JasonW

Use the recommended pressure from the sticker in the door jam. Like said before, the tire says "max pressure" and "fully loaded", meaning don't inflate them beyond the "max pressure" no matter what. Sure Honda knows what tires you're running.......providing you're running the stock size. The weight of the vehicle is what is more important here.

WAIT!!!!!! Before you tear into it too far, it sounds like you may have fallen for the vacuum line trick Honda likes to play on all of us carbed 'bird owners. Make sure you have your vacuum line hooked up correctly.

The problem is definately the missing plastics since it's a carbed version. It's been proven over and over again and I experienced it firsthand after my accident. Like Joe said, you could either plug one side or just tape off part of the openings and it should correct the problem. Personally, I would try to come up with a nicer looking way to restrict the air, such as maybe a similar type of screening as the intake to the oil cooler on the old upper fairing, but it may take some experimentation to get it just right. I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but you really need to post some pics of your streetfighter. It looks good from what I can see in your avatar, but I'd love to see some better pics.

I say we track him down and give him what he deserves. :icon_rape:

Wow, that's hot! As for the bike............????? J/k. Good job, man. Not my style, but I like that someone is doing some custom work to the 'bird. You've obviously spent a lot of time and effort in it and I can certainly respect that. :icon_thumbsup:

That's odd because I don't recall there being any tape holding the wiring to the tank under the pad when I removed the sending unit. As you can see in the pic I posted, the foam tank pad is torn out in order to remove the wiring from underneath. As far as I remember, the tank pad itself is what held the wiring to the tank and not 2 pieces of tape. I could be wrong as it's been awhile since I did that, but I don't remember there being any additional tape. Interesting. Anyway, glad you got it all figured out. Just out of curiosity, what did you have to pay for the tape?

Snake.

Tim, I think you're forgetting something here. Remember, Hyperpro springs are the magical solution to all of your suspension woes because they're the only true progressive springs. There's no need to make any adjustments (other than ride height) once you've simply dropped the springs in, because they're progressive. Sag doesn't matter because they're progressive. Compression and/or rebound damping doesn't matter because they're progressive. Oil weight and levels don't matter because........ (you guessed it) they're progressive. If you've ridden a Hyperpro equiped bike, you'd understand. In a blind taste test, 30 out of 30 Norwegian blackbird riders picked Hyperpro over Racetech and Ohlins. Wait a minute........this guy's fishing and we've all got hooks in our mouths, don't we? Setting sag by sliding the forks up and down in the trees?.......I should have known better than to respond. Oh, wait........maybe he's not fishing. The Hyperpro instructions probably DO say that. It's possible that Hyperpro makes good springs, but it's either completely by chance, or there is simply a huge language barrier that needs to be addressed regarding their literature.

Andrew, Did you get the PM I sent a few days ago?

Not the greatest pic, but the yellow arrows are pointing to the adhesive backed thin rubber pads to which I was refering. They're black and it's pretty dirty, but if you look closely, you can see them. I'm still not 100% sure if these are indeed #18, but they are the only things under the tank that sort of fit the description of "tape" (besides, of course, the actual tape I have covering the sending unit hole)......and there are 2 of them.

+1. It looks the same as the one on my '98 two cents more. WTF!? You're petcocks are sealed with a rectangular shaped "O" ring, or worse yet, tape? #5 is the O-ring for the petcock. He's talking about #18.......that's the rectangular shaped thing toward the center of the pic.......with the number 18 directly above it.

I'm not 100% sure if #18 is the part, but there are 2 small rectangular adhesive backed rubber pads that go on either side of the underside of the tank near the hole (where grommet #20 goes) to which the rear most tank surround connects. I think they protect the hoses from contact with the tank, but that would lead me to believe that those rubber pads are part #17 since it's description is "hose protector". I don't see any other items under the tank that would fall under the description of "tape" other than those thin rubber pads.

Sorry, but an air filter for a '97 won't work on an '03.

