Little by little.....

Well that was a day and a half, so we knew we had a a couple of major problems the clutch and the charging. To cure one we had to get the right spacer to go behind the inner basket, nothing on the island so the "Ze SS" earned the Iron Cross for action the field and gave up the required parts.

In the mean time I've fitted the road alternator I brought along as a spare, at test we had a healthy 14.5v just over tick over so hopefully that was that issue cleared.

A test run up the lane went well so we followed Stuart over the mountain for a final test, I say followed he was out of sight in seconds! Clutch seems good then.

The now usual chaos ensued a scrutineering, you'd have thought that they would have an idea on how to run this event by now, sadly not. Not enough power for tyre warmers, pit lanes empty with ours overflowing, a bit of a fiasco and not professional at all. Still we are here again and for once feeling like we may get somewhere with nothing really worrying me, can't say the same for Stuart though.

So once again we're ready for the off and Stuart skips away with a Suzuki and shows him the way to Bray Hill.

I get news via friends that Stuart is past Glen Helen and then through Kirk Michael, sadly my phone rings and Stuart is there letting me know all is well but seems to lost electrical power at the 18th milepost. When we get down to pick him up Emily starts and is ridden home under her own power with no remedial work required. One those faults that would be easier to diagnose if she didn't start at all.

So a day of find the intermittent fault is on the agenda, fingers crossed.

Ah bugger clutch..

Well with testing limited to just a spin up the lane, by which I mean about 200 yards, I knew we were up against it. So having had the clutch slip on the dyno and having to add another friction to get it through the session, this then made the clutch not a slipper in the correct sense. So I tried another set of plates to reduce the stack height but retain the slipper action, it did seem to work down the lane for Stuart and me but come full power it slipped in the wrong sense. Sadly this was only 3 or so miles down the road outside the Railway Inn at Union Mills. So that's that for today but there are positives to draw on, the lad in the next van to us fell off 20 yards off the start line and broke his collar bone, Stuart overtook one other rider before the clutch failed and even a stalwart of the Manx GP Dave Clark's spark plug fell out on his Suzuki T20 and didn't get anywhere having spent the last day or so rebuilding the engine after a failure at Jurby. So I'll fit either a standard clutch or see what else I can get hold of in the morning. Hey ho that's racing. 

So to finish this evening here are some shots to give you the flavour of the day.

Sometimes it's all about the journey, sometimes....

   When I said next stop Liverpool I didn't mean it had to be like that. An engine start failure on the Manananananan meant we departed the Liver Building an hour late, combined with force 5 weather this predicted a slow run across the Irish Sea, we arrived in Douglas at 01.50. Obviously the Steam Racket had foreseen this and the movie of the day was the almost everlasting part 2 of The Hobbit series, The Desolation of Smaug. Now I'm not sure I've seen anything that drawn out since the government started making excuses for the war in Iraq. Still it was entertainment, or at least it would have been if not constantly interrupted by the stomping of running children outside the overly bright cinema.

To parody a well known sketch,

"Child or freedom?"

"Er, child"

"One hammer each, door on the left, thank you." 

"Hammer?"

"Yes sorry, we had a few complaints about running children. If you could simply nail one foot to deck to avoid disrupting the other passengers that would be great, thank you. Oh, alternatively let them play on deck in the dark and we'll see if Darwin was correct, thank you."

On behalf of the ferry company I'd like to apologise and say thank you to our home stay host Sheila, for staying up to meet us in Andreas at 01.30 in the morning and still be chirpy enough to make a cup of tea.

Still let's get down to the bit you're interested in, the bike.
Having arrived at our final digs for the week we were able to unload and finish off those last minute jobs.
First off is to introduce Stuart to Emily now that she is dressed.

  
I've had an idea in my head of where all decals would go and pretty much as planned, so with some masking tape we can edit and fettle.

 The application is a complete pain the neck, and I mean that. My neck was killing me sticking these things on.

But in the end I hope you like the way she looks, she seems to have changed persona now and means to do business.

Now apart from the dyno Emily has not moved under her own power or even stopped for that matter. So Stuart was sent out for a quick foray up the road just to check that we have the gear lever and other controls in the right place and she actually stops!

