The RC46 story

The fork legs (being a Honda) were grot and needed a paint since I bought the bike.  Suffice to say three years hadn't improved matters. It was time to get the rattle cans out... ...Again Prep wise I: Removed the front wheel. Removed the front calipers and tied them up out of the way. Removed the mudguard, identified it was cracked and set aside. Spent an absolute age cleaning the fork legs. Taped up all of the bits I didn't want to become silver. I didn't bother stripping the old paint back as this is my daily ride not a show bike and I didn't want to loose the casting marks as they help the paint key in. I used some Audi aluminium silver paint which is a touch brighter and more metalic than the paint Honda use but I think looks great. I had used this on my RD headstock in the past which came out great so I had high hopes of it working here too. There was a lot of wind whilst painting resulting in some areas I hadn't t...

When I firsts purchased the VFR it had a carbon effect cover on the headstoch which looked okay. I however do not like "Carbon effect" and it was a little dog eared so I removed it. This left the standard silver headstock that was showing every day of its age. This had to go Jobs like painting your headstock do take a while to come into effect and it is only now that I decided to give it a go. To get to the headstock I had to: Remove the clutch and brake reservoirs from the clipons. Remove the clipons. Remove the HISS system. Remove the instrument cluster fairing. Partially remove the instrument cluster. Unplug the ignition and free the loom from its tie wrap under the instrument cluster. Partially remove my knuckles doing so. Undoo the headstock nut. Withdraw the headstock with the aid of a hide face hammer. Having successfully killed an hour or two doing that I now had my headstock free. First things first; I cleaned everything metic...

I have delayed submitting this blog as I had hoped to get it all sorted before submitting bt it has been months and I haven't got round to it. I will probably update this one or publish a follow up blog when/ if I ever progress this mod. Having just spend the best part of eight months away from my VFR and  NSR250 MC28 , I had found that buying bits for them made me feel a little less sad. First on my list to fit was a powercommander V (from here on refereed to as pc) that I had picked up second hand off of a chap in the states for £100. Ever since fitting the air filter and exhaust system I have wanted to get one as I knew the fuelling would be off and now I had one that I could just "chuck in". As I'm sure you may be wondering already, I was aware that Dynojet don't make a pc V for the fifth gen bikes only the pc III USB. I had quizzed the guy selling it prior to bidding as the part number was for an 09 VTEC (sixth gen) but he told me he had removed it f...

If you have previously read about my pipe fitting fun  then you will know I managed to snap a stud in the process. With the increased decibels of a full stainless system with carbon can I had not noticed much noise but as time wore on and a bit of exuberant riding later a noticeable splutter on the over run was starting to become creep in. Extraction Stud extraction is a pain. VFR800 studs are something else. At only 6mm they snap easy and are a bugger to remove. Luckily for me the stud had gone just under the nut so I had something to grip onto. I had been soaking the stud in anti-seize compound for a while so I was fairly well prepared for this. Clothes off (the bike not me), pipes displaced and sat in the garage I was ready to tackle this. With no threads or welding equipment another nut was out of the question so I went for a stud extractor I had spotted in a mates tool kit. I had planned to use easy outs so this was a bonus. Stud Extractor  After a falt...

Image credit  gabitzu79 We get used to our bikes letting us know they have a problem when they vomit their guts up over the back tire so when the dash board starts blinking at you, you are faced with a mix of annoyance at a new problem but relief that you aren't pushing a dead bike back home just yet. The PGM FI unit lets you know it is having bother by leaving the FI light on when the ignition is switched on. To find out the problem you just flick the side stand out and it will blink a code at you in a series of dashes and dots (long and short blinks). The dots are worth 1 and the longer dashes are worth more (I don't have my Haynes manual to hand to give you values, I had a look online and there is allot of bad advice on there from VTEC owners who have a different setup). With this information at hand you can refer to your trusty Haynes manual and pointing you in the general direction of the fault. I initially misread this error code as an injector not working pr...

Got black bits on your bike? Could they be blacker and less flaky? Well it's time to strip and repaint them as they make your bike look crap. As you can see my VFR was getting a bit flaky around the mirror stems (Just like every other Honda I have owned with this style mirrors. Seeing as I had a few bits of the NSR off for respray  I decided to do the same for the VFR's mirror stems in the same batch. I'll explain the process of dis-assembly followed by respray so you don't have to read everything if you don't need to. To disassemble the mirrors I took the mirror and arm off with the single hex bolt being careful not to loose the spacers inside and remembering the order. Then the two smaller hex bolts need to be removed, allowing the stem base to come off of the fairing. Finally detach the rubber anti vibration spacer from the back of the stem base and we are ready to sort that finish out. Prep for painting required me to lift off any loose paint, rem...

