RedEye

Shit, over $300 for a cowl? I got my Corbin Smuggler for about that. Possibly from someone on this forum.

I'm slowly replacing the valve stems on my bikes with 90 degree metal ones. When I change a tire it get a new angled stem. I don't plan on replacing them unless I have to, except possibly to upgrade them with more blingy versions if I get tired of the cheap bog-o-angled stems I'm using now. I check air pressure about once a week or before a long trip. Also when there's been a major change in the weather. In Saskatchewan it can vary 20 C or more in a day so I have to take that into account.

I don't think anyone has ever found a Yoshi system unpleasant to listen to. Well, maybe on a 600 . . . piddlers all sound like chainsaws to me now

Full system is the only way to go IMO, especially with a carbed XX and its crappy mild steel headers. With slipons the only performance gain is from weight reduction, which admittedly is significant with the XX's giant stock cans. A full system saves even more weight, and gets you a modest power gain as well (you'll definitely have to re-jet the carbs). I have an Akrapovic header with a Yoshi TRC-D can; the TRC-D is loud for a Yoshimura (no db killer insert available) but it's still quieter (and much classier sounding) than a D&D. Nice deep rumble with a Formula 1 shriek at high revs I've never used a center stand except in my garage so I don't miss it . . . much. With a 4-2-1 system, center stand delete, and lithium battery I find the back end is so light now it's hard to jack the front wheel off the ground if I need to do front end work. Jacking under the front of the engine makes the whole bike come up in a very unstable manner. I have a shop crane so no big deal, but without it I'd have to strap the rear wheel down to something heavy on the floor. OTOH, with a single pipe getting at the chain is a lot easier. Installing a full system is also a good opportunity to replace those rusty header studs with stainless Allen-head studs and stainless hardware, less than $30.

Sure, rear diff seals are a common maintenance item, but specific issues vary. Hopefully the Mazda B-series enthusiasts (if there are any) will have some good input on other things that need to be looked at or replaced at the same time -- especially if you're paying someone to do the work. The output shaft seals on my old BMW are leaking, but slowly enough that I just top it up a couple times a year. Sounds like your leak is a bit more serious. My Mazda B story: about 12 years ago I was GPS mapping remote roads in Alberta, 2 man crew in a B2200 automatic that listed about 20 degrees in strong crosswind (we called her Irene). The boss was a huge rally fan and always looked for rally racing on TV if we were staying in a motel that had cable. One fine day we were in the middle of nowhere (somewhere west of Drayton Valley I think) and started seeing signs indicating a rally course (Rocky Mountain Challenge or some such IIRC). There was no one around, the race had been over for some days. We mapped the road, came to a dead end, and then turned around . . . at which point the boss looked at the freshly mapped rally course on the datalogger screen, grinned, and said go for it. He called out the turns while I flogged Irene, 2 guys, 3 spare wheels, and luggage through a world class rally course in an awesome display of wheezing 4-banger fury. The most exciting part was him screaming "CREST -- LEFT! 200 METERS!", drifting over the top of the rise right into the path of a fucking one ton dually pulling a horse trailer. Good times.

Why the hell even ask here? Would you ask a Blackbird question on the Mazda forum? Go to a forum specific to your vehicle. If it's a common problem you won't even have to search, it'll be be a sticky.

So, I finally got this thing installed. Back when I bought it I discovered that all the how-tos were for FI bikes and my oil cooler was where they were mounting the Stebel, and being too caught up in other projects I shelved it. Last week I had the tank off to check the air filter and mounted the horn under the rear of the tank. I made a bracket out of 1" wide 1/8 aluminum and bolted it to the fairing mounts on each side. I ran the ground wire to one of the mounting bolts as well: It's a lot higher-pitched than I thought it would be, but plenty loud . . . which I found out as soon as I hooked the power up, because the included relay was faulty. I hooked the relay up first sans horn, it clicked when I hit the horn switch, so I thought it was working. Then I hooked up the horn and shit myself a little when it went off immediately. Replaced the relay with a Bosch unit I had on hand, changed my undies, and done. Oh, and I discovered that with the tank off (or just raised) it's easy to get a spanner wrench on the rear shock preload adjuster . . . until you mount a horn in the way.

