The RC46 story

Plug it and go play Having spent some more time away from the bike I was left thinking: Sealing the exhaust up hadn't stopped it popping so what was causing it? "Well popping is caused by air getting to the exhaust so either you did a crap job of tightening up the header pipe or it's the PAIR system" I thought to myself. The PAIR valve allows fresh air into the exhaust system to continue the burn of the exhaust gasses on their departure to lower the emissions. This should create no problems with the standard end can but put a straight through can on it and you might get popping and banging on the overrun.  Maybe I needed a step back from the bike to see this but I thought what harm can it do to try? as it happens the task is quite reversible and doesn't cost anything to simply block the system and if it works I might go ahead and remove it completely. PAIR valve isolation With the aid of the Haynes manual and this guide from VFR discussions  I got to ...

One of the first tasks I normally perform on a new (to me) bike is to balance the carburettors. This is one of those jobs that never seems to get done as you need specialist tools but can make quite a difference in the day to day running of the bike.  "But wait Gavin, that's an injected motorcycle" I hear you cry. Well this is true but you can still balance the throttle bodies and mine are all over the place.  When I first purchased this bike, the tick over was up at 3.5k rpm when warm. I bottomed out the idle screw and had to also wind back the whole throttle body plate in order to get it near to the 1.5rpm correct idle. Now this might have had something to do with the bike massively over compensating for having a mouse house in the airbox  but with that small obstruction removed I knew the throttle body balance would be out after my fiddling. The first thing obstructing me from doing this right in the first place was that I had lent my carb gauges to a...

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...

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...