Snoozin

Sounds like a larf what's the criteria? Is 175cc and only 2 strokes acceptable (it may use a bit of premix tho) cos I already have that, although in need of recomissioning. You wouldn't call it a moped tho, by any stretch.

So anyway, given this thing had been sitting for an age, I figured it was probably a solid idea to drain the tank and see what was going on, before attempting to kick it in the guts. So out with the tools, and lets tear this thing to bits, sorta. How easy are bikes to work on... 20230307_220313 by Richard Opie, on Flickr Exhibit A. Fuel. 20230307_222423 by Richard Opie, on Flickr Hmm, yeah that's not so flash. You can probably smell it from where you're viewing this, too. To drain the fuel, I had to remove the fuel pump also. This is what I found. 20230308_101611 by Richard Opie, on Flickr Yummo, sweet varnish, and crusty flaky shit in abundance. So I figured some internal inspection was probably necessary. 20230308_101634 by Richard Opie, on Flickr Shit yeah OK this isn't the best situation to find myself in. So I figured the best solution was to treat and re-line the tank properly, with a POR15 kit. On the shelf at City Honda too! So I was able to crack into this pretty promptly. This is the result after a clean, and a treat with the 'metal ready' stuff, and a thorough drying with heat and airflow to really get all the moisture out. 20230309_191253 by Richard Opie, on Flickr Actually not bad! I popped the liner in after this, swirled it round, mopped out the excess (it wasn't as simple as just draining it, as the fuel pump flange has a return on it internally, I guess to add stiffness, so it just creates a big dam for the liner spooge to flow around, and not out...). I didn't get any pics of this process, but it spent a solid 5 days curing, while I turned my attention to the pump. When I chucked 12v on it, the pump did NOTHING. Like, it was locked solid. Since I had the housing all apart, I popped it in a bath of white vinegar to soften up all the varnish, and left it for a while. Progress photos below of this process. 20230308_170524 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20230308_170513 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20230308_170516 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20230308_164256 by Richard Opie, on Flickr Gross, right. I didn't get any pics of the new pump by itself. But after a soak, the plastic housing and so forth cleaned up pretty well with an easy scrub. 20230310_154941 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20230310_184857 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20230311_094124 by Richard Opie, on Flickr Anyway, I got this all installed, and hit the button. Well, firstly, the pump gasket leaked the proverbial. And secondly, the thing would fire, and just not run past that initial burst of throttle. It'd just peter out. And on the very rare occasion it did run for more than a few seconds, a little bit of throttle would kill it instantly. It was fairly apparent that it was a fuel issue, the ECU has a great feature where you can test relays, sensors etc via a diagnostic mode on the dash. With this, I was able to check spark, throttle position, MAP sensor, fuel pump relay, the injector was pulsing via ECU, as well as pretty much everything on the bike (fan, headlight, you name it... all triggered via the ECU). While it didn't immediately lead me to the cause, it made me confident that everything electrical/electronic was functioning, and that it was likely a physical/mechanical problem causing the drama. So... with consultation from some of PPSC's finest, I figured getting the injector cleaned would be the best next step. A few days later, and with a freshly cleaned injector in the bike and a non-leaking fuel pump gasket/seal.... it fired up on first hit of the button! A real eureka moment. Unfortunately the injector seal was leaking now, like a bloody garden hose. But Blizz saved the day and popped by with a "maybe it's nitrile, maybe it isn't" Aliexpress O-ring kit, so it now runs and its fluid tight! So a few pics of the reassembled bike to celebrate. 2007 Yamaha XT660R-1 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2007 Yamaha XT660R-13 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2007 Yamaha XT660R-20 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2007 Yamaha XT660R-25 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2007 Yamaha XT660R-28 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2007 Yamaha XT660R-42 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 2007 Yamaha XT660R-44 by Richard Opie, on Flickr Yeah. It's not really a serious trail machine, but it should be a neat starter thing to get me enthused and focused on what I might prefer more, something with a more offroad bent, or perhaps a more road friendly bike. But it's first ride was the evening I fired it up, down to the servo for a bit of premium gasoline for a treat. 20230318_223212 by Richard Opie, on Flickr More to come...

