Post race-bingle NC30 rebuild - pic thread

[StrayAlien]

Hi all,

I bingled myself and the '93 NC30 at race in May (2103) and now that I am pretty much healed it is time to get off my lazy butt and fix the 'Bee'. We both took a fairly hard hit that day .. but the Bee has bent up and been in too many pieces for way too long. Time to get it all going again.

So, what follows is some pics of journey this last 6 weeks to get us all race-ready again. Not there yet!

This is a sort of rebuild thread, but more like a fix-it-up-with-a-refurb-and-make-some-improvements-on-the-way kind of thing.

Among other things, there is a 5" wheel and supporting axle going on and a HRC suspension linkage and a suitable shock also.

It'll likely take me a few nights to upload and comment on the photos so bear with me, the work is still going on but tonight is a night to have a break and get this topic started.

I will apologise in advance for the less than hospital-like conditions of the garage, the NC30 has to share its space with the road bikes ... and then there is the bl**dy leaves that always blow in ....

Anyways, despite binning the bike that race day in May I got my first GONG!



And next let me introduce my chief mechanical assistant 'Toro', he is good garage pit crew as he understands both Spanish and English and loves his racing:



His blonde assistant is 'Tinka':



.. and she doesn't understand very much at all I am afraid ...

And here is the bike 'before' :



That all said .... here it is after ....

[StrayAlien]

We hit the dirt at about 80kph or so after going over muddy ditch and into the side of an embankment.

Such is the off-camber exit of turn 1 at Broadford in VIC, Australia.

The crash doesn't look all that bad but the forks are bent, the front wheel bent, the radiator smashed, the brake master cylinder gone, etc etc.





The crash knob bent back bending the engine mount with it:



The right hand master cylinder must be buried in mud somewhere, but thankfully, the electrics looked good. The starter button is intact and the wiring in the nose is fine (I hope).





The fairing was wasted, so need a new one of those:



The (Rick Oliver) rear subframe was bent but not too bad. The seat unit damage was mainly cosmetic, so that is cool:



Front wheel was about 5mm out:



Carbon front guard will be a little shorter after I repair it!



Both pegs bent, but will likely be fixable:





The tank is dented, but luckily, it was not holed, and almost as good, the Starlane wiring came through okay!



Frame will have a dimple from now on, but such is life. It seems straight - I think:

[StrayAlien]

I dont have too many photos of the bike being torn down. That all happened rather quickly with the help of a good mate Norm (who also races 400s). My shoulder was not capable of doing too much so Norm (I have to say) did most of the heavy work for getting things apart. Onya Norm. Thanks.

Here is a picture of him looking like a twit:



Not seen in this pic, but I did go and get some large cheap plastic containers and bought about 300 zip-lock lunch bags to get everything small and confusing labelled and sorted. I found this to be *extremely* important. Rather than just leaving nuts and bolts and crap about, I'd get it off the bike, get it into a labelled bag noting 'left' or 'right', 'front' or 'rear' where appropriate and into the basket.

For items I could not put in a bag, I used a 'dymo' label maker to print off little labels to stick to things (like fork stanchions and damper rods) or I used a permanent marker pen - which comes off with the acetone or the like.

As they were coming off, I was labelling and bagging:



Most done, engine now and other smaller bits:





And finally, well, pretty darn naked:

[StrayAlien]

The forks were bent - both of them. I am afraid I don't have a pic of bent forks, but I did get them straightened to a thousandth or two of an inch of being true - and they bend more than that when braking so I am 'hoping' they'll be okay.

The guy that did the forks had Cam Donald's IOM TT XR69 in his garage to work on it.

I am a great believer in buying tools if you need them. You never regret it.

So, I did want to double-check the work of the fork straightener, so I bought myself a dial gauge and stand, and made myself up a nifty set of v-blocks from some aluminium from the local hardware store (Bunnings). The material must have cost like $15, but some hacksawing, bending, smacking and drilling saw it come together.





The fork straightener guy only did the stanchions so armed with the dial gauge, I could now make sure the damper rods were straight also - and they were not, but getting them straight again with my nifty v-blocks and dial gauge was pretty easy - rotate, find the hump, gentle pressure, rotate again - and do this up and down the rod until straight. A great day in the garage I must say.

[StrayAlien]

The front forks are all racetek internals. So the haynes manual has to be put aside for some of this. For those who have never seen the racetek setup for NC30s here is the rebound valve thingy:





and here is the compression:



But, oh bugger, what is this:



The compression damper oring has a bite in it ... so I ordered some more. I don't know about you, but whenever ordering orings or washers, I always get more than I need. I needed one, so I got 4. They finally arrived:



and here is why I always order more ... :



one is clearly the wrong size... and ...



the bite in the oring is obviously a manufacturing fault, because another new oring had the same fault as the (years old) one in the fork.

I might say the forks were actually not put back together all that well. On one, the rebound adjuster would not have had any effect at all. Haynes and racetek both say 122mm fork oil height - when dismantled, one fork had 200mm, and the other had about 220mm.

[StrayAlien]

But on with the rebuild ...

The lower bushes were not in great condition ....







so they got replaced with nice new ones ....



I found getting the rebound adjuster to be nicely 15 clicks to be somewhat troublesome. So, with the top assembly off, I clicked in 15 clicks from full out and measured down into the assembly from the base to the foot of the rebound clicker ...



Found this to be 15.5mm ...



and used that to determine how far to bolt the damn thing on ..



Raceteck internals do not use a tube spacer as I understand the stock forks do, but a set of 'shims' that use you to set up the initial preload:



(the rough part on the fork in the above photo lives under the triple clamp (erm) clamp, so nothing nasty going on - I tried to polish it out, but it was pretty stubborn)



On reassembly, neither love nor money could get this little copper washer out, so it stayed - there are two in there now ..



Some aluminium strips in the vice helped hold the forks and not damage them. The bench is quite high so I had to have a small seat nearby so I could get high enough to work on them tho!



Getting there ..



While I had things apart I was pretty careful to measure stuff and makes notes:

[StrayAlien]

The carbs were a mess. The previous owner was very careful about the carbs and their setup. I'd not really done anything to them since getting the bike ... but I will have to now ...



That grass and crap went through the carbs, down the inlets and into the engine. Nice ... so the heads come off a bit later ...

Hmmm ... crunchy springs ..



A quick clean up ..





I was a bit concerned about these, but advice on the forum here said they were okay if they slid well, and they seemed to .. when not full of crap.





"Late nights all alone with a test tube .. ohh oh oh oh ..."



... and later while the support team was busy :



... sneak inside and take over the kitchen ...



Now, I did get the carbs ultrasonically cleaned. BEWARE ... if not done right it can cause extreme and swift corrosion of your carbs internal and external. Like this:



this happened within a week. The guy said he forgot to oil the carbs after drying them (he does it with wd40 I think) .. but I reckon by that time the damage had started to be done internally. Man, he must have used something well toxic. Later, when trying to start the bike I realised just how bad the corrosion had gone. We'll see that later.

But also, some washers and orings went missing when it was cleaned. Hmmmm. So, the hunt for new pilot screw washers and orings began.

I only had one of these guy left (out of four):



For now, the carb work had to be parked while locating bits. I should have just bought some new carbs then I reckon ... I had to later. Dagnabbit.

Stay tuned ... more tomorrow night.

[VFRkieran]

Great thread mate, will be following this with interest!

[StrayAlien]

:-). Cheers, still fair bit more to come. Bike is still a non starter. I am waiting on some new carbs to arrive after everything seized up following the 'cleaning'. ... and the HRC linkage arrived yesterday ...

[benny]

Nice thread. Good to follow.