Honda's sales problems aren't all due to the market. When they brought in the Powerhouse concept, they axed their entire existing motorcycle dealer network, and all the years (decades in some cases) of experience and goodwill those dealerships represented. Some of those old-time Honda dealers went under, but a lot of them found other brands to sell. And rather than go deal with clueless car salesmen at a mega-dealer with Civics on one side and Shadows on the other, a lot of the loyal customers said fuck Honda and switched to whatever their local motorcycle dealership was now selling.

Looks like that vendor will let you mix and match styles, which is nice. I really like having a shorty brake lever and regular length clutch, especially with ZXXX front brakes. With knockoffs, always check the fasteners. Every knockoff lever set I've had came with loose nuts that couldn't be tightened down all the way because they'd be recessed too far to get a wrench on them. If that happens, add a washer or two under the nut as a spacer, tighten, and enjoy your, ummm, less flaccid lever.

I had one slip once, because I forgot to torque it. I tightened it up and haven't had any issues in a couple thousand km of hard riding. Deliberately hard, remember I was trying to create worst-case-scenarios for front suspension travel while adjusting my new forks. And I haven't used loctite except for attaching the bars to the clamps, because I'm still fiddling with bar position, but I do recheck the torque every now and then. However, with all the possible bar positions, it's easily possible to set them up in such a way that you could be applying a lot more rotational force around a joint than I am. Taking the risers off and attaching the bars directly to the fork tube clamps is probably a worst-case setup. Also keep in mind that I'm not a huge guy, about 185 in gear, and I have very long arms, so I don't normally rest a lot of my weight on the bars. YMMV. If you do get the bars welded, I still think it's a small price to pay to have perfectly custom fitted clipons. Printing out a series of hash marks with a label maker to make a reference scale at each joint makes the adjustment process a lot less painful

+1, WD-40 is not a lubricant, it's a penetrating oil (and a really shitty one at that, with great marketing and cult status). Once the solvent evaporates it's more of a dirt attractant than anything. Silicone or teflon ftw. And if you want a better penetrating oil, get a small spray bottle and use a 50/50 mixture of acetone and ATF. I'm sure I've posted this before:

Mine came with "permanent" threadlocker. If yours didn't, get some red loctite and apply it after you get the bars set where you want them -- at each joint remove one bolt at a time, apply loctite, snug it up, then do the other bolt and torque them down. With permanent threadlocker you don't have to worry about the bolts coming loose. At my old job we once got some bolts with threadlocker pre-applied that was supposed to be the same strength as blue loctite . . . it wasn't. We didn't find out until we tried to remove them after they'd set. The bolts were in threaded inserts in 1/8 aluminum sheet and most of the time either the bolt head would snap off, or the nutserts would spin in place before the threadlocker let go. You can heat up the bolts with a soldering iron to release the loctite if you need to (a trick we didn't find out until far too late).

For $17.50 I got a 24" x 36" sheet of Lee Valley's Grip Disc material, I think it'll make a good tank pad. I should be able to do 2 bikes with it.

Project Optimus Prime A perfect example of the flawless implementation of a really bad idea.

My point was, if you measure with the wheel off the ground (which is what I assume you meant when you said front suspension fully extended), you'll be measuring an extra 20 or so mm of suspension travel that you only get with the front end unloaded or nearly so. That extra travel is to keep the front wheel in contact with the ground under hard acceleration and the only contribution it makes to ride height is the length of that topout spring when it's fully compressed, which takes only a small fraction of the bike's weight and can't be measured anyway. But even without soft top-out springs, I don't see how the fully extended measurement is useful for comparing ride height.

As far as I know the pre-08 (or whatever year they changed the stem bearing size) 1000RR front end is a straight swap to the 929 and 954. "Any pre-08 Fireblade" makes for a nice pool of donor bikes Since I've already rendered my ZX-14 top triple useless for other applications by modding the ignition mount I'll stick with the setup I have for now, but the info will be handy when I do my '86 Viffer and V45 Sabre. With the triples issue hopefully solved, now we need a comprehensive list of USD forks with the right length, preferably with radial brakes and fully adjustable. Busa and ZX-14 obviously work. Concours 14 probably also, will be heavier sprung and less adjustable. Triumph Tiger 1050 might be a candidate. I'll do some more research when I have time.

