Vintage Grumble

Had a gork at the exhaust, it has a spark arrestor in it, which looks fairly restrictive. The internet tells me removing it has no bad effects and some benefits. I also broke all 6 bolts that hold it in, so guess it's staying out for now. It's a fair bit louder so will see it it's too loud next outing. Leaves a huge hole, but shiny cover makes it less accommodating. Regards, VG.

Took this thing out for another test drive, starting to get used to what it can do. Rubbish cell vids of a few rips: Mate from Ack didn't manage to break it, and he's an expert at breaking things, so that's encouraging. Not sure if you can tell from the vid, but the exhaust sounds very restrictive, so that's on the mods list now. (Not that it needs more power) Also discovered it's limited to 125kmh, probably don't need to go any faster, but I don't like things telling me how fast I can go. Attempted to do some jumps, but was a bit chicken, as the jump wasn't great, and you had to go faster that I felt comfortable with to get air. Getting braver with each drive though. Regards, VG.

Is that outboard 2-stroke?

Sorted a few more things, applied a fire extinguisher, and my overnight parts from Japan (2 weeks from the US of A) arrived, so I now have 4x hub caps too, Also I forgot to mention, the first owner of this didn't have the use of his legs, so it was fitted with hand controls. I found a couple of steel plates from that set up that hadn't been removed, and removed them. The only remnants of the hand controls is a few small bonus holes in the floor. Then this afternoon I took it out for a blast, and by hokey it's a lot of fun/terror. It's pretty damn quick, and it's sort of amazing how quickly you can go over some pretty gnarly terrain. My brain is still going "oh shit, this is going to hurt!!" And then it just glides over it like a champ. I also discovered my wife's screams are much louder than the exhaust. And that it can transport at least 7 people in one go. So practical. One thing I'm not 100% sure on, is two of the tyres have been carved to have a wider groove in the tread, I put the cut ones on the back as they look gruntier, but I'm now thinking the grooves might be to improve steering? Current front/uncut: Cut ones on the back: What ya reckon? The cuts wouldn't give more driving traction, so must be meant to go on the steering end? Oh, and the only failure of 40ish KM of hard hooning today was I lost one rear caliper bolt, but I fixed it good as. Oh and damn, for something with no low range, it can get up some crazy rough/rutted/undulating/steep hills, blew my mind. Pretty stoked with this thing, but need harnesses and roll cage upgrades sooner rather than later. Regards, VG.

This is how I sold my wife on the idea: And this is how I sold myself on the idea:

Yeh they set up the shocks on this one, re-valved them and put dual rate springs on the front. They do the wheel spacers, but are super spendy, and they are just 4x110 all around, so china might be the best bet. With the cage stuff I'll ask if they do weld in bits, but I think they generally build complete new cages from scratch. I'll look into that before I start anything. There is one of their re-flashed ECU's on TM ATM, sort of tempted by that.

So I sold the old girl over a year ago, and haven't done any work on the new one since about then too. But I want to go off-road'in, so I sold out, and purchased a SXS. I looked at a couple of RZRs, but didn't fit in them, then found a YXZ1000R, which I fitted in, and it really tickled my fancy. So the new sleigh is a 2018 Yamaha YXZ1000R. The dude that owned it also had a 2016 YXZ, which he had turbo'd, and then blew up due to losing an oil line, so he purchased the 2018 as an engine donor. He started ripping it to bits then realized it probably wasn't the most financially smart thing to do. So he swapped a few parts between them, and then left the 2018 in a shed for a few years. I got it relatively cheap, because he has taken a few goodies off it, and left it half dismantled. When I got it home a few weeks ago, I went over the whole thing checking bolts and seeing what was missing. It was only missing one front sway bar link, the front bull bar, one hub cap, a few bolts, and lots of plastic clips. I gave it a good clean up, got a new sway bar link, changed one CV boot, and applied a shit ton of bolts and plastic clips, and it's pretty much ready to go for a hoon. You may have noticed it's quite colourful, that's because all the blue bits + the shocks are from the 2016 one. It also has 15" aftermarket wheels rather than the 14" bead locks it came with. This is what its meant to look like, I would like to make it look less patriotic/American one day, and cut down on the range of colours. I also need to make a sweet bull bar for it, before I destroy the front. The neat thing about these, is they are not CVT like the Polaris and Can-ams, they have a 5 speed dog box that is electrically shifted via flappy paddles, and has a big old clutch pack that is controlled by an ECU. They are also a 3 cylinder, so sound way better. And that's the main thing, sounding cool while banging through gears. I will add some extra bars to the cage (they are a bit shit std) and put 4 point harnesses in it sometime soon. The other big upgrade is to widen the track all around with 50mm wheel spacers, apparently it makes them handle a lot better. Looking forward to doing some skids/jumps/flips/rolls in this soon, neeeeaaaat. Regards, VG.

