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cylinders

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cylinders last won the day on February 23 2014

cylinders had the most liked content!

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    Surf, waiting for surf, well engineered bongs.

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  1. Aside from the above I've chased out a few little electrical things that were bugging me, I've got a couple left that I'm working on right now like the right rear indicator not working (not the bulb) and the neutral position sensor not always knowing it's in neutral. The neutral sensor thing is super annoying as I've gotta admit I've tried leaving the lights a couple times and been sitting there in N waiting for the light to change... and it also means that unless it's sensed N (15~25% of the time it works) it kills the motor as soon as the kick stand goes down. Here's a pic of a pretty clean one from japan, not quite where I'm heading with mine but I like the stance and the lack of colour. Those are the stock pipes and although I like them, the high side custom things on mine are great and sound awesome, I'll wrap more of the pipe round my boot area, and possibly make up a heat shield as they are super fucking hot/great for warming my hands at the lights. And I'll also change the cans at some stage either for straight pipes or just do something about that alloy, I'm not sure yet. Here's the most recent custom I've found it's from a shop in Sri Racha and I hate almost everything about it except the engine, the foot controls and those rear shocks (black springs though come on m9) Looking super closely at this custom I can't believe BikeEXIF featured it, lot's little details piss me off like th front guard drooping, the tribal looking tank, the gross colour way etc. but it's a shit tonne more built than mine at this stage so I can't pull it apart too much. Here's a bike that, although a harley, pulls off what I'm trying to do.
  2. I've got my mind set on a much more upright and aggressive stance, so took the rear shocks off to make some measurements and put it where I want to go so I could confirm my idea. It currently has some 290mm length enclosed rear shocks that A - look like polished turds and B - Are about 80mm too short for the ride height I'm after. Here's where I'm headed once I get my hands on some suitable shocks. (any leads on twin rear shocks with a 16mm top bushing and 10mm bottom around the 360mm length appreciated) This is the style or rear shock im after
  3. Howdy ya'll, it's been quite a while since I had a project on here, so I'm bringing you my current cashhole from Perth, WA. It's a 1998 Honda VRX 400. A water cooled v-twin bike they made for a brief period in the mid to late 90's as some kind of pre custom bike fad factory cafe. They were mostly Japanese market only bikes, and while there are a few customs out there they're pretty much all japanese shop bikes and there's no info etc online as far as I can tell. The bike is rego'd as an 88 here as pre 89 bikes enjoy lax regulations around importation, doesn't bother me much at all as it means it's easier to rego and keep on the road. This one came to me like this for only $2500 rego'd and running... First thing I did was put a bit more bend in the 1" bars, pulling them back slightly as the near flat angle was killing my wrists and felt gamy as fuck. Actually thats not true the first thing I did was melt my workboots against that unwrapped bottom pipe... but moving on, the bars feel alot better now and will make do until I order a set of Biltwell's 1" moto bar. I'd really like to fit a protaper or renthal bar on it but they all have 7/8" hand control areas and this bike is 1" from the aftermarket riser clamps to the hand controls. It's unusual to me being a small displacement jap bike but apparently common on Honda's cruiser stuff from 600cc upwards so potentially it has controls from a vt600/750. I also replaced the stock grips as they're fat squishy foam pieces of shit with plastic looking chrome bits and just generally look like try hard harley bits. Went with Biltwell Thruster in 1" and so far I'm happy with them even though the vibration to the hands increased slightly. They look like this now...
