shovelstrokeed

Mike, You are in for a pleasant surprise. The only reason I run 39 in the back is I usually am running around with about 80 lbs of baggage on the bike. For pure solo riding, down to 36f/37r and they are wonderful. Ride is much improved as well. The only thing you may notice is a little more reluctance to turn in, to me it just feels like a slight delay before the bike responds to that first input. Took me all of 3 curves to get used to it.

That area receives very little air anyway. It is mostly masked by the front tire and fender. You are likely to do more harm than good by redirecting air that does reach the cowl to interfere with the outflow from the radiator. From observations on my bike, the air inlet to the radiator is very sensitive to smooth air flow. Even getting too close to a car in front on the freeway, and entering their wake turbulance zone, can raise coolant temperature 10 degrees or so. In smooth air, at even 100+ degree temps, my bike runs at about 184 degrees. Get up behind a cage, and I'm not talking tailgating here, easy 5 car lengths, and the temp goes well into the 190's. Nothing to worry about, even 220 is not horrible so long as your radiator cap is in good shape. Tell the truth, if it wasn't that I was so bored running at 5K RPM in 6th, I probably would never have noticed.

Probably the easiest way is to open the harness coming off your right handgrip and locate the wire for the kill switch. Just splice the switch into the wire (either side as the switch wires in series). I don't have the schematic for the right side switch gear with me, it is home on my desktop. Someone else is sure to chime in with the proper wire color.

Easy enough to fashion your own. I have always used a switch from a jet ski and made a little bracket to hold it, depending on the bike, either to the triple clamp or the handle bar. Nice thing is spare caps and lanyards can be obtained from the same source. Use a cap with a lanyard when at the track, switch to a plain cap, which holds the little button in, for around town. Always keep a spare in the tool kit in case somebody recognizes it for what it is and removes the cap. Wiring is simple as can be, just in series with the kill switch on your handle bar.

I have a set on mine and have felt no such thing. Chicken strips on the rear tire are down to about 1/4", wider on the front. I find them stable and forgiving and hold well on even bumpy roads. I slow way down in the rain but no issues there either. Try 37f/39r instead of the 42/42 in you manual.

Agreed, sounds like a smaller main jet and then one step richer on the needle would bring that around. A little snooping around in a good hardware store might just yield a couple of little washers to fit under the needle clip to get you half a step.

Testing a coil by allowing spark out in the open air is not going to be fully effective. Conditions inside the combustion chamber are quite different with pressures of 150 or so PSI or possibly higher. It is easy to compare both the primar and secondary resistance between a known good coil (2/3 in this case) and the suspect one. Even that won't tell you everything as coils heat under load and it might only break down when operating under full load. Easiest and best way is substitution.

+1 on the 5K interval. I use a variety of synthetic oils in mine and did do some oil analysis on my BMW which, being air/oil cooled is a bit rougher on oil than a 'bird. 5K for the same reason too, it is easy to remember when to change it. Chances are, I'm changing it twice as often as needed but my real easy on the oil 15-1800 mile weekend freeway rides are mixed in with a week or so of just riding 4 miles to work and 7 or so miles home.

Not sure about the consensus here but I have a DID 530 ZVM2 on mine right now and it has only required one adjustment in 6000 miles, yes, I check every 500 when I lube it. The tech at the dealer recommended Chain Wax rather than the stuff I had been using on my old chain.

Not too cool at all. It is where Honda wants it to run. There is a thermostat in the cooling system that will keep it at 175 or so by varying the flow from the water pump. The radiator is sized to handle the output of the motor. In my opinion the only weak point in the system is the air flow into the radiator and I understand why Honda did what it did. You don't get to the speed this bike is capable of with a big, square radiator sitting out in the air stream. The inlet is sensitive to all sorts of things, even the turbulance from cars running 60-80 feet in front of you. Good thing, it gives me another game to play while covering long stretches of interstate. I can pull up behind various cars/trucks and see how much my temp gauge climbs Corvettes are pretty good, most pickups are horrible and all SUV''s should be banned from the roadway.