Tyre pressure check, pack the van check, lets go to the paddock.
In the day paddock where we are based it seems quite small, there's barely space for more than 14 vans not including an awning so we may share some room up in the garages with Alex Sinclair and the other Louigi Moto bike, a TT2 during the week.
For me now comes probably my most nervous moment to date and so to scrutineering.
The queue is long and the wait gets worse as we approach the front. The bike ahead of us has to go to the naughty corner for some last minute fiddles. The waiting is dreadful, not quite condemned man but you get the idea. Eventually an inspector comes along "Got the bike?" "Yep" I reply, and so it begins, the conservatory bike versus the man in blue. It all goes swimmingly really, he even says "nice bike" so I get one of these.

 To go with one of these.

On the business side of things - Parc Ferme.

Unfortunately due to a lack of marshalls, a late ship (again!) and the Ulster GP combine to rob the Classic TT of Saturday night's practice. Still you can never have enough set up and tweeking time, it's strange, even when it's standing still you seem to find little things to do. Stuart is off out today (Sunday) for a lap or two on my Supersport 1000DS (now known as "Ze SS") to refresh again his braking and turn in points. Me, I'm off to check the clutch pack, can't say why but although it works it just felt odd as I rode Emily back to the van last night.

Sometimes the last steps are the hardest...

 As is the way in life sometimes no matter how hard you try to plan something there will always be a hiccup along the way. The last week seems to have just felt like I've been bouncing off brick walls, just when you fixed one thing something else knocks you back. One issue at the moment is charging, running the race alternator it only seems to give out 13V across the battery at 5krpm, hopefully this will be enough as the first alternator gave just 12V. I have a standard alternator to fit if required on the Isle. Another complete f**k up was by K Tech with the forks, they replaced the original progressive springs with linear springs, so far so good. But the new springs when allied with the original spacers gave about 8mm of sag at minimum preload, nowhere near enough. I'm guessing that the original springs being progressive may have been a replacement item and with the nature of the progressive spring there was sag available at the softer end of the range so all seemed well, pop in a set of linear springs and hey presto no sag. They actually had fitted springs from an SV650 even though I had requested ones from their catalogue for the Showa forks. Do K Tech not actually check anything? Luckily I was in the right place at the right time Rich at Louigi Moto decided that we could adjust the internal spacer without dropping the forks. 

 So a jack, some tools and a hacksaw later we're 20mm shorter in the spacer department and we have 25mm of sag. Rich did say that he never had a spacer so hard to depress to release the internals. An indication of K Techs complete failure to supply an item of use, especially considering the destination.  
  Still now is not the time complain for all bar a couple of tweeks to suit Stuart Emily is as ready as she can be for her date on the Isle of Man. The paintwork is back and I'm lock wired out. Here she is.

Next stop Liverpool.

 

Every Dyno has its day...

Today was dyno day, and with a bike barely run in it's time to give it some beans!
To be fair to Chris of CJS Racing he did give Emily an easy morning by building data from the lower rev range. This afternoon though after a few high speed tuns and lots of tweaking he arrived with the figures below.

All in all far better than I expected and Rich Llewelin won the sweepstake with a guess of 118bhp. Torque seems good too topping out at 70 ft lbs.
Just one tiny issue to cure, the lady's not charging the battery very well so Tuesday will be another day of diagnostics. In other good news though, the fairing is back from paint and look awesome.

Something's looming.....

Apologies for the delay in posting an update, but getting stuff done does take priority. 
The last couple of weeks have been a little fraught whilst awaiting delivery of the new Corse loom being made by Peter at Oronero. Nobody said that making a loom from scratch would be easy and just sourcing the different parts is difficult enough. With some technical assistance from as far as over the pond Peter has got there at last, even able to supply bespoke parts able to cope with the subtle differences between the models. 
Well the loom arrived arrived last Wednesday morning and with the afternoon booked off it's home to the build facility, AKA the conservatory. So of course to fit a loom you need to access all areas so once again off with the airbox and other components to make some finger room. All in all it's a pretty straight forward item to fit with just some advice on which of the four injector leads to fit, each loom is made the same but some items are redundant, in this case I need to connect injector leads 2 and 3. Typically of course this the time you find that you've fitted the ECU back to front so the nice period Ohlins sticker is now hidden on the inside, not as if it's seen with the fairing covering it anyway.