  4. Howdy oldschoolers, I've been out of touch for most of the past year as I've been hitting the tools pretty hard over here in Oz, but finally I've returned to the realm of manual chokes, real heavy ass chrome, and carbueretted sorcery. It was a bit of an whim as I was really holding out for a wagon of some description (ke26, xm falcon, p510), but the price was right, the spares were plentiful, and the old girl really needed a caring hand to ensure she didn't end up stickered and forgotten. It's rego'd and running (sort of) and has an absolute butt load of spares. The previous owner is hooking me up with a load of doors and shit tomorrow, but I already have mint jdm tail lights, a couple grilles, chrome window trims, a dash, door cards, blah blah blah! It came with a heinous set of bbs replicas that I despise, they're 16x9 (which looks dumb as hell on this car) and 4/5x100 mounted on 20mm spacers as I discovered today when removing them. Not too sure what I'll do with them, maybe sell for a couple hundy to a flat peaker who doesn't care. The motor is an L23, perfect for a swap to L24/26/28 I believe. 3 speed auto, which is nice and cruisey and might stay. 93,000 miles, which I believe to be correct as in 2011 an old lady named Helen left a shakily written little note of the mile's being 85000ish in the centre console. Body straightish, a few obvious bog spots and the rolled rear guards suck but I'm not too fussed as a lot of hard work has already gone into the body. The black interior looks horrible, but I feel like underneath all the dust and dirt it'll actually turn out quite nice when restored and sorted with a few spares. The current plan is L series upgrade, paint, interior, 14/15x7/8jj rims (five spoke wats would look sick me thinks) and a bit of low. I'll edit this with a pic soon, but for now picture a mustard yellow/army green and black mark IV cedric perched on stupid looking 90's bbs knock offs.
  5. Haha I don't have a wife, I just call her that to piss the old battleaxe off. Cheers much you lords! Yea cletus I reckon she's got another 500 thou to go too! So dreamy and reliable, its the 2y 2wd long bed.. yeeyeee
  6. Howdy! You may have noticed I've been pretty quiet for almost a year now, mostly because I live in Perth, and drive a '92 hilux for now. But, I have another steering wheel project I just finished off, so I thought I'd share the how's, why's and fails of it all. In the beginning... there was a $5 Nardi from the Kumeu swap meets. It was flogged, leather hanging off, basic disgusting wheel that old mate was very happy to see the back of. I already had my restored woodgrain Indy at this point, and on the same day picked up a near mint Personal Neo Grinta in black leather for a steal, so needless to say the priority for this one was extremely low. Fast forward many many moons. I grew restless. Had been using the Personal for some time in my daily hilux but wanted something new. I had already torn off all the old leather back in NZ and had packed all my steering wheels into my carry on luggage at the Christmas break, but dammit I'm blathering here. TL;DR - it was just naked foam and alloy and I had to do something about it. First thing was to get rid of the ugly foam spoke connections, making the spokes longer and sexier. Trimmed them off with a craft knife... Giving me... My first idea was to use handlebar tape from a fixie bike. Not a great solution, being major PITA to wrap, spokes too wide to wrap around in a pretty way, just pure shite. Pic for ref... It was a load of wank. New Idea was to wrap it cord similar to the cars of old. But, I wanted something with a bit more Japanese flavour (ramen sachet) so I studied some samurai handles to get ideas and try to figure out a knotting technique that would work. I tried a few different ones, one that spiralled around the rim, some over locking etc, but by far the best looking and easiest to make was the one I ended up going through with. Spiralling jiggery pokery... And preview of the sexiness ahead... I used about 8 to 10 metres of 550 paracord, with the guts pulled out of it. That makes it lay much flatter over the rim, and keeps the wheel from becoming excessively bulky. It's a bitch to de-core a huge length of paracord but it can be done. Simply push the cover down so you can grab the inner strands (white usually) and tie a knot with the core strands to something solid. You'll need gloves or a very well callused wanking hand for the next bit as you basically pull the bunched up cover down over the core. You'll need to do many many trips up and down the length of cord, pulling the slack down until you feel the cover get thinner between the fingers when the cover slips of the end. It takes a while and can be frustrating, get some beers. It gets easier towards the end when there is less friction and distance to cover. As you make progress, keep retying the core knot to your solid thing (the wifey doesn't like this joke so don't even try using her leg), so that you don't have to walk as far. Once your cord is de-cored you are