Oh, and I bought a GE Super Bright bulb from a local parts store...so far it seems to be visibly brighter than the buld it replaced. Given that the bulb you replaced was burnt out, that shouldn't have been too hard. Sorry for the wiseass but sometimes I can't help myself.

You are right, the engine will be more efficient at wider throttle openings. Lots of things can cloud/mask that though, fuel mapping, as you pointed out being the prime culprit. I might have just been operating at a better place in the map. I don't intend to make it a practice to run 5th at an indicated 90 down the highway, I was just worn out by about 7 hours of riding in 100 degree heat. The bike didn't seem to mind a bit. Even coolant temp was about the same, maybe a couple of degrees higher.

The moisture, so long as it remains a vapor, will have very little effect in terms of pressure change. It still has to obey the gas laws. If it condenses into a liquid its impact can be significant. External tread temperature can be very different from internal temperatures. The former is influenced by fricition with the road and flexure of the tread rubber (hysterisis). The latter, more by carcass flex and changes in ambient temperature than anything else. Friend of mine on another board has all sorts of neat engineering software available and did the calculations once in response to a similar question. You really have to get to saturation before the effect of internal moisture starts to add more than a tenth of a percent or so to the temperature induced pressure rise.

The suction cups will let go over time and they usually pick the worst possible time to do so. Check out the RAM mounting systems and look at the little Gold Wing mounts that use the bar clamps that hold your master cylinders in place. A shorty arm and one of the small mounting plates, a little 3M duo lock and your done. You can find the whole system at Gadget Guy. The Escort is not at all waterproof and it takes very little to destroy it. Gadget guy has boxes you can mount it in. I just put a shower cap over my farkle package which has a similar mounting system that includes my V1 with remote audio, XM SkiFi receiver and antenna and GPS V. It all hardwires to my tank bag, comes off with a twist of two wing nuts for security. Can't read the GPS or XM through it but no problems with the radar.

Anyone who sampled recent liter bikes will know what I`m talking about.You just twist the throttle and go on those bikes. You can get the XX to perform like that too. All you have to do is get 100 or so pounds off it and you'll have near parity. Updating port shapes, combustion chambers, ignition and valve timing and compression ratio could help as well. Face it, we are looking at a 10 year old, at least, design here. Things have moved on in the world of fast motorcycles and Honda has chosen, from the look of it, to not participate until the next time they decide to show the world what they can do.

First off, that is probably normal. The XX is a bit flat below about 6K RPM but wakes up nicely above that. Indicated mph is off by about 8% as well so your not going as fast as you think. BTW, Moriarity, 6500 RPM in 3rd is 71 mph, Takes about 9600 RPM to do 105, unless you have some freakish gear on the bike. Mine will pull evenly, if not in an inspiring way, from well below 3K RPM in 6th which is about 50 mph. Mine also gets a bit buzzy in and around 4200 RPM so I usually downshift if the revs drop below that on the highway. I recently did about 1/2 a tank in 5th gear at 85 mph and got no difference in fuel milage between that and running in 6th leading me to think the bike may like to run higher RPM's rather than lower. Makes sense, more or less, power required ot maintain 80 or better is a function of aerodynamics by that point. Making the same thrust at the rear wheel with a smaller throttle opening due to the increased torque of the lower gear. My standard solution for a quick pass from 80 or so is kick it down 2 and nail it. I like the feel as the cams come in and the ram air really starts doing its thing.

Probably nothing wrong with it. It has a 20 year old set of carbs and 20 year old technology in terms of cylinder head design/camshafts, ignition. Plus it's only a 750 so it is gonna feel soft. My '69 CB750 felt like a rocket ship when I bought it new. Now, 13.1 in the quarter at 106 mph would get its lunch eaten by a SV-650. Get out stopped and out handled as well. Nostalgia bikes are better left unridden lest the mists of time part and reveal the warts.

