ActionStarCBRxx

Posting this for my nephew. He is at the wonderful age of 16... you remember more time than money and think you can do it all?!! He has a 1989 Firebird with a 305 in it. The car is starting to go through quite a bit of oil and is losing power. He did a compression check and he thinks its the valve seals/guides. So his project is to pull the heads, compress the valves, clean everything up and replace the valve seals/guides. He has one head off and is still working on the other ( issue with damaged bolts that were stripped while trying to remove... T40's holding the bracket in place... wtf is chevy thinking) Anyway's he is looking at the top of the pistons and they are really carboned up. He wants to scrap them and remove the carbon. I told him to wait that I thought it would be a bad idea. My thought was if he starts scraping and chipping that stuff away and doesn’t clean everything up perfect or if any particle falls/gets trapped between piston and cylinder wall that would be a bad thing. So you know when you start a project it comes down to how much do you want to do to get it right... how much money do you have to make it right and how long can you be with out the means of transportation. He is a poor high school student that is covering his own car expenses so he doesn’t have much money. Here are my two thoughts on the best way to handle this. 1) Let it be and don’t touch the pistons. If anything its adding to the compression ratio... but it could be keeping the flame from not getting a complete/good burn? 2) Pull the oil pan and undo the connecting rods and push the pistons up from underneath the engine block. This would allow a good sand blasting of the pistons and a chance to replace the rings. Ideally there would be an option three 3) that reads pull the engine and disassemble and replace pistons/rings and take the block in and have it honed. But again I don’t think he can afford this. I am open to suggestions and welcome the input. I admire him for his gumption of taking this on!!

Sent PM on the levers... they still available?

6k 8 months for me with the R1 R/R. Hot to touch on the 97. Its a little hotter then the engine heat coming off the bike around the legs.

Just did this on the 97... I had to the mirror off already so dont know if you need to do that... regardless pull up the boot by the mirror (mirror casing). There are three bolts you should see. Two attach the mirror to the arm (that connects to the bike) and the middle bolt one attaches the mirro to the arm. Undo the middle one that attaches to the arm so you can pull the mirror off the arm. (mirror in this case is actually the glass part of the mirror that is shoved inside the mirror casing. Once the mirror is out, there you will see two screws to undo the lens and light. The mirror casing is the plastic that holds the mirror and the lens. The mirror itself is attached to an arm that has a curve like an elbow. Hope this makes sense. I can see it in my head but I may not be explaining it too well. The little screw you took doesnt change the bulb... unless I just did mine the hard way. :icon_silenced:

I am getting ready to do a fork rebuild on my 97 blackbird. I am attaching the PDF of the front forks. What parts will I need to replace once I put the new springs in? The bike has 30k miles on it. Looking for two categories of parts... 1) Have to replace... like the seal set listed as item #18. 2) May want to consider replacing since the forks are apart... anything like part # 25 needle bushings Thanks for the help! BlackBirdForks.pdf

I couldn't find anything specifically, but a quick Google turned up several links about why not to jump start your bike from a running car. I assume that the reason you don't want to jump start a car from your bike is the same. For example: http://www.shadowriders.org/faq/jumpstarting.html http://motorcycle-maintenance-repair.suite...intenancerepair Maybe someone else will chime in with more specifics. I've jumped my bike from my truck plenty of times, but never when it was running. Of course, that was just because it worked without starting the truck, not because I actually knew not to. -Bob Thanks for the links... That is what I was looking for. This summed it up nice for me.

My wife left the key in the car turned on in order to get the dvd out of player for the kid to watch his favorite movie. The battery was completely dead, and I charged it for a few hours, but still wouldn't turn over (crappy charger). I was about to jump the car from the blackbird... A buddy just happend to come by at the right time and express to me what a bad idea it was. He is one of these good ole boys thats been around the block a few times... He couldnt give me specifics, just that it was a bad idea and he has seen many a bike sitting in the shop from the end result. I suck at electrical things... so to me it seemed like a good idea. Usually when my buddy speaks up, its from experience or a hard lesson, so I heeded his advice. Can anyone provide the technical aspect on what would/couldl most likely happen had I attempted this? Need something better than "it will break" it or "thats bad"... I got that from my friend!! Thanks!

Mike sent me a brief email stating to contact one of their dealers. He referred me to motoworldonline.com. So I ordered the levers from there. $159.00 no shipping charge. thanks for your all's input! k

For those of you that have these levers... Would the shorter lever break if the bike was tipped over? Is it ackward having a shorter clutch lever, or just take some getting used to? Also recomendations on where to purchase? Many Thanks!

What they are stating sounds right. I have an 00 VFR with fuel injection... I havent changed the exhaust yet because I dont have a chip yet, and I dont want the bike to stumble/hesitate either, but from what I have read on the VFR site, I believe the new exhaust causes a lean condition. The current stock map on the bike cant account/compensate for the free'er flow. EDIT I would expect your surge is going to be somewhere in the 4000k to 6000K?

