The next race bike | Page 6 | GTAMotorcycle.com

The next race bike

Brian,

I'm very interested in the air/fuel gauge portion of this project. Where exactly are you hooking it up to on the throttle bodies? How accurate will it be? I'm assuming you will be using it to check against the inputs on the PC map. Are you customizing your own map(s)?
 
Brian,

I'm very interested in the air/fuel gauge portion of this project. Where exactly are you hooking it up to on the throttle bodies? How accurate will it be? I'm assuming you will be using it to check against the inputs on the PC map. Are you customizing your own map(s)?

O2 sensor goes in the exhaust manifold, normally after the pipes from individual cylinders combine. If you are really going to the bleeding edge, you could try and put one in each header, but most people don't do this.

To help the sensor last longer, you want it angled so condensation will drain out of it. In practice that means the body of the sensor is placed almost horizontal in most applications as there isn't room above the pipe to accommodate the sensor placed vertically.
 
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O2 sensor goes in the exhaust manifold, normally after the pipes from individual cylinders combine. If you are really going to the bleeding edge, you could try and put one in each header, but most people don't do this.

To help the sensor last longer, you want it angled so condensation will drain out of it. In practice that means the body of the sensor is placed almost horizontal in most applications as there isn't room above the pipe to accommodate the sensor placed vertically.

I don't think he is talking about an o2 sensor. If this was the case, he could have just bought the auto tune device for the PVC
 
Should have held out for the ninja 400.

God its beautiful!

https://www.rideapart.com/articles/269385/yamahas-new-2019-yzf-r3-is-both-radical-and-adorable/


sdXUVGR.jpg

here; fixed that for you. wink.
 
Same wideband O2 (lambda) sensor for a gauge or for an autotune device. The difference was ... I already had the gauge. Might as well use it.

The new R3 appears to be more or less the same under the skin as the old one. Same engine. Inverted forks but they are smaller diameter. The ergonomic changes on the street bike are academic on a race bike where you end up installing new bars and footpegs anyhow. The cosmetic changes don't mean anything to me. I'm fine with having bought the old one at half the price of what this new one will be ...

On a related note, I saw on facebook that Snow City Cycle has a number of outgoing model R3s that they are blowing out in advance of the new model. $4k for a new noncurrent one. That is a good deal.
 
I just read the article.

I like the appearance; they've fixed some awkward aspects of the old model's styling.

I don't like the bar graph tachometer. Give me a pointer on a dial (like the old one) any day.

Stock handlebars still look way high, and it appears that there is fairing clearance to lower them, BUT ... It looks to me like the newfangled upper triple clamp that they brag about is one piece with the handlebars. Ugh. (KTM RC390 is also like this.) Thanks for making life miserable (or making people buy a whole new different, aftermarket upper triple clamp) if you don't like the stock handlebar position ... and heaven help if you crash it.

Meh. I'll take what I've got.
 
here; fixed that for you. wink.

Ninja doesn't hold a candle to this in the looks department.

But you'll be happy to hear the '19 ZX6R took the lights from the 400!
 
Handlebars - the ones I wanted in the first place - are installed and there is no issue with clearance. I can see where the brake line fitting could hit the instrument cluster if it had full steering travel available and the instrument cluster was in the stock location ... but as it stands, there is plenty of clearance.

Front brake line is installed and I bled the brake.

I still need to make a bracket to install the air/fuel gauge.

Up next, do some cleaning, replace the spring clamps at the radiator hoses with gear clamps, fill the cooling system, run it up to operating temperature and check for leaks, oil change in conjunction with installing a drain plug drilled for safety wire, install said safety wire, install engine guards.
 
Photobucket kicked the bucket. They're on facebook ...

Air/fuel ratio gauge is installed.
 
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Spent an hour doing a bunch of easy odds and ends. Cleaned the engine. Replaced spring clamps on the radiator hoses with gear clamps (which are possible to safety wire). Test ran it for a few minutes in the driveway. It definitely needs some tuning; no load is way rich (11 - 12:1) up to about 7000 rpm then it steps to 13 and change. Throttle response seems good, though. Then I changed the oil ... it had recently been done by the previous owner, but whatever was in there, was not resistant to foaming. In the process, I installed a magnetic drain plug drilled for safety wire, and drilled the oil filler cap and the radiator cap for safety wire. I installed the GB Racing engine covers.

The next task is safety wire. After that ... bodywork. Tuning may have to wait for better weather.
 
Spent an hour doing a bunch of easy odds and ends. Cleaned the engine. Replaced spring clamps on the radiator hoses with gear clamps (which are possible to safety wire). Test ran it for a few minutes in the driveway. It definitely needs some tuning; no load is way rich (11 - 12:1) up to about 7000 rpm then it steps to 13 and change. Throttle response seems good, though. Then I changed the oil ... it had recently been done by the previous owner, but whatever was in there, was not resistant to foaming. In the process, I installed a magnetic drain plug drilled for safety wire, and drilled the oil filler cap and the radiator cap for safety wire. I installed the GB Racing engine covers.