Flip up wheel chocks? Do tell me more.

That was pretty neat, I really enjoyed it eh. Big thanks to @johnnyfive for doing what he do, and also lending me a bike. Huge thanks to @Hemi and 70 Series Brian for support. Also a big thanks to the stream team for lifting all them bikes, you guys were top notch. This is all the media I captured of the event: Don't show Hemi's mum, How's about that rain eh.

Yeh it was crazy windy in Fuckatane today.

Yoza, I hadn't used this little fulla for near on 6 months, so I got it out a few weekends back to give it a run. Went to start it, and it wouldn't turn over. I could just turn it over by hand (grabbing the drive coupling with my hand, so not a lot of grip) so assumed a tired battery or starter. Decided to whip the plugs out and see if it had the balls to turn over then. Unbeknownst to me, the oil tank had drained maybe 1 to 1.5L of oil into the engine, and when I cranked it, two geysers of oil shot amazingly high into the air. It spuewed oil alllll over the boat, my wife's car, up the front of my house, making it to the top of the second story even, and through the boat shed and surrounding area. It took close to 5 hours to clean that ecological disaster up, but I took the boat out for a test run after, and it ran fine, so no damage done. When I ran it a week later it was very smokey on start up, so oil is still leaking into the engine, so either my pump became sad while sitting, or the new oil I had just changed to on the last outting before the park up, is thinner and getting past the pump. More investigation needed. On Tuesday I decided I was going to go as far up the Whakatane river as I could. I went by myself which made things a bit spicy. We also had never gone past Ruatoki, apparently the locals can be very unwelcoming to jet boats/possible hunters. First bit of fun was the Rua bridge, it was like 99% blocked by trees from a recent flood. While stopped to assess a route, a dude popped out of the bushes behind me, and was adamant there was no way I would get through. I spied a gap just slightly wider than the boat, and about 100mm deep, so had a go and made it amazingly. It was like a war zone above that bridge, the flood had made a huge mess, so wild. Pic to break up huge sharn: I got stuck a few times on the way up, the last one on the upward leg was a doozy. I was looking for options, and there was none, so ended up in 50mm of water over sandy mud, and didn't complete the U-turn. I was a long way from floatable depth, so took as much out of and off of the boat as possible, and had to just he-man it out over about 30mins, I was so physically fucked after that. I was slightly worried as I was quite a long way out of cell coverage at that point too. Took a little vid of the scene after I got the boat to a start off-able depth: https://i.imgur.com/U5dAAz2.mp4 After reassembling the boat I set off down river, and after a couple of minutes made another error, and got very stuck again, in a real cunt of a spot. Got the boat floating, but the grate was so blocked I had no drive and the overheating alarm came on. I had to tie the boat to a tree, then dig a hole under the pickup so I could clear the grate. Laying in very cold fast moving water after doing a lot of physical effort was not fun. Got the grate clear, but I then couldn't pull the boat up stream to get to deep enough water to start off, so I had to start the boat next to myself while I walked it up stream to deeper water. Luckily I didn't let go of the boat and got out of that situation. The next situation was the river tricking me, and the deep water was on the inside of a corner, not the outside, causing me to run aground at decent speed. After he-maning the boat back to deeper water I set off right above a gnarly rapid/rock wall corner, to find my steering jammed full lock one way thanks to stones. I donuted into the wall, and after a lot of struggling managed to get to the side of the river and clear the stones. The last situation was I forgot about tides, and found a very long muddy gap between the boat and the trailer when I got back to town. I had to join the winch rope and bow rope and drag the boat across some real deep shit smelling mud, and ended with a really steep ascent onto the trailer. Made it 56km up river from the yacht club if that means anything to ya. So that was quite the adventure. Going solo really adds to the fun. TL:DR, I wish I had taken a GoPro. Regards, VG.