I've been wanting to get my bike license for a decade, easily. I've just been super terrible about it, lazy, busy, unmotivated, you name it, I found an excuse. Usually i just forgot, but yeah anyway. Since both of my cars are in great shape (gone and jinxed that one...) and essentially just need servicing, washing, and WOF-ing I figured I should do something about this long-delayed motorbike license and get it done. So I did. The basic handling was easy, and the written test even easier. Not bad for a bloke who hasn't thrown a leg over a bike in 20 years or so. The other motivation was the rides @BLIZZO etc have been fanging, I had a bit of a hunger to go out exploring and an adventure bike was the most likely candidate. Although I probably wussed out a bit on the seriousness of it all, as you'll soon see. So I researched a bunch of options, KLR650, DR650, DRZ400, even toyed with the idea of buying a brand spankers CRF300, but instead a chance Facebook marketplace find led me to this thing, a Yamaha XT660R. Here's how the purchase went down, it's a bit of an interesting yarn I think. I spied this bike while browsing marketplace (during work hours, natch) and it looked pretty tidy. Details were scarce, and it was allegedly in Cambridge. But the info seemed good, km were low at 33000 so I fired a message. "Oh it's my dads bike, here's his number" was the response I received. No big deal, I dialed the number and got the seller/owner on the phone. "So those pics aren't actually the bike I'm selling," was the first thing this joker said, literally. "It's a bit hard to get to at the moment, and my son saw this bike just like it so I told him to take some pictures of it so we could list mine. Oh yeah it's actually in Tokoroa, not Cambridge, too." Still, no big deal, I've gotten this far so I might as well find out a bit more. Aaaanyway. Here's where the plot thickened. "I bought it 9 years ago, I never rode it and I just put it in my spare room, it's really mint though, looks like it just rolled out of a showroom." Interesting, and surely, the bloke's talking shit, right? The phone conversation would go on for a full FORTY SEVEN minutes, I thought I loved a yarn but this chap was the GOAT. Everything from working in the mines. How good is Thailand? Oh the time I owned a Porsche, I just had a big target on my back. And more. It turned out he'd gone to Wellington for some reason or another, and this bike took his fancy, so he bought it, but then he needed to get it home so he bought a Hiace to transport it back North. How good? As it turned out I was due a trip up that weekend anyway, to go and ride bikes (the kind with pedals) at Redwoods in Rotorua so I figured I could make a detour and check this thing out. I rolled in the driveway at about midday, and the place looked a little sketchy - you know, the kind with the fence made out of longrun roofing because they sure as hell don't want you to see in. Really, it was obscuring a yard chock full of treasure, and when I got to meet Brent, the owner, it was whilst dodging a a dog that was fairly vocal and upset about my being there. A great start, then. Brent had obviously been working quite hard that morning, to get the bike to a point where I could actually view it. So like, cleaning it up, or maybe getting it ready for a start-up or something? No. Brent had just been CLEARING OUT the tonnes of crap that had hemmed this thing inside his spare room for some years. "I like to collect stuff," he explained, "I'd rather put my money into things, you know?" Well, he sure had a LOT of things. Enough things, that meant we had to traverse a perilous path carved through the labyrinth of 'things' (oh, theres a couple of postie bikes under all that, and a brand new scooter somewhere under there *gesticulates at pile of stuff*) populating the hallway and entrance of his old mill house, before we entered the cavern of XT660, and the sight below greeted my eyes. Just to the left of this shot is a stack of bric-a-brac and assorted appliances that reaches the ceiling, I almost considered confined space entry gear to deal with this situation. 2023-03-21_11-00-29 by Richard Opie, on Flickr Remember how I was optimistic about it's condition? Well it sure wasn't showroom, but holy shit it was pretty good, especially considering the relatively meagre bucks this thing was listed for. No major paint wear on the pegs or engine cases, all the plastics still glossy and unmarked, it even had it's original graphics still present. Looked like it had never seen any dirt, no major oxidisation on the alloy components, no fluids where they shouldn't be - but I wasn't allowed to fire it up. Whipping off the fuel tank, it had been BRIMMED before it was stored, but Christ it was whiffy in there, and didn't look like it was going to be a great time in steel fuel tank-ville... but I figured this thing seemed a pretty good starting point, it was tidy (and you all know I love my vehicles clean and tidy), had done minimal work and seemed to offer the goods for a capable enough dualsport bike. Reg on hold was a decent cherry on the top, too. So I made an offer, and we made a deal. The Monday night after that, Markku and I drove up to Tokoroa after work with a trailer in tow, to pick the thing up. The trip was swift but largely uneventful, and we arrived around 8:30pm to find the bike sitting outside, and Brent waiting with a stack of pre-selected yarns. We got the bike loaded, had a quick feed of fresh KFC and hit the road, arriving home at 1:30am, and loading, where Jarvis quickly meowed his approval at my latest folly. 2023-03-21_11-02-35 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20230307_021343 by Richard Opie, on Flickr 20230307_020302 by Richard Opie, on Flickr Next chapter. Wil it run?!

