Bought the wife a bike for her Xmas present.
GPX750R. Bought as a non-runner and a complete donkey. Took many months of building stripping, re-building and sorting to actually get it anywhere near decent. Had disaster after disaster with the worst being multiple camchain issues. Eventually got it home to the wife. To be honest, she hated it. Well she loved the Retro looks and styling, but it handled like a Jelly and had the brakes of a Raleigh chopper. Went like a train though but DAMN them brakes were useless. They were totally different to anything i've worked on before with sliding calipers instead of the usual fixed calipers. Even after new lines, pistons, seals and fluids, it was still crap.
Eventually i sold it for about £30 profit over what the bike and parts cost me. Working on an hourly rate, i rekon it was 0.00001p per hour profit
From there we went on to a new machine, as Non-runner again. Suzuki GSXR600SRAD. 1997 classic sportsbike from my past, in fact it was my first big bike. This was again a nightmare and this time once again was the brakes. The first calipers were siezed, only 3 pistons actually moved... So i went onto a new (Ebay) set of the Tokico 4 pot calipers and was not a happy boy to find out these were also siezed, although only 2 pistons this time.
So the costings were worked out and it was cheaper to buy a new set of calipers from the US, the re-build kit even with just 2 pistons was over £150.
So the calipers arrived after lots of messing about with customs and they're bloody brilliant.
I went for the 6 pot Tokico's instead of the 4 pots, reason quite simply was that you can't get the 4 pots later than a 2000. However the 6 pots are currently fitted to the ZZR600 in the US, so i managed to find a set of 2008 calipers with less than 1200 miles on them. They turned up and look superb, clean as you like. Took about an hour of bleeding as they're notoriously bad for bleeding, but we got there in the end. Took the bike out and DAMN !!!! they're superb.
I feel sooooooooooooooo happy tonight with this bike. We've had a tough old road getting the sodding thing working nicely and it now stops brilliantly.
We're also on the 2nd set of carbs and sadly they've not resolved some of the running issues, so it's off next Monday for a fully dyno setup.
Just thought i'd give you boys somethign to read.
GPX750R. Bought as a non-runner and a complete donkey. Took many months of building stripping, re-building and sorting to actually get it anywhere near decent. Had disaster after disaster with the worst being multiple camchain issues. Eventually got it home to the wife. To be honest, she hated it. Well she loved the Retro looks and styling, but it handled like a Jelly and had the brakes of a Raleigh chopper. Went like a train though but DAMN them brakes were useless. They were totally different to anything i've worked on before with sliding calipers instead of the usual fixed calipers. Even after new lines, pistons, seals and fluids, it was still crap.
Eventually i sold it for about £30 profit over what the bike and parts cost me. Working on an hourly rate, i rekon it was 0.00001p per hour profit
From there we went on to a new machine, as Non-runner again. Suzuki GSXR600SRAD. 1997 classic sportsbike from my past, in fact it was my first big bike. This was again a nightmare and this time once again was the brakes. The first calipers were siezed, only 3 pistons actually moved... So i went onto a new (Ebay) set of the Tokico 4 pot calipers and was not a happy boy to find out these were also siezed, although only 2 pistons this time.
So the costings were worked out and it was cheaper to buy a new set of calipers from the US, the re-build kit even with just 2 pistons was over £150.
So the calipers arrived after lots of messing about with customs and they're bloody brilliant.
I went for the 6 pot Tokico's instead of the 4 pots, reason quite simply was that you can't get the 4 pots later than a 2000. However the 6 pots are currently fitted to the ZZR600 in the US, so i managed to find a set of 2008 calipers with less than 1200 miles on them. They turned up and look superb, clean as you like. Took about an hour of bleeding as they're notoriously bad for bleeding, but we got there in the end. Took the bike out and DAMN !!!! they're superb.
I feel sooooooooooooooo happy tonight with this bike. We've had a tough old road getting the sodding thing working nicely and it now stops brilliantly.
We're also on the 2nd set of carbs and sadly they've not resolved some of the running issues, so it's off next Monday for a fully dyno setup.
Just thought i'd give you boys somethign to read.
