The frame I got from mr C in stafford turned out to be less than perfect. It's not scratched or dented and the history is fine but it had seriously oval steering bearing cups. Apparently this is not unusual on Rgv frames and is blamed a lot on braking, endo's and wheelies. I must admit I find this a bit difficult to accept and think it's more likely due to the fact that most have been crashed.
Crashing rgv's is very easy and if you had just got off a 125 on to a 250 I would think an impact is inevitable. The thing with the 250 is it's gutless and struggles to pull 5th at legal speeds so you knock it down a few, gas it and suddenly you are doing 100mph and that corner is right under you....bump!
I digress, sorry
So the bottom bearing cup was loose but not unserviceable. A bit of loctite retainer has it held strong so that will work. The top cup was stretched by 0.70mm!
The Gsxr front end uses a 30mm steering tube, the Rgv one is 26 I think. Anyway the upper bearing cup was 47mm and a 30/47 taper bearing is not available but a 30/48 was. So it's simple - open up the 47 diameter (47.70 in places) to 48. All I needed was a person to do it...
Spondon....££££!!!!!
Local engineers not interested
I tried to get the tool room to do it at workout they didn't seem keen to do foreigners (a bit odd)
Local blokes with various machines were a bit scared of the job or too busy.
I think the truth is that people were a bit frightened of the job and not sure how to do it. Well if you want a job doing right you should do it yourself....so I did.
Sadly I didn't have a horizontal boring machine handy or any kind of vertical machine either (like the Bridgeport that I've since acquired) but col has a lathe so that would have to do.
Basically I used the steering tube between centres to align everything and then hold the frame upright against the tool post with g-clamps. Once set in position I put a boring tool in a small 4 jaw, set it to cut 47.95 diameter and put it in the big 3 jaw.
I turned it our by hand. Look. I was quite pleased. It must be said that i took 3 or 4 attempts to position the frame and probably took 10 hours to get set. It's only cheap if it's your own time. Anyway all done and everything went together great. The bottom taper bearing was available in the right sizes without any machining which was good news.
Sweet.
Next was the swingarm. No real drama, just required the removal of 5.5mm off each end of the axle and new needle rollers. I then took 11.00mm from the internal bearing spacer. It needs some different shims making but nothing difficult.
The frame rearset mounts needed the inner edges filing back a bit to give clearance but that's all and it went in 'dreamy'.
I got a gaxr600 k8 shock from eBay to see if it would work. Shock length is the same as Rgv but the reservoir is attached. Directly to the shock near the upper mounting. I've been told hat it is a good upgrade but I want an ohlins unit and Gsxr ones are everywhere so I should get s good deal on one if I can get one to fit.
The swingarm has retained the aprilia linkage because it uses the same distance angles as the vh22 (did you hear that you posh aprilia owners?)
Front end on and a swing arm fitted. You know where this went....
Mega!
The subframe is 11mm higher at the end than it would be with a standard swingarm and shock. I think that is close enough.
So next I need to get the Gsxr rear wheel aligned and the sprocket carrier positioned.
So I got the back wheel and.... Well have a look.
Double mega!
Then I had to try some clothes on it.
Triple mega!
Quadle mega!
It's better than porn. Well it was until that fat bloke sat on it...
It's tiny. I'm talking about the bike.
I think I'm going to have a pretty cool looking GP bike in the end. If it has 110bhp and weighs 140 kgs it will be as good as it looks.
Why did I not do this years ago?
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