Progress looms

This is the week the bike has to run if we're to stand any chance of some dyno and setup time. If the setup has to wait then so be it, if all else fails I'll pop the number plate on and get an MOT! With that in mind I also booked off Thursday and Friday to get down to Louigi Moto for those final little tweeks and base settings that would have the bike ready for the dyno. Simply put the injectors come off and the TPS is set with Christian's magic numbers along with a base setting to the ECU, he could have told me figures but then he'd have had to kill me apparently, I wisely declined the information. Just semi-synthetic oil for the running in period goes in the motor alongside distilled water for the radiator. Happily all the fluids appear to have stayed on the inside with no leaks, fingers crossed eh! Just a final connection to make up to the fuel pump, a reference check showed that as suspected the red and black were the required connections. With that and a few new earth leads we're ready to push the button, now don't get too excited as this was just to get fresh oil into all those important little places, and happily even though I thought I'd put a tad too much in at 4 litres all was well and the level returned to a more normal position, phew. Alongside these tasks I've been able to bleed all the hydraulic systems with some rather expensive Brembo fluid, I wish Paul Baleta had warned me how much it costs!! Also we now have a chain fitted, one of life's little essentials for bikes (shaft drive ones excepted).
OK so are you ready for it? It's time to simply add petrol, using Richards remote fuel tank we prime the system and wonder why the fuel pump doesn't stop? As it's a Corse style loom it's void of fuses and relays so yes the fuel pump runs continuously, hopefully well enough to keep Stuart and bike going flat out. 
Right, let's do it, turning, turning, turning, bugger. Turning, turning, turning, bugger. 
Right let's play diagnostics. Is there a spark, nope. Is there any fuel on the plug, nope. Have I connected the cam and motor pick ups back to front, nope. Call for the Mathesis diagnostic unit to check things over. First issue is the diagnostics won't talk to the EEPROM currently installed so a quick switch with a 916SP one gets us a step closer to seeing what's going on. We're now able to see where the fault lies, it turns out to be the cam sensor so a replacement is sourced and fitted.
OK are you ready for it?
Right, let's do it, turning, brum, turning, brum, brum, turning, turning, turning. Bugger what now?
"Ah" says Christian "we still have the 916 chip in the ECU and that runs four injectors" the 916 would run either 1 and 3 or 2 and 4 as pairs, but I run 2 and 3 having only two. So the bike was trying to run on one injector, or not as the case may be. Back to the original chip, let's see if that works.
OK are you ready for it?
Right, let's do it, turning, turning, brum, brum, brum, brum, job's a good'un as that man would say.
At last I'm smiling like a Cheshire cat and Rich just says "I knew it would start." Easy for you to say Rich you've been at the birth of many but this one's mine so it's special to me. The electronic rev counter works as does the temp gauge as well, I'm reet chuffed!

Now with a switch

 I'll take some more pictures later and maybe some video. As a final note the fuel tank now has some anti slosh foam installed along with a complete set of new fuel lines with some quick connectors.

 

Some inspiration...

It's all you need sometimes when things feel a little slow. The first of the paintwork has arrived thanks to Del Whitaker at D W Automotive. Gotta say it does look rather good and I've asked Stuart to lift his boot clear when climbing aboard. So here's an early weekend post as I'm very excited.

Hope you like the style of the number boards which are loosely based on the period bikes.
In other news the hose for the rear shock has finally arrived and the reservoir is now set in position for the overhaul. With that back later in the week and tyres from James White in the post, next weekend's goal has got to be a rolling chassis at last. My deepest thanks also go out to Jill and Stuart Calkin who have also made an offer of sponsorship, cheers Calky.

Other points of note this week are the new bracket made by Stuart's dad fitted straight on with the addition of some riv nuts to the air runners.
Well done Stuart's dad.

The sharp eyed amongst you will spot the lock wire, surprisingly tricky when the bolt heads are this close together. Also fitted were the coils which are also lock wired. Overkill maybe, still they won't come loose.

Just in case you're in the South West the naked bike (poor Emily) will be on show at Sammy Miller's on the 20th July at their MotoItaliano day. 
Maybe see you there.
Finally I can see that the blog has had over 3000 views and I thank you all for taking the time to read all the way to the bottom.