A MiniTwin is Born

Originally Posted by Berlin

Had another session with a very hungover mechanic somewhere slightly north of manchester and we achieved results!

piff what ya on about man i let him of lightly i tell thee

His 1000 yard stare says different!

He worked through it valiantly though!
C

Top job lads

im impressed that hes had a tidy up in the garage as well! He must be serious

T minus 8 days to complete!

We're hoping to have it all together and running by a week on Monday (26th July). Problem is, I can't get down there with all the bits 'till a week today, so thats 48 hours to finish it. Its going to be a marathon session!

I've actually been practising putting each part on in my head so that I'll be quick enough on the day.

Only parts left to arrive are the front brake pads and the part for the Akrapovic exhaust. Everything else is now purchased and here.

There'll be a hell of a lot of photos by next Tuesday!

First outing is planned to be East Fortune on August 7th/8th.

C

Well, I hope I never have a weekend like that again! If it could have gone wrong, it did and then some.

As we left off the bike looked something like this...



I showed up with a van full of everything left to finish the project and have THE WONDERBUCKET purring by early sunday afternoon for a relaxing drive back to HQ to stick some numbers on.

It didn't exactly go according to plan
It the time between leaving and coming back Chrisopher San was tasked with Forks and Electrics

I arrived to find this...



The bike had magically self destructed Actually The Chief Mechanic had been pulling off monster shifts injecting Hocus pocus and voodoo into the forks and if you've ever seen the size of hokus pocus you'll relaise that it was never going to be an easy fit! Especially with the irregular shape of Voodoo nowadays!

So, I dived into the huge box of goodies and got the easy stuff out of the way whist Chris mixed eye of Newt with bats balls.

The Shark fin tootsie protector was the first thing to be drilled and tapped into place...



Easy peasy! If it kept going like this it'd be finished by lunchtime!

Next on was the Penske Shock, which is pure suspension porn, along with the new Dogbones kindly donated by Mr Husky who is a very nice man but I wouldn't want to let him catch me peeing in a shop door way! (not that I pee in shop doorways!)



Looking good with the suspension linkage all nicely serviced (as best we could) the last time out.

So onwards and upwards (with chris now throwing toads and mucus into the pot) Toby showed up and various tyres showed up and made their way onto various rims. My wets arrived and made their way onto the spare and desperately shabby blue spare wheels. These will be getting a coat of paint at the earliest opportunity. Wheels were balanced and Toby made a cracking job of polishing the rear sprocket.
On went the rear wheel with Supercorsa Diablo scrub that will be the tyre of doom for the first outing with a matching Racetec Interact front (I know they don't match but they'll do to get the first weekend out of the way and I've used this combo before with good results)



...

Ah, now I see why he turned the air blue when I PM'd him
Wow that looks like 1 step forward and 12 back, it will be worth it in the end.

I think I spot a rather inconspicuous front end there getting in the way of the job (sorry about that)

Is gonna be awesome when its sorted, just a word of advice, don't bin it on the first outing or it won't be the crash you fear, it will be YC with the course grade of hammer!

Loving the commentary and pictures, thanks for taking the time out to update us all

Can't wait to see the finished bike.

A brew was consumed (thankfully not chris's brew which now had cobwebs and crows feet in it) and Bob showed up.

Meanwhile, on the other side a new and standard rear caliper was fitted with race pads and duly hung on the bike and after some tricky bleeding had at least had some bite on the new Braking wavy rear disc.



Another brew and some great craik later and it was time for the engine prepping to start! First of all, fit some gorgeous Iridium spark plugs! You can tell how excited I was at fitting these by the camera shake! Either that or it was from the explosion as Chris added Plutonium to his cauldron. I hope plutonium is legal in minitwins!



I really like these plugs.

More banter and drilling and hammering ensued and a little later a tray was fashioned to hold the ECU and the Reg reg which made its way onto the sub frame with some no expense spared Stainless rivets...



Looking good! This will be protected from the elements by the cover on the bottom of the seat unit. (we hope!)

The ostrich was squashed unceremoniously into Chris' now bubbling concoction of dark matter and it was unanimously decided that the new magnetic, go faster sump plug with lockwiring holes was next to be fitted along with a K&N Lockwirable oil filter...