ready... for a bong rip and another beer probably, because the monotony is about to commence! You can very easily tie this wrap with a huge length as you never have to pass the length of cord through the spokes, thus elimanating the potential for frustration when you run out of cord three knots from the end. Start hard up against a spoke, by trapping the tail of the cord under the first knot you tie. Make a loop from the back of the wheel towards the front (the part facing the driver). With the your finger, hold the loop in place, and using the long tail make another loop going behind the wheel up the opposite side from where you started, and up through the first loop. Using the second loop, tighten the first loop leaving the second loop wide enough to do it all over again. Note that while the tail looks like it's coming from under my thumb it isn't. It pays to watch how you handle the loops here, it's bit of muckery but try to make sure there are no twists in your loops, always lay the cord the same way, and dress (tidy) the cord as you go because doing it later sucks balls and is nearly impossible. Pay attention also to the wraps around the wheel, as they can overlap each other when you're tightening the loop up, and this makes the grip a more uncomfortable than it should be. Keep looping and tightening, looping and tightening... When you eventually reach the next spoke, have a kit kat. And do something else for a while. Otherwise you'll probably not be able to use your fingers for anything decent for quite some time (wife hates that joke too). Ignoring the left hand part of my knots in the next image, you can see how to finish your wrap next to a spoke. simply pull the tail through the last loop, and cut it 100mm away and tighten it up nice. This'll give you a bit to trim later on when you wrap the spokes, laying that short tail neatly underneath the spoke wrap to trap it in place. When you can be arsed, wrap the next spoke section. Pretty soon you'll be over halfway, and then you'll want to bang the rest out that night so you can use it. In this pic you can see the long tails of finished sections and one of my spoke wraps trapping another beginning/end. Then eventually... Hopefully that last pic is big enough to give an idea of the spoke wrap areas, there's no secret to them, I just wrapped it crossing back and forth until most of the black foam was hidden, then tied a reef knot behind the spoke. Give it a go. It's actually pretty comfortable as the knots lay in the soft part of your palm, although definitely takes a little getting used to after that super comfy Personal I was using. Enjoy! Chur to the chur. -cylinders
  7. I know the discussion is currently on flurbos and blowie values but lets be real, the big issue here was quietly mentioned a few pages back and no one said anything... disappointing. VG i want you to have my 14" cragar steelies for this for the low low price of 100 south pacific pesos just so I can sleep easy knowing you aren't rolling around the 'tane on scummy 17's like it was two thousand and five just livin your la vida loca. Do it man.
  8. Yes sideways I totally missed this but am keen. Are they in good nick? And yes that was me in ruakaka, was working at Marsden for quite a while, but home now in the mighty BOP. On another note I found out exactly why toyota tax is a thing... A while ago (about a year now haha) I noticed a dip in performance when it started running on 3 cylinders, figured I'd just keep running it til it died but hasn't yet. Had a fiddle with it today and found it holds 0 psi in #3, but still goes sweet as and passed a vtnz wof this arvo!
  9. If you seen the last update, give me your best onions on the way to lower this thing before I take out a telephone wire.
  10. Hmm it's been a while since I updated this... Long story short, got the frost plug thing sorted and then 2 days later my missus cooked the motor while on a roadtrip with her mates. *facepalm* Got it home and eventually found another E13 motor. Did all the usual stuff, waterpump, gaskets, plugs, and some gearbox bits, then slapped it in and went for a hoon. Drove it like that for a few months, then wof time came around and it failed on the old 110/90/R12 tyres being perished as well as a bit of rust that seems to have really taken off now that it lives a couple blocks from the sea. So I got a set of 14x6.5 Heroes Racing and some 185/60 tyres to replace the 12x5 cheviots and increase the rolling diameter at the same time. And have nearly finished taking care of the rust (which was down by the door hinges on both sides). It goes heaps better with the bigger tyres, and running a gps in it shows that the speedo is actually more accurate now than it was so I'm guessing it's alot closer to the factory set up now than it was. Next thing to do is get it a bit lower.
  11. I'm thinking I'll show my face this wednesday, been too long since I've caught with you lads. Gonna try to bring the new whip but it may be away for rust chop. Hilux still lingering.
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