Why hello again everyone, been awhile.
Since then, I've moved up north, the CBX got running, and had about 3,000 miles put on it, including a few trackdays. I got a functional trailtech Voyager unit, Magura hydraulic clutch conversion (the OEM one was a bear), as well as a couple of other mods.
The geometry was slightly off, but not enough to slow us down too much. The real issue is we discovered that it was still burning a bit more oil than I expected after break in and heat cycling, and there were some persistent oil leaks. After pulling the bike apart, I discovered that my compression numbers were ~175/125/170/175/185/180. Unfortunately, I noticed that one of the rings was different, although it still spec'd out okay, and I think I ended up with a bad oil control ring on the #2 cylinder. Because it is running an Ontario big bore kit, I think I'm going to need to ship the whole head + #2 piston off to someone to have custom rings made for it. Frustrating, because without that one thing it would have just been chasing down the oil issues. I've reached out to Brent Hyde in the hope that I can get a set of the manual cam chain tensioners, as the ones that are in there are in pretty rough shape. I could do my own designs, but time is tough to come by.
Obligatory photo:
I've had a few other fun projects in the meantime - aircooled ducati in a superbike frame:
In action:
Titanium exhaust assembly for my Duke 890 Trackbike:
In action with the previous exhaust:
Some mods to my 890 Adventure R:
Electric dirtbike with a 6 speed transmission / clutch:
Custom light assembly for friend's 790:
Building a 350 rally bike for the COTAH rally:
GasGas with a motor swap and custom carbon frame spars for endurance minimoto racing:
But back to the CBX:
Plans are - Tear down the motor, get proper rings made for the #2 cylinder, clean everything up once again (sorry Nils, if you see this, your gorgeous vapor blasting work got filthy, sigh), reinstall the heads with the fresh rings, upgraded cam chain tensioners, check / adjust the valves, drop the motor back into the frame. Probably ride it for a bit, then tear it down again to redo 100% of the electrical, fix the gauges, paint, powdercoat, custom triples to bring the geometry back to a more ideal range. I'll build a custom 6 into 6 for it, and I have access to a dyno now, so will be able to hopefully really dial in the fueling. I've been doing a good amount of experimentation with exhaust and header design, as well as reverse engineering the KTM 890 ECUs, so that + work has been filling a lot of my time but hey, given the state of the world, lucky to be doing all of the above.
Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season :)
impressive amount of work accomplished in only 6 months ...
A lot of people sure would enjoy and appreciate your hard work!
