Nathan's motorcycles.....

[tortron]

Loving my lithium battery on GN. 4kg lighter and I have left it for over a month and still has full power

[flyingbrick]

Yup technology is amazing. 

Tonight I assembled a basic watt meter/load with voltage switch thing so that I can test battery capacities accurately. Its all just cheap shit from ali express but seems to work OK. 

You connect a fully charged battery and press the button on the side, this engages the resistors to give a 30 watt load, and then when voltage gets down to 12.1 it disconnects the load and holds capacity information on the screen. During discharge it also displays load in Watts and battery voltage. Quite neat. 

The old busa battery drops from 13v to 12.3 very quickly,and in total outputs just 0.4Ah before it disengages the load at 12.1v

I know that I'd get more out of the battery if there was a smaller load (manufacturers test Ah over a ten hour draw down or something) but it should still be a lot better than what I got. 

Not quite brave enough to connect and test the new battery though, LOL. 

 

[flyingbrick]

So just an FYI for anyone who cares to follow along

The Old busa battery is now up to 4.5Ah of capacity when doing the discharge test at 4watts down to a cut off voltage of 12.1v. Thats obviously a huge increase from the originally tested .4Ah and has taken around a week and about 2 minutes every night to switch alligator clips around. I *THINK* that optimum capacity would be around 6Ah if doing this test on the battery when new, but I really do not know what voltage the factory tests down to when specifying capacities. Regardless- If i hadn't bought a new battery this one would be totally usable now- Thankfully it will have a good home in my lawn mower  

To make the battery more usable I've been running an AliExpress desulphator circuit on it- Basically, it feeds the battery a high voltage pulse (From 0v to around 22v I think). The High voltage pushes energy through the sulphate crystals and knocks them off the lead plates- the pulse stops the battery from overheating as actual amps in is very low. Theres people on YT saying you don't need to bother with that and they jam on some high voltage DC and carefully monitor amps and temperature- but thats too much admin for me- the pulse circuit is simply set and forget.

Routine: 

1. connect pulse circuit to battery for 24hrs.
2. run capacity test for 24 hrs (I just check it each night, no idea how long its sitting idle for once it finishes)
3. repeat steps 1 and 2 until capacity stops increasing.

In  my case the first capacity test was .4Ah, then 1.5Ah, then 3Ah, then 4.4Ah, then 4.5Ah, so its obviously as good as its going to get, time to move on to the next one.

 

 

 

 

[tortron]

I just hook up my big old South African charger at max amps and wait till it starts to boil while I'm working in the shed, as long as they don't go dry its "fine" lol

[flyingbrick]

haha yes the problem is that you only get a small amount of desulphation before it starts to boil and you need to wait for it to cool off- but it will definitely help. 

[flyingbrick]

Pulled off fairing and old sprockets. They were both pretty worn on one face each. Surprising because the rear axle was perfectly aligned with its notches.

I asked a mate with a busa(he has a couple including a bking and a turbo busa drag bike) , he uses a laser thing to align his bike and tells me all of the marks on these bikes are wrong from the factory. 

I Google it and he's right. Apparently there's quite a few different models of bike with shit house marks. 

I managed to find some decent info about how many race teams align their rear wheels then gave a basic drawing to @Kimjon. Within a few days that bloody brilliant chap had machined up the bits for me. I skid them onto half a flounder spear shaft and boom, foolproof and extremely accurate alignments every time.

The cone ends center themselves into the swingarm pivot and the rear axle, you just lock the tool and compare one sides measurement to the other side. 

And on Tuesday I sent off the ecu to the same bloke who gave alignment advice. He flashed the ecu for me and put a sticker on it. 

These computers are pretty advanced and have nearly as much tuneability and functionality as a modern link. It adjusts 8 injectors with maps for each of the four cylinders, fuel and timing depending on which gear you are in, which power level you have selected (basically three different sets of maps which you can flick between on the fly to change power levels or whatever else you want to change maps for). 

Its also completely tunable with just a basic cable and some software (which isn't that expensive). 

But cheaper than that is just having him to do it. He has a very popular set of safe maps that make it a bit smoother, a little more powerful, more free revving etc plus turns on fans at a slightly lower temp. These bikes are so popular around the world that there's a pretty comprehensive recipe to get them running their best. 

[flyingbrick]

Got a one piece clutch hub

Pulled the body panels off and did the clutch slave seal because that went wees everywhere.

Then pulled off the clutch cover.

And ya undo those screw things and pull the hat off and you can see the shitty two piece clutch hub. Long story but just know that it's there to give you a light clutch lever, and it increases clamp force as torque is applied to the clutch.

Ita a clunky horrible shuddery bunny hoppy piece of crap 

This is much nicer.

And put in some nice red oil. 

 

And today did about 200km with @64valiant to visit the guys at garlic masters. Such a good improvement, anyone with a gen 1 or 2 busa should do the one piece hub ASAP!

[flyingbrick]

Did the corro loop for the first time.

[flyingbrick]

Stoop meet in Gisborne. Did 740ish km yesterday.

 

[flyingbrick]

1300km in total.

 

[cletus]

Looks like the gisbourne top 10? 

