Overandout

A quick and dull update (no photos I'm afraid):

So my lengthened forks are now together and I'm on the hunt for some heavier weight fork oil. Standard oil for these forks is rumoured to be 5w or 10w, depending on where you are reading, but the stuff that came out was like water, so I'm going to try 20w and see how it goes.

Having had the top yoke prepared and the forks now built, I thought a trial fit of the front end was in order. I had, however totally forgotten that, although the steering stem diameters and threads are the same between the Zoomer X and the CBR, the Zoomer stem is much longer and could not be used to fit the botton yole in the CBR frame....

So off to the machine shop again to see if they could remove the CBR stem from the yoke, and transplant it onto the Zoomer yoke.... I am picking it up on Friday.

I also ordered a Zoomer X speedo drive for the front wheel which is required due the fact that the Zoomer forks require the caliper and disc to be mounted on the left and the speedo drive on the right.

If I am very, very lucky, the gear ratio will be close enough to give a reasonable speedo reading and the front spindle will not need any more spacers engineered to fit the NSR wheel in the Zoomer forks.

I am not counting on much luck with this project though !!

Only parts involved with valve adjustments are the shims (or the replacement gasket ). 200 Baht won't buy many shims so I expect it will just be one or two exhaust valves needing doing.

Batteries do deteriorate fast here. Mine tend to last about 3 years.

The batteries over here are not the best quality. Usually they die every year. If it's a good one maybe 2 year, but that's all

Haven't read all this thread, but yesterday I bought an FB brand battery for my Granvia and it came with a 2 yr warranty. Not sure how easy it would be to claim on it but I wouldn't buy a battery that only gives 12 months when 24 months are available.

Well, despite the nay-sayers, the responses (or the vast majority of them) have been very useful to me. So thanks to all.

I will go to the doctor,simply because of the wide range of stuff that could be happening.

You have also made me get my problem into perspective and think about things other than simply "how much food" and am I about to die?

I'll let you know what the real doctors say!!

Cheer's.

Will miss the races from Assen as will be in flight.

Never mind.

Looks like I'll miss them too as my Truevisions has packed up.... Hope the technician turns up this morning ....

On the plus side, I have bought tickets to the Malaysia round !!

Actually, I have just doen a BMI calculation and I get 18.333, accepted ideal seems to be between 18.5 and 25. So I am not "way too thin", just a bit under the recommended minimum. 1Kg more and I would be "in range"...

Same thing with a frie d of mine.....then he started to. get weak. Went to the hospital and they did a work up on him. three days of tests. Nothing.

Then a month later he gave birth to a 6 m tapeworm.

Nice!... no other symptoms?

55 kg: The question is how tall you are and if you are male or female.

(a big difference if you are 1.75 male (way too thin) or a 1.60 woman (not really thin))

Try to write down for a week what you in total. Some thin people believe they eat a lot, but in fact they don't eat much while some fat people think they almost eat nothing (who was it who claimed to doesn't loose weight at 700 kcal per day?) but in fact they eat a lot more than they believe themself.

Unfortunately you are almost bang on with your first example.. male, about 1.73m

Good idea about the food log, but how do you estimate calories intake? Its difficult to know the weight of the portions.

Firstly a few disclaimers:

This is not a thread for the "I'm too fat forum".

I have done some searches, but all results on weight are from the "I'm too fat forum".

I am not gloating or trying to upset people who are trying to lose weight, I am genuinely concerned about my own health.

So, I moved to Thailand two years ago. I have never been a fat lad, and have a fast metabolism (I can eat until I feel stuffed, but still be hungry 3 hours later).

When I arrived here I weighed about 61 kg. After a year I had lost 3 Kg. Yesterday I weighed myself and I am down to 55 Kg.

Thats over 5 kg (nearly 10%) in 24 months. If I carry on at this rate I will vanish!

I eat a balanced diet, meat, carbs, veg, fruit etc. and I try to eat decent quantities (although at lunch time in the Thai establishments near work that is tricky).

I am beginning to notice that I have lower physical stamina and I am worried that I am becoming more at risk to illnes due to my low weight.

What can / should I do?

Wait, you're thinking of lending your legal bike to someone with no license to ride in Thailand?

Hey. Your the expert. You believe what you like.

I have a City and Guilds in Motorcycle mechanics. 3 years experience of working in a bike shop as a mechanic. Along with over 30 years spannering experience on motorcycles in the UK.

I know for a fact what happens in bike shops here. They don't change the rocker cover gasket unless it needs it or the customer has expressly asked for it.

But of course your in Thailand, the bike shop was fully kitted out with Snap on roll cabs and flank drive sockets. They are the experts. Far better than the average monkey mechanics you will find in England.

I don't understand what you are getting at here.

Of course the Thai garages probably don't follow the procedures in the service manuals. That's why I am saying that if they are not invoicing for parts that probably should be changed in the service, it probably indicates that they are not to be trusted to have done the work they claim.

I am no more of an expert than you, but I am giving practical advice to the OP, not "showing off about my own "abilities".