The next task is safety wire. After that ... bodywork. Tuning may have to wait for better weather.

Hey Brian - your project is proceeding pretty quickly; fantastic R3 build. and no spring rush for you.

In regards to the motor oil foaming, I've never had sttreet bike oil foam on me. I have seen dirtbikes with foaming oil- it was always water in the oil. Do you think maybe there is a possibilty some water got in the oil? or maybe the oil was over filled by previous owner? A look/see show any oil in the air box?
 
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It's possible that there was a tiny bit of water in the oil. The water pump outlet goes through the clutch cover gasket on these. When I had the clutch cover off, I had drained the cooling system, but probably a little bit of coolant was hiding in there waiting for me to take the cover off, and then it can't help but drip into the engine the moment you break the seal. I changed the oil afterward, so it isn't an issue any more.
 
Worked last Sunday ... off today. I retorqued the bolts for the clutch cover. I took the bike out onto the driveway, and hooked up the laptop. I enabled the quickshifter and took a first crack at mapping the near shut throttle part of the map. The rest of it will have to wait. There is no evidence of leakage from the clutch cover.

I also started putting bits of bodywork on. Front fender went without issue. Fuel tank cover is stock, so that's not an issue. The tail section is a royal pain. I'm going to move the Power Commander on top of the battery so that I shouldn't ever have to take the tail section off once it's on.
 
Crap weather = working on the bike. It is almost done! Safety wiring is mostly done. All bodywork except the belly pan has been fitted. I need to pick up a few fasteners to finish installing a couple of the trim panels for which the original fasteners won't fit. The belly pan is incompatible with the side stand, and the bracket for the side stand also includes a bodywork mount, so fitting the belly pan is a bigger job than it looks (but so is fitting all of the bodywork for the first time in general).

Still to do:
get two M5x16 hex head screws, nuts, and washers for the trim panels
remove the side stand
fabricate a new belly pan mount
get a rear sprocket (stock is 43 teeth, I will get 46 and 47 tooth sprockets)
get a new chain (the stock one will be too short to allow the above bigger rear sprockets to be installed
tires ... when the new Q4 becomes available in the right sizes
tuning
graphics
 
For the belly pan, we ran all season with no bracket on the left rear side. Two DZUS fasteners on each side to the upper and then the stock mounting point on the back right. Belly pan was solid that way.
One thing to be aware of. The side stand bracket is held on by an engine mount. When you remove the sidestand mount the bolt is too long so you need to add a couple of washers to fill in the gap. There is a company that makes a bracket but we never bother with it.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk
 
It's a track bike now, I took the side stand off. Turns out that the Flexiglass belly pan only has a designed in mounting point on the right rear anyhow. I also fixed the trim panel fastener situation.
 
Someone reminded me that I forgot to update this. The bike is basically good to go except for tires and tuning. Bodywork - Done. Side stand - Gone. 47 tooth rear sprocket and new chain - Done.

A few weeks ago, we took the bike off the hoist and checked front and rear rider-aboard sag with the Ohlins bits "as received" for the shock and at their recommended initial settings for the forks with the exception that I put in 10mm higher fork oil level because I have a funny feeling that the Ohlins recommended fork springs will be a bit too soft. 25mm sag front and rear without adjusting anything. For now, good enough.

After some measurements and calculations, I adjusted the shock ride height adjuster to get the swingarm pivot height close to where I want it to be for an initial setting (which is a fair bit higher than stock). I have also dropped the footpeg brackets down to the lower setting ... eyeballing the bike when it is on the hoist suggests that it will still have plenty of cornering clearance. Handlebar positions were fiddled with to get them where I want them.
 
I'm getting racetrack withdrawal, especially after watching World Superbike from Phillip Island over this weekend (I bought the Videopass).

Over the last three months ... I bought a longer muffler to replace the one that was on there before, which was scientifically chosen by being the one that came with the bike. I wanted to keep it quiet for Jennings, but a trip down south was not in the cards this spring, it will help for Calabogie as well. In conjunction with installing that, I took out the "oxygen sensor optimizer" plug that came with the PowerCommander, presumably to keep the MIL fault warning lamp off, because I suspect the ECU was trying to go into closed loop with that plugged in, leading to inconsistent operation. Leaving it unplugged theoretically should force it to stay in open loop. Today I decided to test that theory, and it seems to be borne out. No-load air/fuel ratio now behaves predictably, and it is now tune-able.
 
Details. Steel tire valve caps. Transponder bracket. Set the shift light to 11,500 rpm and set the clock (don't really need it, but it's there, so why not). Put in a few litres of the fuel that I'm planning to use (nothing special, PetroCanada 94). Fiddled with the no-load part of the PowerCommander map a bit more. First scheduled practice day is 20 April at Shannonville.
 

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