Be careful. Chrome polish and metal polish are two different things. Chrome polish is much more abrasive since chrome is alot tougher finish. Chrome polish such as "Turtle wax chrome polish and rust remover" does wonders for Chrome, but will scratch (dull) the fuck out of polished aluminum.

+1 to what Warchild said. The manual recommends sealant in the semi circular areas on the cylinder head by the cam sprockets. If you think you might need the relevant pages from the manual, I can scan and send them to you. Just PM your email address to me and I'll shoot 'em on over.

Steve, I just don't understand.......... The solution to your problem is right there on your old bike. Swap out the forks and rear shock and it's done. They're already set up for you. It couldn't be any more simple than that. Besides, the suspension parts on your '97 aren't going to raise the value of the bike much and probably wouldn't be set up properly for the new owner anyway. What are you waiting for?...........Swap 'em out.

I had a similar thing happen to me with one of the tach lights. It would be on most of the time, but occasionally it would go out, then return. I didn't do anything about it since it would only be off every so often and for short periods of time. Then, because of my accident, the clip portion of one of those sockets broke. Too cheap to replace the front harness, I just put short screws on each side through the plastic gauge cluster backing into the plastic that surrounds the the "socket". It seems to be more snug than the original connection since it won't rock back and forth like before. You need to be very careful and drill pilot holes, but it's not hard to do. Obviously you also need to make damn sure the screws are short enough to not get into the connections. Kind of a ghetto fix, I know, but it worked for me.

Thanks, Jeff. I thought you might know, and I was going to call you, but didn't know if it was a convenient time. One of these days one of us needs to pick up the phone. I'll call CBR bearing tomorrow. Thanks for the advise.

Does anyone know the inside diameter of the steering head...........or outside diameter of the bearing races? I'm putting a different front end on my bike so I can't simply order stock replacements. I don't want to remove mine to measure, but have no other way of finding out. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Sounds pretty painful. Simple. :icon_love: Do you have a manual? Not sure what part of it has got you stuck? The stem nut takes a 12mm allen, the bars and fork clamps take a 6mm. What's the extension for?.....and why is it necessary to crank hard enough to break? I've never had any reason to remove just the top tree. It's always involved removing the entire front end.

How does it not fit right? I've seen many posts on here about people having to elongate the mounting holes on the Pyramid huggers to make them work. Will something as simple as that do the trick? I bought a Red Fox hugger a few years ago and it mounted up just fine, but the chainguard portion of it didn't parallel the chain to my liking. I simply put a heat gun to the area and straightened it out.

Congrats on getting it apart and diagnosed, Steve. I'm glad you caught it when you did and it didn't cause any bodily harm. Feels good to have accomplished it yourself, huh? If you don't have a torque wrench buy one or borrow one. I'm 99.9% sure that muscling it is what caused the failure.

Actually, the steering stem axis is the correct reference for trail. With offset bearing cups, which vary rake angle, the trail will follow. It is not appropriate, in that case, to use the steering head centerline. The same applies to offset triple trees, although they complicate the calculation as the fork angle resulting increases trail while the rake angle of the steering stem remains the same. Both are useful tools for the race engineer to change handling characteristics although the primary use of the latter is in the chopper world where handling is an oxymoron. You're right about the offset bearings......the front still pivots at the angle of the stem no matter how it's oriented in the steering head. However, trail will be affected by rake angle and not "follow". The more rake you put into a system, the more trail will result. I've never dealt with offset bearings but have experience in offset trees to obtain a desired amount of trail (offset trees typically reduce trail) on a longbike (chopper). Handling in the sense of cornering like a sportbike isn't possible, of course, but getting a front that's 30" over stock to turn without flopping is definately possible by getting the trail right through the use of offset trees.

Right you are, Joe! I should say that it's not a straight line through the steering stem, but rather the steering head tube since this is static. There are bearing cups available for some bikes with a rake built into them to achieve different trail so using the stem wouldn't be accurate in that particular case.

Fixed.