Suspension fully extended isn't a useful measurement with the ZX-14's soft top-out progressive springs. It only takes a few lbs to compress the forks for the first 15-20mm of travel; if you try to set sag using a fully extended measurement as your starting point, you're gonna have a bad time because unless you weigh 500 lbs you'll never get it down to 35mm rider sag. That's why they recommend just using a zip tie on the fork leg, riding the piss out of it and adjusting preload until you have 10-15mm of travel in reserve. Measuring frame to axle with the wheel on the ground, bike weight only, might be a better baseline.

Playing MacGuyver/Mad Scientist is how I spend most of my free time, so that would be a day well spent for me A lot of the -14 fender's width comes from the trim pieces with the little fins; I took mine off (2 screws each side iirc). Of course now it looks unfinished, but that matches the rest of the BeaterBird. It can stay that way until I decide what I'm doing with it . . . I don't really like any of the options so another overly ambitious project might be required. Don't take the chance, 303 Aerospace Protectant is your friend.

You'd need the whole RC51 setup. If you just have the upper, you're still stuck with a ZX stem that's too long and the wrong diameter for a stock bearing. Plus, the fork tube offset and angle are probably not the same between the 2.

Right, got excited when I found another bearing with right dimensions and forgot the obvious, that this type of bearing doesn't have a separately rotating inner race. How about 04-07 CBR 1000RR triples? Not sure about the ignition but the bearings are the same. Rake is probably different, but the geometry isn't going to be stock XX with ZX-14 triples anyway. 1000rr parts are common and cheap, RC51 parts not so much, especially Sp1. Anyway, I think we need a sticky with everyone's front end swap info and insights.

The blue tint isn't necessarily an illusion, HID bulbs (the shit ones you can just plug into your stock halogen headlight housing) come in colours from OEM (4300K) all the way to 12000K or so, which is such a faggoty purple that even Elton John finds it tacky. 5000K isn't bad at all in that respect. Putting kit bulbs in a halogen reflector housing is lame, but the XX is one of the least offensive vehicles to do this in, because the top of the headlight housing itself makes a decent cutoff so the beam pattern isn't as bad as it could be. But using a plain HID as a high beam is definitely doing it wrong. HIDs are supposed to be turned on an left on, short power cycles are very bad for both bulb and ballast, plus they take a while to ignite and reach full brightness. That's why real HID high beams are bixenons. Good installations use a switch, time delay relay, or other setup (having the headlight circuit power up when the oil pressure light goes off is one) to avoid the lights going on when turning the key, then going off again right away when you hit the starter. So imagine what having the thing just wired up light a halogen light is doing for the life expectancy of your hardware. Especially if you flash the brights at cagers in a position to pull out in front of you.

Another possible option for the top steering stem bearing: RNA4906 35x47x17 Needle Bearing Much sturdier than the thin section ball bearing, no need to stack 2 of them so half the cost . . . don't see why this wouldn't work.

Some more info on ZX-14 suspension from a tuner.

A few updates on my ZXXX (well, 1/2 ZXXX since I only did the front). I have a few thousand km on it now and, to the extent that I can tell without stripping the front end down, the steering head bearings are still fine. I can't feel or hear any play or notch. Mind you, there was a bad notch in the stock bearings that wasn't apparent until I had it stripped down to bare forks, but the bike doesn't have the tendency to wobble all over at walking speeds like it did then. Suspension setup has been interesting. At the stock preload setting I had close to 50mm rider sag, 15mm free sag, but increasing the preload a bit made the front rock hard. A zip-tie on the fork slider showed that despite the big sag numbers I was getting very little front suspension travel, even braking hard over bumps. I did a little digging and found this article: So in the end I used the zip tie to monitor suspension travel, used hard braking over a big-ass bump to simulate a worst-case scenario (ie, max front fork compression) for normal riding, and adjusted preload until I had 10mm travel in reserve in case of giant potholes or riding off an embankment or something. Still playing with compression and rebound but at this point the front end feels very well planted without being too unpleasant on rough roads (which are most of them around here, unfortunately). Of course that just underscores how bad the rear is . . . I've been reluctant to sink money into a rear end I'm planning on replacing entirely, but I think I'll have to get a new shock soon. And I don't think an aftermarket XX shock will be hard to sell in the future when I get around to a rear end swap

The last pads I used on my stock front end were Sixity, a US-made EBC clone. Cheap, and I was really impressed with the performance especially on wet and or very cold days.