 

between the people on the beach otp and someone loading a broken camper onto a trailer , then rain, I got very little sleep 

 

I got a cabin the next time  

[flyingbrick]

My stay was lush. Very quiet and never seen facilities so clean!!!

[anglia4]

China Palace and an order of Pink Pussies is the only Oldschool.co.ng approved dining in Gizzy

[flyingbrick]

1 hour ago, mopig said:

did you go get seafood at captain morgans?  many moons ago was the best seafood / takeaways in gizzy

yeah! actually got dinner there, was bloody good! fish, chips and a number of scallops. then for breakfast the next morning got smashed avo with eggs on toast. Bloody good, and perfectly located when camping there.

 

[Raizer]

They must have improved again with the latest owners, was absolutely shit and super stingy an owner or 2 back.

[flyingbrick]

Nice view from @Geophys place this morning.

 

[flyingbrick]

When I was very young I had a Gtech timing device for my cars. No idea what happened to it but practicing 0-100 times was a hoot.

I'd love to take the busa to the strip one day (The solid clutch center contributes to this) and so when I stumbled across an indegogo project for the RaceBox Mini, I was pretty excited. Its basically a compact GPS/G sensor unit which mounts on the bike (or car) and then provides a huge amount of data on acceleration, timing, lean angles and G forces via your smart phone. I'd never signed up for any kickstarter type thing before so I was anxious, but the result couldn't have been better.

But yeah unfortunately the bikes now in bits and the rain had set in prior to disassembly so its not even been used .... But unboxing pics below. Its a quality bit of kit!

https://www.racebox.pro/products/racebox-mini

 

[flyingbrick]

I then started researching ways to chisel weight from the big thing. If you have a million bucks its EASY. You can purchase carbon or forge wheels, carbon fairings, titanium axles and bolts for the whole bike, etc etc etc. I'm always more interested in the more DIY approach which utilizes factory parts where possible. Its still expensive, but comparatively cheap.

Big news on busa forums is the R1 wheel swap idea. Guys take R1 wheels, buy a conversion axle for the front plus theres a few spacers required for the rear. The R1 wheels are lighter (though finding an accurate measurement is difficult) and they look a ton better than the factory tri spokes. 

But. R1 wheels are not readily available here in NZ. They are also expensive when they do become available (1k for the pair) and the conversion axle for the front wheel is less than elegant (its a smaller OD to fit the smaller R1 bearings, has ugly sleeves to step up to the hayabusa forks, is SOLID rather than hollow like the factory item and uses an ugly industrial bolt and washer to pull the lot together.

Once I figured that out about R1 wheels I decided to do my own research. Just because that swap exists, doesn't mean its actually the best solution!

I went on Trademe and FB Market place and found modern sports bikes being wrecked. Eventually I found a couple which had wheels available so I enquired to find pricing and then hit Google to figure out widths and bearing sizes.

I settled on gen1 ZX10R wheels which were 400$ for the pair and most importantly, share the same size axles and seals as the busa. I paid the money and they arrived a week later, then I slid the front wheel onto the busa axle with busa spacer and took some measurements. It fit near perfectly with the only modification being to the factory wheel spacer, which required 1.25mm taken off its length to center the kawasaki wheel. I have weighed the bare wheel, this looks to be 450 grams lighter for the bare front wheel than a bare Hayabusa wheel, so not bad and in line with the best case measurements I've seen for the R1 front wheel swap (+ the lighter factory front axle!)

Also, these wheels are made by enkei and look fucking great.

I had some chap machine me up the new shorter front spacer. Theres a spare for a mate with a few race bikes, he is wanting to swap to these wheels now too.

Next up, I need to buy some new front discs from a gen2 zx10r. They have the same wheel PCD and the same diameter as the hayabusa. At worst these discs will require some thin washers to center them perfectly in the caliper

 

 

 

 

[flyingbrick]

Also happening in parallel with the wheels is a weight loss plan involving nearly everything else.  I bought some digital fish type scales and have my super accurate resin scales, so I started just pulling stuff off and finding lighter weight replacements.

A list of weights so far is below- the Exhaust was done by the previous owner but the factory exhausts were included so I was able to weigh and compare.

The most fun of these items was the rear subframe. This is an aluminum subframe as used during the first three years of Hayabusa manufacture and I bought it in from Norway (ebay). IT was bloody cheap, but after freight and conversion etc came out to around 190 NZD. There was one recently on trademe for $400, so thats a bargain.

Its needed a huge amount of bracket trimming and cleaning up- I'm still not quite finished (have some threaded aluminum bosses being made for me which will need to be welded to the frame) but the comparison when you compare the weights is incredible. 

Being for a gen1 some of the fairing mounting bosses are in the wrong place- but there's enough in the right place to mean its not too big of a job to get the alignment correct- and the important things like rider seat retention loops are in the correct place.

The other items were all very very easy- footpeg weights to lessen vibration, pillion pegs, etc etc.

Also, strikes me as funny that they go through the trouble of using subframe mounting bolts which are drilled and relieved for weight reduction- when basically none of the other bolts on the bike are. Just seems futile considering the very minute savings.

All in all, 16.3 KG is not bad so far! but lots more to go (lighter wheels etc will help, plus stuff covered below)

 

[tortron]

Some lighter weight oil next Nathan?