How does the saying go, the last 10% takes 90% of the time. Well there is some truth in that statement.
Since the last post we have had it drivable, but that was short lived. Straight away we notice that the clutch pedal stroke is way to short as is the throttle. A couple of laps of the driveway and it was back on the hoist.
The clutch is a design fault of ours, as we assumed a couple of things in positioning the master cylinder. So the fix was to move the push rod further up the clutch pedal. It pushes at a bit of an angle but should be fine. The pedal stroke is much better, about 2/3 to the floor to disengage.
The throttle we knew would have to be changed as soon as we hooked it up. The bike engine throttle cable only moves about 25mm and it is wide open, meaning the pedal would only go half way to the floor. The solution was to move the pedal pivot point up, but how much? Some careful measurements, a bit of CAD and smouldering some brain dust trying to think make to high school maths class, which I failed, we decided on it needed to move 90mm up. A bit of a grind and weld later and it is perfect, a full pedal stroke.
While it was drivable we tested the balance of the drive line, it did not pass. On the hoist we put it in 6th gear and took the revs up, there was a huge vibration and at 8000rpm. A spanner on the floor was going to jump out the door. With almost 4000rpm left in the rev range this was not acceptable. So out came the drive shafts and gearbox. The drive shaft had been made and balanced by drive shaft professionals but it would seem their tolerances are not low enough, so a bit more machining was required there. The reversing box flanges had run out as well. The machining of the gearbox and the flanges is perfect, but when you put them together, the tolerance in the spline is enough to make it out of balance. So the fix was to take the shaft out of the reversing box, attach the flange and the machine it as one piece to balance it. It worked and once back together the vibration is hugely reduced, and we can live with what vibration is still there.
A bit of a rethink on the reversing was needed also. In an earlier post you will see we had a cable on the gear lever which we would pull to go in reverse. In reality it did not give us enough feel of the engagement, so you could not really tell if it was in gear. So we decided to put the lever trough the floor.
Also amongst all this we have had a few pesky wiring issues, and then the communication box between the ECU and laptop died. So back to Aussie it went for a replacement. We started to think our ECU might have some issues but we got another ECU to compare with and all seems well so one less thing to worry about. In hindsight we would not have had our wiring loom modified by someone else as they cut out and added bits which only they know about. After weeks of studying the wiring diagram it would have been easy enough to do the mods ourselves.
Pivot point moved up, and mounted from the original position
Reversing lever, needs to be lengthened. The spring is temporary also.
The extractors are getting a bit of colour in them. Also a cardboard heat shield template otherwise the tower will get cooked.
Hayabusa Starlet Build 