would be way too soft for you and you won't be able to bring up the preload enough with spacers to get the right value. With a 1.0 spring, you can get pretty close. Plus, don't just look to the RT site. See if any of your local suspension shops have them, or someone like Dan Kyle, Traxxion etc.

ABout 30 minutes if you know what you're doing.

I seriously doubt it would be the R1 r/r causing the problem unless you've stuffed up the wiring somewhere (maybe having two wires occasionally touch). Motorcycle stators can fry, I used to do one every 6 months or so on my old KR-1S. It's certainly very unusual on the XX, but that it has gone in and of itself is not a big surprise. Perhaps the bike has been sitting outside in the rain and a small amount of water has leaked into the stator area, or perhaps you just got a crappy one? You should be able to get them rewound pretty easily - ask any auto-electrician who does theirs. That's what I used to do with my other bikes. At the same time, you can get it wound for greater capacity if you are running electrics like vests etc. The 2002 model XX has a different, much larger rectifier on it. It's bigger again than the R1 unit.

Making noise is not common on hondas, but having the cam-chains wear out is. There's a very big difference. VTRs and VFRs all need to change the camchains and tensioners at about 40K miles because the old chain has stretched too much and the tensioners are at the end of their adjustments.

Rectifier's fucked. Time to get a new one. If the alternator was dead, you won't be getting any voltage anywhere in the system.

Yes it does. A huge fucker actually. I ran into it today while I was trying to fit the frames for my topbox. Bloody thing is HUGE. I've got some photos of it somewhere, but not on the web right now. I need to update that page with the 02 r/r photo. I don't think it will die, but as a replacement for the older bikes, you'll need a different connector (ie one from an 02 bike, which probably means having to buy new).

That's almost nothing. The question is - is the sag values correct for you? If you don't know, measure first before trying to adjust the shock. It may be hard because the damping is wrong (or crap) so you really need to adjust that. Anywhere from a couple of hundred to 40K. I've seen shocks detonate at less than 2000km from brand new, and some that have had 60K Km and not had an issue. It's whenever the shock looses the damping.

Spade connectors work fine. A friend of mine did the conversion on the weekend and he said that the R1 r/r uses a stock auto connector, so head to your local car-parts store to look for it. However, why are you trying to buy new? Just grab one from a wrecker, along with the wiring harness. Should cost you no more than $30.

Redbird, that's what the long piece of PVC tube is for :grin: Stick it down the end of the fork until you feel it fit over the end of the cartridge. Jeff, what was the first thing I said in this thread? Ah, vindication is mine... :twisted:

