cylinders
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Anyone out there with any ideas on this? Same engine as a steed 400, it's called a vrx400.
Basically it only senses that I've put it in neutral about 15% of the time. It doesn't flicker off and on once it does sense N.
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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.
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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
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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...
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I require uneducated and educated opinions on the Honda VRX 400. I might buy one in a day or two, but I thought I'd check if it was okay with my loved ones first.
They have a watercooled 9.8:1 comp 398cc four stroke v-twin, gives 32hp (only 13 less than 883 harley)
I plan on jacking the rear up an inch or so, making new pipes with supertrapps, and fitting a board rack and knobblies so I can hoon around the 4x4 tracks of Margaret River and get waves. Yes I've considered xr400 and all them, just don't really want a dirt bike at this stage. Here's a molested one for your jiggly bits.
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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.
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I'm in Perth, hence the cry for help! Thanks though bud, would have taken you up on that and crushed a few tins with you for sure.
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No slime, no smoke!
Hah sorry I mistook coil to mean altezza type coil packs... smh.
Cheers very muchy for the help you bunch of lords!
She's driving back home now, she's going to have a check of the coil if she gets the loss of power again.On the to do list, get old mate Neil to reinstall the winter intake pipe, get auld M8 Neil to multimeter erthang', get OMN to have a geez at the fuel filter and whats floating around the float bowl.
chhhhhurrr to the max!
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"Hey pet, how many litres of water did you put in the radiator?"
"Quite a bit."
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oh man im out of likes
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Sunny E13S is carb and spark plugs... this is an 84 sunny delivery van after all!
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I tried to explain to here the probe concept and look of the thing, after topping up and circulating we're a 1/5 of temp gauge, so hopefully not too bad.
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Fuck, I will go sit in the garden for an hour or two if she's cooked another motor.
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She's filled the rad with cool water from waihi BP. Ran the engine for a minute to circulate things.
Currently trying to explain what a fuel filter looks like and where she'll find it...
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Hey boes, I need some help!
The missus is taking the Sunny (Nissan VB11 w/ E13S motor) up to Auckland. She's loosing power regularly after about 15km of driving. She reckons it runs fine up to that point and then goes gutless. It's so bad that it is losing revs up hills and hardly accelerates on the flats. She is about to turn around and head for home, currently in Waihi.
1.3L E13S Engine
4 speed box
Oil topped up
Motor not running hot
Rad fluids good (edit - she just found the rad to be dry and filled
Exhaust recently replaced
Normally runs fine, but she's had this problem a few times now without any grand solution, it just tends to disappear.
I know how much we all love to speculate via the webs, so now's your chance!
Can you diagnose this problem?
Who can diagnose it first, and from how far away?
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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
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Chur k-diggity-digs
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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.
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or buy this $4500 woodgrain and get a free starlet and sr20det... dooortphhhhsh
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or scour swap meats and tm for deals on genuine articles in need of tender lovin.
I have a 350mm personal neo grinta in leather (minty, current daily, $20 @ kumeu), nardi classic ($5 @kumeu, was phucked, removed leather, currently wrapping in olive drab cord for wierdness), and a 1979 momo woodgrain ($35 on the tardem, restored myself with zero knowledge, 2 years ago, still mint and sexy blonde)
All up you might spend over a thousand bucks on those three wheels (neo grinta ~$450nzd from moonlight) with associated boss kits and horn buttons (staying genuine) but I have so far spent <$300 total. The most expensive item was a nrg short hub to stop me t-rexing the fuck out of my commute.
Take your time, go to kumeu, look on tm for ads with incorrect labels or shitty descriptions and potato pictures. Take a punt on a $20 80's momo monte carlo and you might win.
Also hunt pick a part and wreckers for horn buttons and hubs, you'd be suprised how much good italian aftermarket shit is just sitting there waiting for the right boe.
Lastly, I second the votes against suede, a steering wheel in a daily should glide smoothly through the palm as you exit the roundabout, unless you drive 10-2 at all times it's gonna be a case of "just waiting for a mate" when the suede grips your hand when it shouldn't. Sorry about all the parentheses (brackets) (fuck)
ERDIT: p.s. also while nardi is very vogue and chic, momo and personal (made more f1 champions' wheels than any other, including senna's) seems to have fallen further out of fanboy's radars lately, you can find some bangin vintage prototipos and indys on ebay occasionally for $150-200 that haven't been snapped up by some humidor sniffing maserati collector to be resold at profit.
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Sheesh
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i mean wait
january?
....4thj?
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New 'scavenger hunt' thread.
in General Car Chat
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Don't let this challenge kill the thread, someone lay down some diesel and rep the wu!