695 mods and revamp

[suzyj]

A couple of weekends ago, I decided to take the side covers (which were stuffed anyway after my attempts at dying them before last year's concourse) off and remove the mounting tabs and vertical cylinder coil tabs.

After a day's work with dremel and files, then an attempt at painting the exposed frame with a brush, my OCD kicked in.

I put the bike on chassis stands and set to.  The goals of the project are as follows:

• Build a decent mount for my A123 LiFePO4 battery, so it doesn't rattle around in the stock battery box.
• Respray the heads, which have turned brown and yucky.
• Respray the frame, which looked perfectly good until I attacked it with a file.
• Clean up the wiring loom, which is really truly dreadful for such a young bike.

I've been at it for a little while now.  Here's some pictures thus far.

Firstly what started the whole thing.  My removed side covers.  We'll call these before photos:







Now after pulling the seat and tank off, I had a bit of a play with the existing battery mount to see what I could accomplish.  I decided that if I rotate my battery around so the terminals face the airbox, I could fit both coils on.  That would remove one of the irritations on my bike - having the vertical coil lead run past the shock pivot:



Here's a photo of my vertical head, showing the extent of the paint discolouration:



Another thing that offends me is the odd routing of wiring.  For example, jamming the loom in between the timing belt cover and fuse box:



So I removed the loom:



Here is is on the ground, writhing in agony:



But I'm nowhere near done with it.  I need to pull it completely apart, so I can change how the wiring is routed and put some decent quality braid over it.  Next step is to get to the actual wires:



Scary, huh.

So on to the new battery box.  I fabbed a bracket out of 3mm aluminium sheet, that holds the ECU, battery, 30A fuse, both coils, and the rectifier/regulator (actually a Shendingen mosfet one, which I have to order).  The cool thing about this is that it removes another bunch of cables running past the shock pivot, plus it should get a bit more air out from under the seat:



The coils aren't held in properly yet.  A couple of smaller L brackets still have to be made.

Then I supported the swingarm and continued removing things, until I had the frame free:



My bike looks a little pitiful now.  And I haven't even started on the engine itself.

Right now I'm removing the welds that held on the tabs for the side covers, as well as the vertical coil and a bunch of other random tabs that aren't that useful, and sanding the frame nice and smooth in preparation for paint.  I'm also working out where to route stuff for the loom.

[cicii]

• Clean up the wiring loom, which is really truly dreadful for such a young bike.

I totally agree with the wiring. It seems the bike was designed without the wiring locations in mind and they just slapped it on at the end. If you think your engine is bad you'd freak at mine! the frame paintwork aint too good either but meh its 16yrs old. its rustic hehe

[seanster]

Great work thus far....I'm interesting to get more info of that battery...don't like my fully leaded stock ones.

[Slide Panda]

I'll be interested to see where you go with this. I've already stol... er borrowed, yeah borrowed a couple ideas from your previous efforts.

[suzyj]

A further cool thing about moving the coils up behind the battery is that it liberates space at the back of the airbox where the horizontal coil used to be.  What better use for that space than for the solenoid.



It makes the +ve connection from battery to solenoid just a few cm long, and makes it really convenient to route the starter +ve line down the left side of the bike, so it doesn't run across the horizontal belt cover.

So now there's another bracket that can be picked on:



Bye bye.



I still clearly have to file back the welds, like I have for the vertical coil mount and side cover tabs:



Oh, and some more metal fell off the frame.  I can hardly do all this work to the frame without a tail chop now, can I?

[suzyj]

Great work thus far....I'm interesting to get more info of that battery...don't like my fully leaded stock ones.

I bought the cells from a hobby shop.  The holder came from a guy here in Sydney, who's into electric racebikes.  He goes by the name ripperton on forums.

Here's some details of the holder he made:  http://www.1000rr.net/forums/showpost.php?p=1665939&postcount=60

[kopfjäger]

 

[d3vi@nt]

Can you provide some info on your beer tray? Is it a trimmed stocker or aftermarket? I've been looking for something similar, but only found the CF stubbie that's very expensive.

[suzyj]

Can you provide some info on your beer tray? Is it a trimmed stocker or aftermarket? I've been looking for something similar, but only found the CF stubbie that's very expensive.

I just trimmed the stock one.  It's fairly straightforward.  I never really liked the look of the CF stubby beer tray.

[Scotzman]

^^    With that very hacksaw in the picture? 
Thinking about doing it takes longer than actually cutting it off.

[d3vi@nt]

I just trimmed the stock one.  It's fairly straightforward.  I never really liked the look of the CF stubby beer tray.

Nice. Thanks for the info. Looking forward to watching this project unfold. 

[Buckethead]

Oh,  god.

That's so hot...

 

[RC Fan]

Wow!  I'd like to have a fraction of your knowledge/skills!

[suzyj]

Some more work, this time on the heads.  They came off surprisingly easily, once I'd popped the belts off, undone the headers, and removed the head nuts.  I was expecting to have to really push on the head nuts, but I didn't even need to make an extension for my (modified) ring spanner.  Maybe all this motorcycle maintenance is making me stronger?



There's some carbon buildup in the combustion chamber, plus more of the paint discolouring around the exhaust flange, where the head clearly gets hottest.  The red stuff is oil, surprisingly.  Isn't oil supposed to be black and yucky?



Another photo showing the paint discolouring:



The discolouring is confined to the heads, so I think I'll leave the cylinders on the bike and save myself from having to buy new gaskets:



And the combustion chamber after some scrubbing with a bristle brush and carby cleaner, then a light buff with red rouge and a felt mop in my dremel:



Now for a question:  There are plenty of tooling marks around the valves.  Is it fair game to buff these out?  I can't see that it would be too hard...

[suzyj]

Well they were the nastiest, tightest nuts I've ever had the misfortune to meet.

I started by making a tool to hold the cam pulley in place - a simple bit of 40mm x 6mm steel bar with some holes drilled in it, which I pressed 5mm dowel pins into.

Then I bought a 19mm long-series socket, which I cut back, filed and dremelled to suit the little cutouts in the cam nut.  I used a helper (my bloody big vise) to hold the cam pulley holder, while I applied persuasion to the nut via an impact wrench...

First one (pictured) came off after a couple of minutes of clack clack.  Second one, not so much.  It refused even to budge.  Eventually the prongs came off my tool, so I figured that it'd be more rewarding using my dremel on the nut than on the tool



Anyway, the pulleys are off now, followed by the belt covers, so the next step is to replace all the bolts with crappy ones, tape up all the holes with copper foil tape, then sandblast off all the paint.