I truly do not. I don't own the bike anymore, so no way to check either. You could try pinging G2, but I really do not see him on here much anymore. I sent him a PM. Sounds like G2 really knows his stuff. I started searching for replies to posts by him and found the following. I am curious did you remove shims due to your weight?? Or did he do that to work with the longer springs? Do you recall what brand of springs you went with?

It may have been this one. I talked about what another member( G2) found in freshening up my forks ( a 97 ) and his own ( an 01) Fork Link Do you know for sure what you did on yours? Here is the notes from your thread... I would like to mimick the same.

Any idea how these compare to sprocket specialist and their Titan Tough aluminum sprockets?

I'm 87.3% positive that they changed the internals for '99. Went from steel to aluminum on one component, IIRC. Not sure how they interchange, however. Also the valve orifices are larger and oriented differently in the 97-98 The orifices being larger is what the thread discussed... Thats why they were worth rebuilding/revalving instead of doing cartridges. Any idea on the thread though?

A saw a reference in a post that someone did quite a while ago that compared the internals of the forks of the carbed birds (97/98) vs the FI birds (99-04). The article in question stated something to the effect that the carbed birds forks internals were worth rebuilding, but the FI birds would do better with replacement fork cartridges. Any help locating the article would be appreciated, Thanks! ** EDIT ** I tried searching by fork, shim, and I think cartridge.

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Note that he used a 46T on the rear. That will push the tire further up in the swing arm and give a shorter distance between tires which is about the equivalent of raising the rear end up with a spacer. I dont recall the distance the extra teeth and moving further in on the swing arm to the relation to raising the rear though...I dont remember if its a 1:1 or a 1:2 on in vs up.

$$210.00 I am all over that! I just ordered a set and will pick them up at the dealer! Thanks for posting this!

If anyone has any info on any Pilot Power sales this holiday weekend... please share!!

I hate going through trying to figure this type of problem out only to find out they forgot to tell you that they were "changing" a air filter or something easy like that... and it turns out to be a hose not all the way plugged in or something like that. So I try to look at the obvious first. I agree with you... and would lean towards fuel as well. It sounds like a lean condition.

Did you have the bike apart for anyreason before this occurred... like the tank off? Were you chainging plugs or air filter and then soon after this occured? The bird is real funny about having all its vacuum lines connectetd correctly. When it hesitates... what RPM does it start. Does it occur when the bike is hot as well as whem you start it up?

Never ridden any bike except Yamaha and Honda. Based on the two I owned FJ1200 (1993) and a YZF600R (2006) and the Hondas... I would take the Honda any day of the week and twice on Sunday for cruising! Regarding oil... I think both Honda's are running the 20W-50. I know the bird is, I dont recall on the VFR. I like that it takes so little clutch pull to engage/shift the Honda's. I didn't know if the gears may have been back cut or any other majic on the blackbird. Hate to think its just oil!

This last weekend I went to see a buddy of mine in Graham (about a 90 minute ride from the house) I took the bird so he could work some welding magic on the subframe and front end. As I was riding, I was amazed at how nice this bike shifts. I have had two Yamahas (FJ1200 and YZF600) and I have the VFR800 and the blackbird. Hands down without a question the black bird shifts the best out of all of them. Every time, every shift... always. What components make this bike so solid in the shifting? I would like to carry some of this over to the VFR. I swear everytime I rid this thing after time off, I fall back in love with it!! Your input would be much appreciated.

+1 I was WD-40 fanatic as well... always kept a clean chain. Bought a VFR that aleady had some miles on the chain so started the same process. The chain had a few tight spots... and they got worse with the WD-40. I talked to a dirt biker buddy of mine and he said go back to the basics... oil... texas tease... black gold. I did not want to pull the chain on the VFR so every hour I would take a sponge brush and coat/paint the oil on the chain - roll the tire and paint the chain over and over. I let it soak over night and wiped everything off. I then went through every link and spun every roller to make sure they could spin and bent the chain up and down to work out kinks. This took care of all but one tight spot on the chain. Now I just brush the oil on after a few tanks of gas and go. Nothing fancy. I agree with Bart... WD-40 will eventually penetrate and eat the grease and then the kinks will follow. 1 can of cheap 10W-30 oil is how much?

Thanks Mr Bad Example! So what was the final decision on what they did to the fuel mixture if any? On my VFR, I think it was causing it to run lean because the O2 sensor was seeing a rich condition in the exhaust so it was cutting fuel. Removing it off that bike smoothed out some of the 4500-5500 rpm hesitation that the bike exibits. (Y2K VFR800 Close Loop) On a carbed bird, what effect would it have? From another thread our three wheeled friend removed his, but I dont know what year bird he runs. EDIT I am an idiot. No need to answer that question.