The fact that you have a C&G and some professional experience doesn't change what an official service center should or shouldn't do according to manufacturer's service schedule. You of all people should know that.

http://driving.information.in.th/license-plates.html and http://us.wow.com/wiki/Thai_vehicle_license_plates too much to write about.

This is useful, but it doesn't confirm if any of the scare mongering on here about non-Thais not being able to own certain plated vehicles, or that they are not allowed in the right hand lane of the highway are true.

I don't really care as I have driven over 10,000 kms in my van with blue lettered plates, normal speeds, whatever lane and no bother at all.

But it would be nice to know if I am breaking the law (again...) with any of my driving!

Or perhaps even by owning it in the first place !!

Wow, how many farangs did he have to "fine" to be able to afford that?

I'm not familiar with this particular model, but with many bikes, the valve cover gasket should only be reused if the valve cover is removed within a short period of time or kms after a new one was fitted.

Assuming that your gasket was the original, its a good bet that the Honda service schedule states that a new gasket should be used at the 24,000 kms service.

So, if your invoice doesn't list a new gasket, I would be asking why.

Sorry but I will have to disagree, some rocker cover gaskets are rubber, they do not need to be replaced. Not sure about this engine. However a rocker cover gasket is not subject to the same conditions as a head gasket and can often be reused.

Firstly, I said "some valve cover gaskets". I have no idea if this bike has a rubber gasket set on the valve cover or not, but most modern Japanese in line 4 motors do.

Secondly, if you think that rubber valve cover gaskets don't need replacing then you've got a lot to learn about mechanics.

Here is a quote from my last big bike's service manual (for a Suzuki GSXR 750 y - K3) in the section "Periodic Maintenance" - "Valve clearance" which is due at 24,000 kms and had a rubber profiled valve cover gasket.

Reinstall Cylider Head Cover:

* Pour engine oil in each oil pocket of the cylinder head

* Install the dowel pins

* Install the O rings

* Install new gaskets to the cylinder head cover

* Apply SUZUKI BOND B to the cam end caps of the gaskets as shown

CAUTION USE NEW GASKETS TO PREVENT OIL LEAKS

So, if I had ever taken my GSXR to a Suzuki dealer for this work I would fully expect them to follow the service manual faithfully and charge me for the new gaskets (plural because the 4 end caps are also classed as gaskets).

Whether you would change them is obviously questionable, but I was giving advice to the OP about how an authorised dealer should do a proper job.

Sorry if being correct offends you.

You could always dig a hole next to the bike and work standing in the hole....

Sorry.

So let me get this clear, are we talking about "modified bikes" or simply bikes with loud exhausts?

There is quite a difference. I'd imagine that even the dumbest of officers can tell when a bike has an aftre market illegal exhaust, but how will the know if the cdi has been reprogrammed or the front forks changed?

What about Zoomers with 17" wheel kits? Larger brake discs with caliper brackets?

Where do they draw the line?

When they cracked down in Spain on the EU laws of Type Approval, they went mental. One guy I knew in a classic car club couldn't get his car through the "MoT" (even though it had been legally on the road for the last 25 or 26 years) because the car had a sunroof which wasn't recorded on the documentation. This meant, by SPanish bureaucratic logic, that it must have been added afterwards and therefore needed an engineer's certificate for the installation, but no engineer would give him one because they hadn't done the work and it was obviously a factory sunroof.

I'm not suggesting that Thailand will ever get to the ridiculous levels of EU ubercontrol, but how is a Thai cop qualified to decide if my bike is modified or not?

Well I certainly support the "when in Rome" argument.

Before I arrived in Thailand I would never have ridden the way I do here, and I still don't jump red lights (unless turning left) or lane split at high speed, but I have taken to ignoring pedestrian crossings, overtaking on the near-side and giving way to larger vehicles regardless of who is "in the right".

Seems to work for me.

I bought one of my bikes from a farang that had left the country. He left me a stack of papers and the green book.

When I went to put it in my name my name, I went to get help from a local shop as it needed a puncture fixed, inspection and insurance too.

Turns out that it was never in the previous owner's name, it had been three years since he bought it, but he did have the copy of the Thai ID and PoA of the last registered owner. The people in the shop started pointing at dates and talking to me in Thai but I had no clue what was going on. I guess they were telling me that some of the documents were out of date.

I just asked "how much?" a few times and eventually they said 2,000 baht. So I said OK, 1,000 now, 1,000 when I get the papers in my name. They told me to come back in two weeks!

I did and they had the green book in my name. Sorted.

I have no idea how they did it, and I don't care. I'm sure 2,00 baht was too much, but I certainly get the feeling that if I'd tried to do it myself it would have caused more than 2,000 baht's worth of stress and time!

I'm still here!

Marquez panics, yet again.... He is clearly not able to measure his own limits is he?

So this is a Zoomer fork.

These are not cartridge forks like most USD forks, they are "damper rod" forks, where the damper rod screws into the fork cap and the spring sits inside the lower fork tube and is compressed by the damper rod.

