Oulton Race Photo's

Just a few photo's from the Oulton race to show what the bike looks like in action.

Finished and Used!

Here we have it, the finished machine. It has taken alot of hard work and alot of help to get to this point and as we all know by now, there is alot of work still to come. I have just done my first race weekend in nearly a year on a bike I had never riden and at a circuit I had only ever walked round,(Oulton park is now level pagging with Cadwell in my race track league)however the innitial signs of the way the bike works are very good to say the least, power wise it kept with the much bigger mono's on track, handling wise all worked well but it does need a proper suspension setup, reliability seems to be good. Over the next few months I will be getting base settings for the suspension sorted and hopefully create an easy to use folder of technical info to aid with setup for the various tracks that I will be racing at. Other than this I am hopeing that just routine maintenance and tlc is all that is needed to keep the bike on track, fingers crossed as usual.




















A big thanks to Dave bennett (number 54) for the rear sprocket, thanks to Mat Newall for being my pit crew for the weekend and again thanks to Mark at DBR Race Engineering for the parts that made it all come together.

Keep watching this blog as racing is now first and foremost and I will be putting updates of my progress on here soon.

Engine, WORK!

Nearly there now, I left myself the most daunting task of building the engine till last but luckily it was not as bad a job as I was expecting. It all came apart a bit too easy really as when all was laying on the bench I thought "What have I done,I will never get this done in time" but as the following pictures show not only have I put it back together but I have managed to get some goodies inside too, I must say a big cheers to a local company called Holeshot Engineering near colchester, this guy knows all there is to know about bike engines and luckily pointed out a couple of previous mistakes made within my engine that has saved me time and effort in the future. Right, today is Saturday I will be putting engine in tomorrow morning and then do shims and run in on monday so as usual, staying true to the supermono way, the build will use all available time right upto the race. Watch this space as I will try to update with the final pictures from the build before I leave for the race on Thursday.

Finishing touches?

In build terms I am on the home straight, however this does appear to be a very long and technically demanding straight. The bike is now in my own workshop where I will obviously be spending every evening putting the finishing touches to the mighty CRF mono. A big thanks to Donk at DBR for the work on the bike as these were tasks that I do not have the machinery or for site to have tackled myself. The rearsets are now in place and bolted up, check out the pics.

The GP adjusters are now full functional. This makes changing wheels a two minute job,you just undo the spindle, pull it out and the wheel just sits there in a half cup affair. Loverly juberley.

I have also plumbed in a Brembo master cylinder to work the fabulous BSB Brembo caliper, this feels more like a switch than a brake lever so I am expecting to go over the bars first time out.

Last but not least I have attached a cone air filter for the time being until I find out what a Dyno run says about the air needs will be for the CRF.

You wait for ages, then two come along at once?!?!

Right what can I say except, SHTICKERS!! Things are now moving at a good rate of knots. Mark at DBR has milled me up a very nice mounting bracket for a very sexy Brembo caliper (ex British super bike of all things) so as to mount it correctly in line with the disc and to hopefully stop the bike quicker than a quick stopping thing, he will also be working his wizardry with the rear caliper and GP adjusters so to make the rear quick and easy to pull apart, you know the one, will it rain? will it dry? and then all of a sudden you have ten minutes to change wheels.... so a set of his famous adjuster/locator's are an obvious must. With all this being taken care of I have done a bit more to the body work, firstly finishing the spray job and lacquer, this wasn't without its problems as the first few coats reacted and had to be striped back with a blade then started again, after this dried I pulled out the various stickers that were to be applied, some a must for the series and some for parts I am using within the engine build. This I think is it for the time being but don't despair as the engine will be out next week for a complete going over and tune up so there will be lots to tell you all soon.

Fairing surgery.

Its been a fair while!

Now as you all may have noticed I have its been a fair while since I last updated the build blog. There is a good reason for this, I have started a new job and due to this time and money has been hard to come by but thanks to a very very nice man (you know who you are) the build is now back on track and should be done and ready to race at Oulton park on the 15/16Th of August.

You all remember the dilemma over wheels, don't you?well the original plan was to use CB500 wheels but after much ridicule and general weight orientated questions I decided that it would be a better idea to go for a light weight wheel, and due to the nature of the build (all Honda please) these would ideally be Honda rs125 wheels, Now I had many opportunities to get wheels but believe it or not you cant get two sets complete for less than £1k so after allot of head scratching and trying to sell everything I own I still had no where near enough money to buy them. But all looked lost for the build until a top bloke I know offered me two pairs buck shee! that's free that is. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and all that hey.

So now the wheels are away at a local race engineer being made to feel at home in my CRF chassis and I will put photos on when they are home again.

In the mean time please look at the piccies of my fairings that I am now blinging up by giving them a damn good lacquering and revamp, please not that the seat unit will be black and red in the end. well that's all for now folks. Fingers crossed please people!

Its been a fair while !

TANK UPDATE!

Right as you may have read on the previous post I bought a Tank Cover that was a bit,umm, shall we say different, so armed with my trusty grinder (my Dremel blew up) I set to work adapting the tank to fit better, lower and more like it was meant to be there.

As you can see in the pictures it was a not flowing with the frame.

Then after a bit of measuring, thinking, measuring and finally sod it!, I just attacked it, it started to look better straight away.

Note the gap between tank cover and radiator in the before and after picture.

Then came the cutting of the hole for the fuel cap, a steady hand and a keen eye is all that was needed. I took a deep breath and went for it with my hole cutter on my drill and it worked fine.

I will be locking the cap with an R-clip and lockwire set up.

All thats left to do is the mounting brackets that hopefull should be straight forward, fingers crossed

Shiney Stuff Arrived.

Some of the exciting engine componants have now arrived from the states. First came the race ignition (750rpm higher limiter plus 2-3hp accros rev range) then the Hot Rods heavy duty con rod arrived in a flash little display box all embosed with the logo next came the Wiseco piston kit, standard bore but slightly higher compresion ratio at 12.5:1 which I have been reliably informed is the right combination for 102 octane pump fuel ( keeping costs low,oh yes) and in the last two days a Hot Cam stage 2 arrived, again with flash packing and a wedge of stickers. The plan is to not tackle the engine mods until after I have sorted the chassis 100% but the force is strong from the shiney little toys oh yes the force is strong so strong. Picture wise you can reference to my earlier post and the original Ebay photo's.

Wow look! An Exhaust.

Now you all may have noticed that progress has been a little slow of late but here it is, the latest update to the CRF Supermono/450. It took a good 4 hours and alot of measure twice cut once but eventually it emerged all bleary-eyed and warm to the touch (from the welding you see) and it looks quite tidy I think. I have used a combination of componants for this particular mod but staying true to the original plan of using Honda parts I have managed to fabricate this exhaust using Honda 3 bolt flange and bends bought off the shelf. Cost wise the pipe work was less than £30 and I had a link pipe left over from a streetfighter Fireblade project so this was effectively 'buck shee', we like bargain modifications. Next on the list is to modify the severely oversized tank cover that arrived last week from Replicast. Now dont get me wrong the tank cover has been made to a very high standard and is even in Honda red but for some reason it's about the same size as my ZX6r tank which is far too big for my little race bike so the plan is to cut bits out to make it fit to the frame rather than hang over it and looking like it's for a different bike altogether. I will update pictures of the tank as I start the cutting, slashing, cutting, slashing haha, heeeaaars Jonny (music playing from psycho). woops sorry, its the voices, you here them too don't you?