I'm not a massive sticker fan as they tend to detract from the lines of the bike. This bike had quite a few Team Roberts LTD stickers all over her and although not terrible to look at, they didn't mean allot to me so had to go. I was worried that the old stickers might damage the paint work when I tried to remove them but was relieved to see them wrinkle up and slide off with a bit of pressure using a finger nail.  Not fancying tearing my nails off over this; I went about finding a soft scraper and settled on a paint rattle can lid. When held to make the bottom oval it becomes strong enough to chip away at the transfers without being so strong it scratched the paint work.  For the first couple I used WD40 to soften the adhesive but it didn't make allot of difference and seemed to make the scraper skip over the transfers so did the rest dry. After allot of scraping I used household polish to lift any residual glue by leaving it on there for 10 minutes then b...

Pipe Dreams One down side of the mighty Viffer is that due to some boring laws, Honda had to muffle her voice rather more than I'd like. A new can is the obvious answer to this with the added bonus of additional ponies, maybe. Having recently looked at the exhaust system as a whole, I was also in the market for a new system as the old one looked a little suspect in some places. The cost of a system is not cheap. In addition to this I wanted stainless which would make it a bit more and it's for a V4 remember, so that is not going to be a cheap stainless steel octopus I was looking to buy. Well you might think that but as it happens a top individual posted up  a Motad stainless system for a VFR800 with no pictures or further description so with me as the only person daft enough to bid, I won it for £149. Bargain! As you probably expected, I went to my trusted motorcycle pats specialist; eBay. I was however in need of the end can bit and annoyingly other people had th...

A quick and dirty blog update. I wanted a Baglux/ Bagster cover. So I bought one. But being the cheap ass that I am of course it was second hand from ebay. The most interesting thing about this and the whole point in this blog update is that this is a VFR800 VTEC cover. As the VTEC model was built for longer, there are more covers for them in the second hand market and cheaper as a result. They fit the VFR800 FI just as well less the top back corners that are a touch to big where the VTEC's tank flares out more but you can't really notice. The main point is I got a colour matched £100 Baglux cover for £15 win! Also what you might have made out from the background of the image above is a seat cowl. Colour matched and picked up for a fiver. Always worth checking the auction section of ebay! Luckily for me the cowl was marked as scratched so I got it for the minimum bid. The scratch was no worse than I would have expected if nothing was mentioned at all. This ...

After that little rodent issue I was keen to have a good look around the VFR to see how everything was under there. Images of chewed wires and hoses were in my mind and as yet I hadn't found the culprit so was expecting to find a cooked mouse somewhere. All of the fasteners are hex driven stainless into steel captive nuts or rubberized plugs for the forward fairing. That means they were relatively corrosion free and came off easily bar one rubber plug that had become brittle and required replacing (always worth having a few of these in the draw as they regularly fail). As there was no hand rail the seat unit came off quickly with the light unit in place (just needs unplugging from the loom.The inner front fairing is held in by quarter turn plastic clips that you should remove first as they can be a pain if under strain. The top of this fairing clips into the nose fairing inner fairing so be careful not to snap this when removing it (it is pretty durable though). The fo...

Imagine making yourself a nice place to live. It's roomy, with a springy floor and you fill it with soft bedding to make it into the most comfy nest to get your head down after a long hard day working. One day you are woken by what feels like an earth quake as your room is jolted about. In the darkness you hear a distant jangle and click followed by a brief scream that emanates from below, stopping as fast as it starts. All goes quiet for a moment before your world is turned upside down. A brief rhythmic cranking noise is followed by a tremendous roar. Air rushes past you and apparently into the floor like breath.The roar builds and falls sucking bits of bedding into the creases of the floor. You jolt into action and run  for the entrance, feeling the wind tear at you as you flee. What was once a cold, neglected, man made maze is now rapidly heating into a furnace as you hop and jump your way to the floor only to see what was once your house, bellow off into the distance ap...

What do you do when you buy a house? Move in, maybe buy some furniture and get yourself settled? Well in November 2013 I was doing just that, but I had two rooms that lacked any furniture at all. I'd walk into these rooms that felt cold and empty and ponder how best I should make them feel like home. I knew other rooms needed finishing to. The spare bedroom had no bed, the living room just had a sofa in it and the study was filled with boxes of books. So some budgeting and prioritizing was in order. After some sole and internet searching the plan became clear. One of the garages was going to have to wait a bit longer than the other. After three years of caging I was buying another motorcycle,  but what to buy? As aforementioned I had been off of bikes for 3 years so I wasn't going to get anything to silly, but on the same hand my last two bikes were Fireblades so I was kind of used to a little power to play with. I was going to need something that was fun and goo...