So to make the fork longer, I needed to extend the damper rod. To do this I decided to just use a longer bolt than the original, and sleeve that bolt with steel tube with the same outside diameter as the damper rod.

The difference in fork length to the original CBR forks is just under 8cms, so I bought some 10cm long bolts of the right head and thread size so that I could later cut them down, and had pair of sleeves made 8cm long by a machine shop.

Unfortunately, on the first trial fit, it became apparent that this would extend the lower tube too far out of the upper tube, causing the fork seal to run off the hard-chromed area onto mild steel. Not good.

So I cut the sleeves down to 6cm. This is as much as I can extend the forks, so even though they will be much closer to the original CBR forks' length, they will still be about 2cm shorter. Never mind, if its too low I'll have to re-spring the forks.

Then I had to lengthen the bump stop, which originally butted up against the inside of the fork stop. Using some old handlebars and aluminium parts, I made some sleeves to go round the extended damper rod for the bump stops to butt up against (the need a clean up because of the glue and paint on the handlebars!)

So the Zoomer forks will now be pretty close to the original CBR forks' length.. (2nd from the left)

I also cleaned the frame with petrol to get rid of all the old grease and chain lube... opinion on whether this was a good idea to do on the balcony was divided in my household:!

Im love this one-off project . Fantastic to see an engineer coming up with such intresting solutions to problems faced by everyone who embarks on a custom project . It matters not what bike , or its size , or its value . Your making a work of art .

Thanks for the compliments !!

I agree that it's the process of doing it that gives the satisfaction, the final result is just the end.

Sometimes I think about how much I'm spending and realise that I could buy a top condition NSR SP for the money, which, ultimately would be a better bike than I will end up with, but where's the fun in that?

One thing though... I'm no engineer! (I work in Contracts and Legal), this is just a hobby.

Sandpaper for the frame number. Sandpaper again for the bolt holes. Fold a small piece of sandpaper into a length of wire. Insert the wire into a drill motor chuck and sand the hole out.

I think ata Thai Watsadu, I saw fine grit sand paper around 40,000 to 50,000 grit. If you finish it up with that, I'd say any polishing compound would clean it up nicely. Gonna take time though.

You don't want to be rotary sanding threaded bolt holes in a frame, you'll ruin the threads.

The only way to clean those out is with a tap of the right thread size. Should cut through powder coat quite easily.

Here is the swing arm with the original NSR pivot bushes and spacers, as you can see, only about 3mm can come off this...

So here is the swing arm with the reduced spacer for the pivot. Quite happy with that really considering I did it at home:

Then I had to enlarge the pivot hole in the frame.

First I filled the original holes with epoxy putty, and drilled a small pilot hole in it when set:

Then a 15mm steel hole cutter with a low speed drill and lots of water for cooling....

Took me about 4 hours to do both sides, but the result is a clean centered 15mm hole for the NSR pivot bolt to go through!!

So with the swing arm ready to go into the modified frame, it was time to turn my attention to the front end.

The first problem was that I couldn't use the "top hat" extenders that came on the USD forks of the donor bike on the Zoomer forks, which meant that, as the top yoke from the CBR would no longer grip onto a reduced diameter tube, it could not be used. I have to use the Zoomer top yoke, but that has bar risers / clamps but I want to keep with clip-ons...

So here is the yoke after removing the risers:

Happy with that too, but it cost me 400 Baht for the machine work.

So now to the forks...

As you can see, the original CBR forks are quite long (on the left, black "right way up" fork), the USD forks which were fitted to the donor bike were a few cms shorter (center, USD fork with reduced diameter adapter at the top), but the Zoomer forks are shorter still (on the right)... and as the "top hat" that you can see on the donor forks cannot be transferred, I need to come up with a way of lengthening the Zoomer forks to somewhere close to the original forks' length.

A trial bulid of an extended Zoomer fork should be complete this weekend.....

Its not clear from your post if you have a frame that you will use as a base, or if you expect the fabricator to make it from sratch. I'm thinking that this would be quite a difference.

I am using a local machine shop for fabrication / modification of small parts for my project, but it's mainly milling / grinding / boring and cutting. No welding.

Quality is good so far, but they are in Bangkok and I'm really not sure if they are suitable for what you want. They are not a custom bike company, just a small machine shop.

If you want details I will share them, one of the guys there speaks enough English so that, with sketches, I get what I want.

My understanding is that they are designed to compensate the long queuing time that the driver has to endure before picking up the fare. The theory is that if he were in the city he would be productive during that time.

Seems fair to me.

Just a small increase not too much 25 bt for normal and 45 bt extra for the bigger ones. I am sure the taxi drivers wanted more. This is acceptable for sure for tourists. Now they must only make sure that they always open their meter and get suspended right away when a tourist is ripped off by them.

But I do not get why there should be one to start with.

Taxi's do not make enough, they are not forced or required to go looking for customers at the airport .

I do not think I have seen other places where taxi had a surcharge of any kind because it was airport

Well, they do exist in other places, Madrid for example.