Prep & Mods (thru 09/16/99)

Prep & Mods
thru 09/16/99

The time off between Loudon and the Laguna WSB weekend and between Laguna and Colorado afforded us the opportunity to crank up the development of the F4s and take care of some over-due maintenance jobs like refreshing the suspensions. Of course, we can't reveal all of the development mods, but here's the short list:

Clutch - the only problems we've had with the transmissions this year have been a spattering of false neutrals. To help cure this, we installed a Factory pro shift kit in my bike. The clutch had 2200 race miles over eight events and I was very surprised at the lack of wear. Some of the inner steel plates were a bit burned, but the friction plates were in great shape and the clutch basket had very little galling of the splines (unlike the older F2/F3 design that only lasted about half the season before needing replacement). Kudos to Honda for an excellent design on the F4. In addition to the shift kit, we installed heavy duty springs, and Cryolabs aluminim plates.

Throttle - searching for that little extra edge, we installed HRC quick twist throttles and switch gear. The HRC throttle has about 75 - 80 degrees of travel (stock has 90 degrees). Blipping the throttle between downshifts was easier and you don't have to crank it so far for those WFO runs. The throttle and switch gear were a near perfect fit - you have to drill a hole in the clip-on to locate the positioning tab on the switch and swap out one of the OEM connectors from the original switch.

Weight Reduction - removed the switch gear on the left clip-on, secondary air supply system, ignition switch, radiator fan, and finally trimmed off the rear upper fender. The choke cable was re-routed to one of the holes in the rear brake master cylinder mounting bracket and a jumper was inserted in the OEM connector to bypass the clutch switch. We made a mounting plate out of aluminum and installed an on / off switch (local hardware store) in place of the ignition switch.

Bob