I run whatever max pressure is for the tyre. In the BT case, 42. That's generally because I'm doing LD riding, not twisties. When the corners come up (like I'm going to be riding 101 back from SF), I drop back to 33/36. Basically gives the tyres a chance to really heat up and grip better. But, I'm also a shitload lighter than you too, and that means you'd probably not want to drop down quite that low because extra weight means more sidewall flex, meaning more heat and quicker distruction. Not that I've seen you ride or the condition of your tyres, but here's my gut-feel to why you have the sensation of slipping tyres. I'm also making one educated guess - number of miles on your bike. From what I remember, it has about 20K miles on the clock? The stock setup for the bike is a guy around 160lb. With your weight, you're really taxing the rear end of the bike, even if you've upped the preload a long way. As you accelerate out of the corners, a multitude of things happen to the suspension of the bike. One of those is that the weight transfer heads backwards. As power comes through the drivetrain, the rear of the bike squats. Because of your high weight (relative to what the suspension settings are), and your sitting upright on the bike, a lot more weight goes to the rear and the suspension just takes it all on the chin. It's just not capable, and so you get an almost completely compressed rear suspension - ie at its maximum upwards travel. So your first feeling is that of the rear of the bike sagging really quickly. The second feeling is once the bike is there, it cannot deal any further with the road surface. Any bump cannot be absorbed because your suspension is already at its limits in one direction. When it's like that, it will tend to skip around on the road quite a bit because now, instead of the suspension dealing with most of the road surface, your tyres are having to do all the work. They can't cope as well, and so it feels like the rear is moving around a lot, because it is - the tyres, particularly the sidewalls, are flexing huge amounts. As a mental image, think about the bike hitting a big positive-shaped bump. As the rear wheel hits, it has to track over the object. The initial reaction is in the sidewalls as they flex to cope. Next, the sidewalls unload some of that compression to the rim, which means a direct line to your suspension. The springs, because they are already almost completely compressed from your weight and the weight transfer from the slow acceleration through the corner have nowhere to go. That force now has to go somewhere - meaning straight through the frame and into your butt. So now you have the entire bike and rider moving away from the bump - that's around 400 odd pound (other half of the weight is on the front wheel). Somewhere about now, gravity kicks in and wants to return the bike back to the road surface. The first thing that happens is that the spring pushes the swingarm and wheel away from the rest of the bike (it being the lighter of the two masses so does the most movement). The wheel maintains traction with the road, basically. A few tenths of a second later, the rest of the bike's mass decides to follow suit. The spring is still mainly compressed (we're assuming a relatively small-ish bump here) so you have about 400lbs of bike and rider heading towards the roadway surface. The spring will attempt to take the incoming mass, but because it is already at its limits, it will completely compress until there is no more travel left. If it hasn't stopped the movement of the bike by this point (almost guaranteed it hasn't), then something has to! That movement now translates into the swingarm being forced to move, which obviously means the tyres now also have to cope. So the tyres flex. If you were going straight down the road, that would translate into sidewall flex. Both would bulge fairly evenly, so you'd not notice anything too drastic. But, you're leaned over in the corner. Suddenly the forces are no longer directly along the sidewalls, but actually at an angle. You also have a shear effect from the torque of the acceleration, so the sidewalls will tend to flex in some random sideways direction. Now because you have this almost direct link between the tyres and your butt (everythings compressed, remember) that flex feels like the tyre is slipping on the road. It's even worse than just a basic slide because the sidewalls will be moving all over the place trying to cope with the load, the road surface and the accelaration, not just in a single direction. That feels like the rear of the bike is moving all over the road, when it probably isn't. But, push it just a tad further and the sidewalls can no longer deal with the flex, and the rear of the bike will break loose. Now as a contributor to this is the shock itself. I'd say the damping is probably fucked, or getting close to it. A heavy load on the shocks, particularly with wrong spring weight, means the valving, seals etc inside the shock, not to mention the fluid itself, is going to die rapidly. That's not just something with your weight, but with any rider that is carrying a lot of wieght on the bike like a pillion, bags etc. When the damping is shot, that means the bike wriggles around a lot more because now you have purely spring and sidewalls of the tyre absorbing bumps. So the bigger bumps now induce a lot of extra movement, compounding the above situation. More movement means more forces end up being directly applied to the tyres. A good way to tell if your shock is shot internally is to pay attention to how it rides over the course of a single ride. A really shot one will actually make horrible squishing/gas sounds if you bounce on it while sitting still. One that is on its way out will change damping characteristics as you ride. For example, does the bike feel ok when you first get on it and as you hit the first few corners and then start feeling like it is slipping as you get further into the riding? If you back off the corners for a while and do a straight stretch, does it seem to firm up again, only to deteriorate as you hit the next set of corners? If so, then you have to get the shock rebuilt/replaced. As a guide, aftermarket shock manufacturers recommend servicing the shock every 18K mi or so (25K kilometers, so I think that's the right conversion). That involves replacing the oil, regassing etc. That's for shocks with all the goodies like remote resoviours that help prevent the oil from getting cooked. On a stock shock like the blackbird has, where there is no such features, think of what that does to it internally (not to mention much smaller body, meaning less oil, and greater heat build-up). I've seen Honda(Showa) shocks that have trashed themselves under 4000km from a brand-new bike (two VFRs and a VTR), so large mileage is not necessarily a pre-condition for the shock to be stuffed. Given all the info you've provide, I really think the next thing you should spend your money on for improving the XX is to fit a properly setup aftermarket shock on there (it's not really possible to rebuild the stock shocks, but you might be able to just fit a spring). I think the feelings you are getting now from the tyres will still be around regardless of what brand/model of tyre you put on there.

The way to tell if your oil needs changing is to pull the stick out, and put some on your fingers. Run it between your thumb and first finger. If it feels soapy, then time to change. If it is not soapy, just greasy, it is fine. As for non-oem filters, somehere here a while ago said a RX-7 filter works just fine. Can't remember who it was though.