Not really an update but this thing is going pretty well so far, I've put 8000km on it (more actually as the speedo/odo wasn't working for at least 500km as we couldn't initially get it to read a pulse from the speed sensor - a moderately long story but it's working mint now). So what's been happening? I entered this in 4&Rotary Nats show, because I wanted to tick that box really, nothing more, nothing less. So myself and @oftensideways made the trip up, both trailered - in my case now wanting to get it all grubby due to spending hours cleaning and sprtizing. As it turned out, this was the weekend those hectic rains came in and hit Auckland, so we drove up in generally garbage conditions, and the car was coated in a thick film of schmutz when I got theire (engine bay included) which meant a hurried cleaning mission to get it ready. I reckon we presented pretty well though! KP61 4nR 2023 Show1-2-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 4nR 2023 Show1-5-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 4nR 2023 Show1-3-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 4nR 2023 Show1-11-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr Lots of sweet car yarns and hangs ensured throughout the following day, and when prizegiving rolled in I was pretty humbled to receive the Best Toyota trophy, against what I think were some pretty wild cars (Supercharged LS KE70, a big power JZX100 dripping in all the lush Japanese parts etc). So when I got home I wiped it down and took a few pics - note the addition of the limited edition Momo Heritage Prototipo, with a TRD horn button I've been hoarding for some time. This is likely as good as the car will ever look. KP61 Orakei Rd-219-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-230-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-44-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-48-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-111-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-147-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-144-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-137-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-158-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-172-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-175-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-218-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-89-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-239-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Orakei Rd-102-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Came here to post exactly this. How odd!

Unsure about the properties of both materials, but is one of them more flexible than the other? In that car (1997 Laguna, that's my shot), the radiators and ducting is mounted to a floating "subframe" arrangement hung off little dampers, it also retains the splitter and the undertray. Idea is you run super slammed and it just moves when you strike a ripple strip/curbing on track. Unsure if there is any strength or cost differential between them, but a quick Google suggests the aramid fibre is much less brittle than carbon so it could have a bearing on why those particular components are made out of the stuff?

Essentially, it's identical arrangement in that P10 vs the 98 P11.

Trip to Japan to strip it, pack the parts in a container thru Empire.... job done!

2nd a Beams, but add ITB for extra coolness. Not as good as a Honda K motor, but not as expensive either.