Honda's factory sprocket is dampened... it has rubber on it for damping... Never seen any other make/model with this so if your sprocket is aftermarket... it's undampened... I think a VFR front sprocket might have the damping as well, could also be a 16T, I'm too lazy to check over at Ron Ayers.

Why not just go aftermarket. Summit Racing probably has a fan that will meet your needs. Most of them can be easily mounted with some heavy wire ties through the fins on the radiator.

Left side caliper should rotate fore and aft a bit as that is an integral part of the linked braking system. It should have little or no ability to twist or move in and out. Check the condition of the pivot bolt and bushing on the caliper mount. Mine has a little play in it and it is causing a groaning near the end of a stop. Gonna order some parts when I get back from New Mexico next week.

I'm mostly old and out of the loop on this stuff and haven't really played with a turbo bike in quite a few years but here are some thoughts. Header, build your own and I would recommend a hybrid. SS weld ells at the header flanges, machined to accept SS tubing at their exits. Do keep the transitions smooth. The merge into the collector is somehat tricky and you might be better off pirating another header to get just that section. In the 5-8 PSI boost range an intercooler is not mandatory but you'll probably need more than that to meet your 200 RWHP goal so do consider one in your planning. A boost piloted fuel pressure regulator is a nice thing to have until boost pressures get so high as to cause problems with certain injectors (Bosch really have problems at pressures above about 55 PSI). By far the best way to go to handle boost is something like a Haltech F4 controller that will bring in a second set of injectors and vary their pulse rate with boost. A little experimentation with injector sizing and the kick in point (adjustable on the Haltech) quickly brings about a nice smooth transition into boost and no worries about holed pistons and the like. Some form of A/F ratio monitoring is essential. I still like EGT gauges for this and it is fairly simple, if you are building your own header to incorporate a sensor into the merge portion of the header. The best response comes from individual sensors right at that first bend but downstream with a single sensor works nearly as well and the cost is much less. With that setup, 1100 deg C EGT is really all you want to see and 1000 to 1050 is a good deal safer. Waste gate control is really where the newer systems have an edge on the primative stuff I used to run. With the newer electronic systems boost can be brought in so smoothly that you can't even tell there is a hair dryer under there until you notice that the movie from your faceshield has gone into fast forward that is.

Damn you!!! That looks great. They would make a perfect addition to my bike. I like the height I am at right now, 1/4" up and rotated about 5 degrees forward from stock but I would really prefer about 1" back to get my fore arms more parallel to the ground for better control while cornering. Those look like the perfect solution. Also will add nicely to the bling factor of the Gilles Tooling rearsets and short Pazzo levers I have now. More bucks on a soon to be 6 year old bike, damnit!!!

+1 on the bad tire thing. I had a new D208 front fitted on my K12RS a couple of years ago and could barely ride the bike around the block. Side to side vibration in the bars at speeds over 45 that threatened to become a tank slapper at around 60. Turned out to be a defective tire. Runout was OK, beads seated all the way around, all looked good, damn thing just wouldn't track above 45 mph. New MEZ-4 (told you it was awhile ago) fixed it right up.

I suppose that would work. You are talkiing about preventing the HID from cycling twice due to the action of the load shedding realy during startup, are you not? I don't have a schematic here or the pinout of the load shed relay but there should be a simpler way to get switched 12 volt that is not turned off by the load shed during starting. You could then use that to power a relay that switched you HID off and on.

Good advise given. Just to pick a nit, while brake fluid is, indeed hydrospcopic the term for something that adsorbs water from the air is hygroscopic. Not a big deal in the overall scheme of things. BMW recommends an annual fluid flush on their ABS brakes and hydraulic clutch systems using DOT-4 brake fluid and it has always made sense to me. I picked up my '01, used, from a BMW dealer and they had done a fluid change for me as part of their normal service for used bikes. 8 months later I can already detect a change in the color of the stuff in the master cylinder and will probably change mine out some time in the next month or so. Just one of my all time favorite things to do, kneel on the floor of my garage for a couple of hours.