Winter work

It's winter and it's time to get to work on the VFR750. What can we find to fiddle with this time?


I really had very few plans for this winter work on the VFR. It had worked superbly all season but I was starting to find more of the bikes limits.
The VFR took second place to the RD250 which had more work to do on it so aside from draining the water out, I didn't get to touch the VFR till mid January but back to the plan. What I would like is:
  • More ground clearance.
  • More brakes.

Shocker

The first point was very apparent at Donny and Mallory. As you can see from the image below, I have some serious ground clearance problems still, despite my best efforts to tidy things up before.
Credit PJM photography for the shot and Ragged edge racing for the fairing I am currently destroying.

As you can see on the left, the YSS shock is a bit of an upgrade on the standard 30 year old original. This shouldn't really come as a shock as that is its job! It is a bit better but I needed more ground clearance so was going to need a longer shock. Yes it is possible to achieve the same with different link plates on most mono shock bikes but this suspension setup doesn't really led itself to that idea.
I knew the fix.
I had been putting it off for two years.
It was going to hurt, but I knew I was going to have to do it.
I need a fancy pants custom Nitron rear shock.
My wallet is still whimpering.

 A phone call to Rob Wittey got me a direct link to a lot of his own work. In building his VFR he had come up with a slightly longer shock design to give a bit more ride height without fowling the tight space the swing arm offers.
The hefty bill for this shock might be scary but the quality difference to the still great for it price YSS shock is easy to see side by side. I went for the lowest model Nitron shock as I really don't need all of the bells and whistles, its just something else to make a mess of. Also I can't run a remote reservoir rear shock in the class I am racing in either so two good reasons not to spend the extra on it.
The shock was ordered mid December and was with me early in January.
Swapping the shock is pretty straight forward so I won't go into it. Suffice to say: everything was cleaned and lubed before refitting.
The shock is already set up for my bike and weight but I will do a full suspension base setup. In fact I just cut away and bought a fork rebuild kit, as writing this reminded me I need to do that again. That then progressed to me sending a message to Classic Racing Green to see what some K-tech front springs will cost me. I can see this mothballing badly so will stop this here and make a start on another blog entry. More work on a bike I can't ride at the moment!

Brakes

Probably destined for the NSR250 MC28 now
I wanted some nice 4 pot calipers on the front of the VFR when I first built her and had decided on the tried and tested CBR954 Fireblade 4 pot Nissins as I knew they were good and that they had passed eligibility with other riders.
I found a pair cheap (I think it was something like £50 for a pair because one was scuffed already) and got them ordered.
It wasn't till I tried to fit the EBC race compound brake pads that I realised I had made a mistake.
These calipers are for the earlier Fireblade. Whoops!
I then decided to run with the CBR600 F3 2 pot sliders for now and they are perfectly adequate. After a few horrifying entries into Goddards however I decided that maybe it was time to revisit those bigger brakes. It's not like I have a lot else to do to the bike really.
Now this will be a bigger job and I want it to be easily searchable so again I will separate this job out.

Other stuff

This is a bit thin on the ground but basically consisted of an oil change using Witham oils Qualube Qualsyn PCMO SS Special Racing Oil 10W50 which I am interested to see the performance of and sorting the exhaust out a bit. 
The oil change was about as exciting as an oil change can be and the exhaust (link pipe back) was removed, thoroughly cleaned and reinstalled with proper exhaust clamps rather than Jubilee clamps. I also used plenty of copper RTV so hopefully it wont blow till at least after first practice, whenever that is.
Otherwise the bike really didn't need for much. There are some body work tidy up jobs but there is no point in doing that in the cold, it will just come out badly.
A finished(but never really finished) VFR ready to race.
Ready to ride but never finished

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