Good progress this week

I got back from Valencia late on Friday afternoon after a 2.5 hour delay!!
I'd hoped to start building on Saturday, but my back was playing up again, so I had the weekend off, and was in a foul mood, by Sunday night, thinking I was going to loose another weeks building.

I'd booked this week off so was happy that my back felt better on Monday morning, and armed with sandwiches biscuits and tea,I made my way to the workshop.

I made good progress this week, especially with the extra help from Gavin.

The first job was to re-adjust the spacing of the rear wishbones before assembling the diff and drive shafts. For the time being, I'm going to leave the washers in place, and replace them with spacers, once the suspension geometry is set up.

I had to modify the hole positions for the diff mounting,  as 2 of them were slightly out of position.
Once the diff was bolted in, I realised that I should have connected the fuel pipes first, as there is not a lot of room under the diff. Luckily I managed to connect them without taking the diff out.

With the diff in place we started to assemble the rear drive shafts and hubs.
As I'd chosen to use the Willwood Sierra rear calipers, I had to mount their adaptor brackets. The brackets can be mounted both round both ways, but only one way works, so make sure the machined face is mounted against the bearing housing.

Once the uprights were assembled with the hubs and caliper brackets, they were re-assembled to the wishbones and the calipers were bolted on.

To complete the rear end the handbrake was drilled and bolted on, and the cables routed.

As I plan to duct the radiator hot air out of the nose cone, I had to move the rad forward from it's original mountings. This meant fabricating some new brackets.
At the moment I've mounted directly to the rad, but I've just ordered some rubber bobbins for the mounts, to minimise the vibration into the Ali Rad.


Trial fitting brackets.



Next job is to set the steering position and get the column cut to length. This involved sitting in the seat and getting the a comfortable driving position, whist the positions were marked by Gavin.



I was happier than I look...honest !!

Once the steering column was positioned, I could start fitting the body.

The tub was riveted from underneath, but the top was left to allow for aligning the scuttle bonnet and nose.

The position for the steering column was marked on the scuttle, then slots cut to clear the column. I wanted to have slots, so that I can remove the scuttle without having to remove the column. I can finish the slots with a small bezel.

Next was to fit the nose, and check the bonnet length to ensure the scuttle position.

Everything aligned great. This is one of MNR's strong points, the body fitment and alignment is second to none.



Where's Gavin? Look carefully, he's the one in the Rusky hat!!



So this weeks finished on a high, I feel like I'm getting there, and once Xmas is over, I can finish fixing the body, then start to think about fitting the Engine :-)

Have a Great Christmas everyone, and a Happy New Year.

Back building

Finally back building after 3 weeks off with my back problem. Lost a lot of time, so I'm going to be busy in my week off before Christmas.
The snow also hampered all my deliveries, most of the stuff turned up within a couple of days of the snow stopping, was like Christmas coming early.

So this weekend consisted of Christmas shopping on Saturday and a good day down the workshop on Sunday.

Jobs completed this week:

Pedal box fitted. Spent a lot of time getting the clutch cable routing right and checked the efforts. There's been a lot of comments about how heavy the clutch is on the CBR1000, but the 08 model doesn't seem any heavier than my old R1 so I think i'll stay with the cable, rather than going to a hydraulic clutch. I hope I don't come to regret this !!!!

Next job was rebuilding the diff. I must say a big thank you to my Uncle Tony for fitting the new bearings to the diff and carriers, while I was incapacitated.
The first time I tried to set the diff clearances, I had a tight spot which was probably down to some muck between the diff and crown wheel, so I had to pull it out again and take the crown wheel off, clean it and bolt it back up. With this done, I managed to get the clearances set and bolt it all back together.
With a fresh coat of paint, its ready to go in.

Whilst I was working on the Diff, Gavin was fitting my newly acquired extinguisher. He's getting good at laying under the car drilling holes ;-). Cheers Gav.

I was considering using twin pot willwood brakes on the rear, and fabricating a handbrake mechanism off the Diff, but decided to go with the simpler route of Powerlite calipers with the handbrake cable attached, it's more expensive, but I haven't got the time to mess around anymore, and I prefer the idea of having a proper hand brake, should there be any problems with the hydraulics.
One job that was needed with fitting the Powerlite rears, was to machine down the hubs to fit inside the 240 dia discs. I managed to do this in a machine shop we use at work, they let me use one of their Lathes. A big thank you to ASE for this, and I'm sure I'll be back for more at some point.

Going to bed now, I've got a 6.10 flight to Valencia in the morning, got to get up at 3am ouch!!!