Life has thrown quite a bit of stuff my way over the last few months and with what looks like an fall chill setting in, I decided to pack it in early this year. The down time has given me time to do some stuff on the bike and generally shift focus from maintaining a ridable machine to adding on major components for next year .
First thing I did was try to sort out the F-Hot carbon fiber intake tubes. Like I mentioned before, the F-Hot tubes really don't work too well with standard CV carbs and standard airbox.
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| Definately going to leak air here ... shop towels wedged behind the tubes for visibility |
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| Tubes don't quite make contact with the airbox resulting in leaks all over the place |
I'm not quite ready to reinstall my FCRs yet so in the mean time
something must be done to seal up the massive gaps between the tubes and
the airbox. I went down the home depot and got myself a roll of weather stripping foam; the thickest one I could find.
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| This stuff is supposed to be good enough to seal my windows so an airbox should be a cake walk (never understood that expression) |
The weather stripping material basically replaced the factory rubber seals around the airbox intake. One strip on the inside and one strip on the outside creates a very tight seal. Looks decent too.
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| One strip taped to the inside of the opening ... |
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| ... and another one around the outside of the opening ... |
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| ... creats a tight and handsome looking seal ... |
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| Much better |
Another 'leak' that I discovered with the F-Hot tubes was in the front where the tubes meet the mesh grille. The standard grille and rubber fitting is a little more 'round' on the outside where the F-Hot tubes are a little 'flat'... if that makes any sense.
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| Holy fitting issues Batman! |
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| A gap large enough to fit an average sized school bus |
To remedy this, I basically taped the ducts to the rubber pieces that join the intake tubes to the front fairing. Not the most elegant solution but it doesn't look half bad and solves the problem. I didn't take a direct photo of it but you can see the fix in some pictures below.
So while that pretty much wraps up the intake tube installation, the biggest project (and one that is yet to be completed) is the front end upgrade. I've been collecting parts for this all year long (wheels, forks, brake master cylinder etc. etc.) and just last week, I finally got the critical component I had been waiting for! Dan's custom triple clamps!
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| Really no need for captions... the pictures speak for how gorgeous these are |
Dan makes custom triple clamps specifically for the ZX7. He has one version that uses standard forks and another that will adapt a ZX10 front end to a ZX7. Luckily for me, I just happen to have a set of ZX10 Ohlins forks and OZ rims! Yay!
The pictures speak for themselves, but these triples are absolutely gorgeous! The only visible fault is some tool chatter marks in the middle of the bottom triple and a tiny bit of chatter at the bottom of the top triple. This certainly isn't representative of Dan's work since he cut these up for me in a hurry while he was moving his shop. When he gets settled down we'll figure out what to do about these chatter marks.
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| Chatter marks; only blemish on this otherwise brilliant piece. |
So fitting the front end is pretty simple. First the bike had to be stripped down of course
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| Getting Naked |
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| Getting Naked |
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| Forks out |
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| Forks out |
Now at this point the old triples had to come out which is a bit of a problem because without wheels or forks, the only thing supporting the front end is the front stand.... which is plugged into the old triples.
I resorted to using two hydraulic jacks to hold the bike up while the front stand was removed. If I had bothere to remove the exhaust I probably could have gotten away with using just one.
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| Jacking up the bike while the front stand is removed is by far the most nervous part of the install. |
Another difficulty with this install is removing the old bottom bearing from the steering stem. Luckily I had an All Balls steering bearing kit lying around that was advertised as a direct replacement for the ZX7RR N1.
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| The All Balls bearing is on the left. The OEM is on the right |
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| While the bearings may have been close in dimension, the races definately were not! |
Since I didn't plan on riding my bike until next spring, I figured using the All Balls bearings temporarily would be okay. Dunno when I'll be able to press the OEM ones out... hopefully soon.
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| Bearing grease courtesy of George |
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| The All Balls dust seal is considerably smaller than OEM... not great. I'll have to order an OEM one |
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| New bearing hammered into place |
With my temporary bearing situation figured out, I slapped my triples on and slid my forks in.
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| Looks good! |
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| mmmmm... looking more business-like |
Although the triples look great, there are a few areas of concern. The bottom of steering head is spaced very close to the bottom triple; there's a gap of about 0.15mm. Maybe this is due to the stupid All Balls bearings. There's also a chance that a small clearance isn't even an issue. Hard to tell without riding the bike thou.
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| With the triples fully installed, there is very little clearance between the bottom of the head stock and the triple ... won't know if this is an issue until I ride the bike |
Another issue I noticed was that the steering stem doesn't become flush with the top triple like I thought it would. Once again, maybe not an issue. For all I know it's not supposed to be flush.
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| The steering stem sits a little deeper into the top triple that I'd like to see... |
The last issue was that the ignition barrel mount couldn't be monted due to contact with the dust steering column dust cover. From what I understand, the ZX7RR N has a lager steering column than the ZX7R P so the vast majority of ZX7 owners shouldn't have this problem.
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| Ignition barrel mount doesn't quite clear the black dust cover |
Before I mounted everything I did a quick weight comparison between the OEM stuff I took off and the new stuff I put on:
OEM forks + triples = 25lbs
OEM front wheel + rotors + tire + spacers = 30lbs
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Total = 55lbs
Ohlins forks + custom triples = 22lbs
OZ wheels + rotors + tire + spacers = 25lbs
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Total = 47lbs
So far the front end swap has saved 8 pounds, at least 5 of which is unsprung weight from the wheels!
Nice!
So that's it for now. Clipons and calipers are next! Here are some more shots of the forks and junk.
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