It was about this time that things started to go ever so slightly wrong. We decided that it would be a good idea, given the bikes chequered past, to check the valve clearances.

Basically the exhaust valves were tighter than the inlets so they were all going to need shimming! Buggerance! No shims to fit so these would have to go onto the "To Buy" list for tomorrow. We even tried a different set of feeler gauges to make sure. Miles out.

And this must have started a trent becasue one by one little things started to show up that we hadn't planned for.

We were flying through the list though and we still had the Saturday evening and the next day to sor them. No worries!

We were flying through the list anyway...



So, off we set again after some delicious Fishnchips, the airbox was cleaned and the filter desnorkled (shoot me! ) and the jets changed in the carbs and the needles moved one notch.
Problem two arrived! The Cv carb rubbers were so old the had shrunk and I couldn't get the buggers back on no matter what. EVENTUALLY (thats time lapse that is!) they were persuaded to fit using a feeler gauge and some silicone grease. Phew!

There was a bolt of lightning from Chris's area and he had his safety boots on! so we presumed that ment the voodoo was starting to go in.

We called it a day at 10 pm and turned on the telly for the MotoGP just as the red light went out for the start! You'd think we planned it!

That was a 7am till 10 pm shift.

Chris put "The Concoction" on simmer and we decided a 7am start the next day would easily see the bike finished!

[Binky]

Yep, keep up the good work guys.

Interesting read indeed. Look forward to seeing and hearing about the first outing now.

Day TWO!

... and they're off!

Swearing was heard from Chris' area shortly after the first "Jumpstart" coffees were drank. "Someone" had buggered up a fork seal and it wasn't me and it wasn't Chris so who could that be? New fork seals were added the the "To Get" list.

So off we popped and got those along with some "race" brake fluid from Halfrauds.

Back to work and it wasn't long before some More swearing and it was found that the New K-TechFork springs that had arrived were the wrong weight so a frantic ring around and some were found in Reactive Suspension, north of York and also some in Maxton, South of Manchester. A quick fiddle on the sat nav later and it turned out both places were 60 miles away, One around the York ring road at Lunchtime and one around the Manchester ring road at Lunchtime! York was chosen and I set off that way and Chris set off for Valve shims. Rendesvouse some hours later...

One stressful trip to York later, 40 quids worth of diesel and another 20 quid on top of what the K-Tech Springs cost and I was the proud owner of some Racetech Springs.

Pie and a cupper time!

Chris fitted the valve shims and banged the rocker covers back on and I handed over two very expensive curly pieces of metal so he could sprinkle pixie power on them and the spanners were a blur again! New front hoses were fitted and a new left handlebar along with a new clutch lever and R&G bar ends. Will this whirlwind of race parts never end?

The front calipers were attached (no sign of the race brake pads yet) and Renthal grips and an R6 Quick action throttle tube found its way on.

And finally the carbs found their way back onto the bike. After what seemed like an endless stream of part and work you'd think it'd be looking like a race bike good and proper...

It wasn't...



The battery box was attached (that took a LOT of swearing to make it fit!!) and The list was nearly complete. How the hell can a list be nearly complete and the bike still look like that?

Chris' Cauldron was still bubbling away in the background so I refitted the seat unit so it actually lined up with the middle of the bike.

and we were running out of things to add on.

I then fitted the smashed rev counter (we need a better one of these if anyone has one) and the front fairing bracket.

A FORK ARRIVED! I fitted it and was quickly informed that I had to unfit it as Gandalf need it back.

So off it was swept again.

By this time it was approaching 8 pm on Monday and we looked like we were going to have to admit it wasn't going to happen.

And then I noticed the fork leg lying on the ground that Chris had put about 60 man hours into was at somewhat of a "jaunty angle"! or in other words, it was FUBAR'ed!

Now, I have to admit there's been a lot of manly swearing all weekend but what followed was a tyrade that would have made Chubby Brown blush!

So that was that. Emergency "Find some new forks" was put into effect and I headed off to Edinburgh sans WonderBucket.

But we'll have it ready next week WONT WE!!

9 Days to race day. Tick... Tick... Tick..

C