That is so fucking chur. eggplant emoji IN MY PANTS!! Yeh black looks good.

So friggin sweet. So when can I order my formula kpr-antics 250hp 4age?

Have you tried yet? I'm too scared. I'm 99% sure they are going to be fucking horrible.

The level of gay sex is about the same.

Damn boy, that sexy. Looks much better all red I reckon. Also, good to see crazy Neil's car in the retro pics. That thing hasn't moved in 7+ years now, RIP.

Well it makes more sense that it was a std yaris, not a GR to begin with. I was very confused there for a second.

@98cc that is so friggen sweet! Amazing job on the car, and so jealous of your involvement in that world, so many amazing machines.

Ok that's enough, first the range hood, now this, leave some blood in my head ayy.

Wholey shit that's sweet, you fucking mad man.

Wholey moley, more info please!!

Yoza, I'm trying to organize having my wheels re-banded by Pine, but he doesn't have the step lip barrels my current rims have, and has offered a reverse lip. In the pic he sent me, the rim is so fucking shiny I cant tell what the shape actually is, its making my eyes go cray cray. Has anyone had a set redone by Pine with the reverse lip barrels? If so, would you be able to post up pics from different angles so I can try understand the shape? Cheers!

Yeh so the final drive shafts were the same, just different in the dingus length. Swapped that over and bam, matching wheels. Also wanted to run the correct muffler, which involved changing the gigantic bracket they hang off. The skywave muffler has 3 bolts vs boomermans 2, and sits on a very slightly different angle, so also had to change the little header pipe. (Note finger in shot, like a legit boomer) Then I put it all back together using the best bits of both bikes. Note $17 AliExpress shield extension, and burgman forum badge. I dailyed it to work for a couple of weeks, goes hard for what it is, but sadly I'm too tall for it, it just owns my legs and back, because I can't get my ass back far enough (note removed lumber support in attempt to move ass back) so I'm going to have to move it on. Bit of a PITA, but hey, what's a brother going to do? I had a bit of free time, so started playing with the skywave. Determined the fuel pump was not dead (as last owner was told by mechanic). It had spark, so figured out the wiring for the pump and sender (had been chopped off) and wired it up. Then after a bit of fooling about figured out it was just a bung relay stopping the pump and injection. Changed the relay out and bam, started straight up. Stoked. I went back later for more mending, and every time I hooked the battery up, it would blow a fuse (had a few blown fuses before I started playing around) after blowing a few more, I discovered some wires shorting out. Sorted that and no more blown fuses. But now it won't run, dumb. It's flashing the F1 light, which I think is basically the check engine light. Also the dash lights flicker randomly, so something somewhere is not happy. While trying to find a wiring diagram, I found the actual bike on another forum. Good to see it has a long history of wiring faults, lolols. https://www.advrider.com/f/threads/neppi’s-an250-2004-skywave-burgman-misery.1421380/ Hopefully I can sort it out, as I have to flick this one off too. I might even be able to break even, ha.

I'm disgusted I didn't find the build thread earlier. This is so far up my alley, it's touching a lung.

I can't imagine how fast the 650s are, must be nuts. Edit: apparently with the correct technique, they can do 0-100 in 4.6 seconds. Edit edit: last night I found out why the back wheel of bike no2 was never changed to the OG wheel, the later model motors have a way shorter output shaft, and the OG brake/wheel combo doesn't fit. I'm going to yank the final drive shaft out of the bung motor and see if it will fit in this one, because I'd like matching wheels. Not the end of the world if it doesn't, but worth a go.