KP61 Hero Contributor-6-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr Still running well, clean sheeted it's first WOF after cert and generally been relatively minimal, but happy motoring. No 13's on it because, I'm lazy. And it drives really nicely on these, but the 13s will find their way back on soon. I've had the paint (that was done in 2007) colour sanded and corrected and it looks ridiculously good. This shot doesn't really shot it, but it's flat, glossy and much more vibrant. All I have to do now is look after it!

5kg Swift springs in the front, I forget the length, no keepers as they are quite a long, soft spring. Fortune Auto offered me a range of insert lengths with varying stroke etc, so I was able to work out where it needed to be to get enough droop, a good ride height and a good amount of bump travel. Bonus for being relatively compliant in a light car. I have used the length to even the ride height, but if I wanted to go lower I can drop the spring platform and still retain captive springs at this stage and not compromise bump travel.

You basically said why it's a bad idea in your reply "if you have a suitable main spring and keeper." Ergo, the platform and vehicle ride height is set via suitable spring. Engineering your own solution is even more of an incentive to get it right, when you order a Fortune Auto setup for example, you have a choice of spring rates and lengths.

Height is set by spring length. When you think about it, platform height is influencing the length of your spring, the most common issues that occur when setting up a strut by adjusting height only using the bottom clevis is having a wheel that bottoms out in the arch before the shock hits its bump stop, as well as often minimal droop. You ideally want a main spring and a tender/keeper to fine tune your ride height and droop. https://mcasuspension.com/spring-seat-adjustment-method/ https://mcasuspension.com/how-to-adjust-ride-height/ MCA explain it more eloquently than I ever could.

Vintage TRD = expensive, no matter what part it is. Old/period aftermarket stuff is reaching obscene prices, even for 90s gear... just catching up to the Euro and USA classic bits I guess.

I was keener than mustard, but asked the seller if they had 6 I could buy at that price for a group deal, and when they responded in the negative, I exclaimed "WELL GOOD DAY TO YOU, SIR," and closed my browser in a huff!

The car was acquired already built and never run in anger, AP4 rely on a whole lot of control/compliant chassis items to meet regulations. So the initial investment and specialist fabrication was already completed on that car, they look like production shells but they're not.

No, it's literally been lifted out of a road car and popped in.

4AG has been consigned to the bin on this car. Now has GR 3-pot in it, although not ready yet.

Project Binky levels of bracketry there, my good man!

So far, this has been going pretty well. Aside from some problems with cracking on the headers, the car has run pretty well. There's a few tune-based things to tidy up but nothing that really affects the drivability. All the Pioneer stereo gear is now functional. I use a Bluetooth cassette adaptor off Aliexpress to enable me to retain total tape functionality and play tunes from Spotify. It works much better than expected. I also went to town on my cert-spec wheels, as I figured it best look pretty good when I do have to take it for a WOF! Results as below. KP61 Night 21-04-16-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Night 21-04-37-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Night 21-04-44-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr KP61 Night 21-04-49-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

Those throttles are so cool!

Jump on Amayama - I bet you'll be able to get most bolts, genuine. You probably won't find your chassis number but you'll find a Japanese market model and most of those fasteners will be identical. Way better than bolt shop bolts, with their silly 13mm heads etc.

From the limited information at hand, it looks like it might be a prime example to ruin with some slam and wheels! Still has a radio blanking plate? That's rad.

Fitted up the TE37, finally. The tyres are Lakesea Gredge 07RS semi slicks, a re-branded Zestino that's a 140TW DOT rated semi. They were meant to be Zestino, but the local distro got sent an incorrect batch of 205/45/16 only with the Lakesea branding. Subsequently, these were specialled off at $50 per tyre, which I decided was a no-brainer to get the TE's shod in some rubber. I like the look, although I think I prefer it best on the RG still. DC2R Phone (63)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr DC2R Phone (64)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr The classic Honda driveway exit pose. DC2R Phone (60)-Edit by Richard Opie, on Flickr

I like the idea of a press-fit plug/stub. Thread it, weld in a nipple and be done. You could even machine an o-ring groove in it.