Prep & Mods (10/96)

Prep & Mods
10/96

Maintenance prep done this month:

	The throttle was getting a bit sticky, so I disassembled it and lubed it and the cable w/silicone spray

	Cleaned & re-oiled the K&N air filter. The white lithium grease that I applied inside the air box attracted all kinds of pebbles, sticks, and rubber boogers from the front tire. Need to start cleaning the filter every other month.

Mods made this month included installing the Yoshimira Zyclone pipe off my street F2, a Factory Pro shift kit and a Daytona / TBR race steering damper.

The Yosh pipe was a no-brainer - new exhaust gaskets for the header & bolt it up. It should be good for a little more top end and let the engine rev a bit quicker.

I put the shift kit in in hopes of improving my upshift / missed down shift problems. While I haven't had a missed downshift since and shifting is much more pronounced (CLUNK), but I still have problems w/upshifting into third & six under a full head of steam.

Installation of the shift kit on an F2 is a real pain in the ass! The clutch basket has to come out - not a big deal until I found out that you're supposed to have a special Honda tool to hold the basket in place while removing the nut. Honda doesn't sell the tool any longer, and after an aborted attempt using Motion Pro's 'generic' clutch holder (during which I broke the clutch basket!), I called on the Race Mailing List for help. The best suggestion was to put the bike in six gear and put a 2x4 through the rear rim, step on the rear brake and take the nut off. Worked like a charm.

The Factory Pro shift kit consists of a new detent arm and a stronger spring. The spring is A LOT stronger than the stock one! The trick to installing it was to loosely install the detent arm / spring assembly, then use a screw driver to pry the detent arm up on top of the star gear while tightening the bolt that holds it all in place.

The Daytona / TBR steering damper went on next. The nice thing about the design of this unit is it mounts in front of the forks, eliminating the chance of damaging the unit if the bike goes down on its side. The down side is the loss of about 3/16" of steering travel to either side. I modified the steering stops to pick up the loss of travel by drilling holes in them and using hex-head bolts with nylon nuts. I purposely ate up another 1/16" of travel as a safety margin with this mod. The only problem with losing that much travel is the slow-spee stuff like moving around the shop or pulling a U-turn in the pits (don't ask how I found this out). It hasn't been a problem out on the track - you never crank the bars that far over.

I rotated the Auto Meter tach to put the 11k - 13k range at the 12:00 position. It proved much easier to see this critical rev range through peripheral vision in this position.

Lastly, I drilled and safety wired the ignition cover in place. The guy in the pits next to us at last month's race lost his coming around T4 and spilled oil all over the place.

Bob