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Unless your old lines are perished and expanding the biggest gain in feel would be from the new fluid. Tend to change mine every year to keep it feeling tip top.

I don't recall it being that difficult to get the tyre on without cable ties. Getting the old tyre off in the first place is the hard bit. I always do my own as it takes less time to do that riding to a place I trust. I've never found a place that'll fit a pair for £20 unless you take the wheels off for them and then you're more or less halfway there anyway.

Tried this a few times and gave up. Basically you need something that functions while still working as hearing protection or you'll gradually go deaf. Your choices are either some custom fit thing that costs a load which is fine if you can afford it or some helmet speakers that you can hear while wearing earplugs. If you don't do any of that then you're trying to overcome the volume of background noise that can send you deaf without adding louder music over the top of that. If you do buy the expensive solution and it works for you then you're effectively removing one of your senses while riding but you'll have to make up your own mind about whether that's a good plan or not. Cheers, Mark

Just ride it and enjoy it. When you get more confidence on it and it no longer feels like a new massive bike go back and practice your slow speed stuff. Over time it'll become natural.

Project begins with a bit of a strip down... Everything looks ok for now. Bodywork isn't great as I knew. There's an oil leak from the top of the engine but it looks like it's the cam cover gasket and/or the cam cover bolt washers have failed. The upside is that the front of the engine is oily but clean. Exhaust off and engine out next time.

depends on how many old self-satisfied, complacent, self-congratulatory, superior, puffed up, pleased with oneself, self-approving, well pleased, proud of oneself twats there are in your way ... The goal of the thread was to give a bit of an insight as to the process if you were interested. The sense of arguing about it completely escapes me.

There are plenty of commercial road riding courses you can do but I imagine it would work out quite a lot more expensive but still worth it. In term of the stuff you learn you could do worse than simply getting a copy of the police riders handbook, reading a bit of it and going and to practice it. You'd probably gain plenty from that.

Although it's definitely increased my average speed A to B.

Don't know if this is useful or interesting but thought I'd post this while all still fresh... I chatted to some blood bikers a couple of years ago and one thing led to another and I ended up signing up with the IAM roughly a year ago. My motivation was partly that I quite fancied doing blood bike work but mainly that although I'd been riding for nearly 25 years I rode too quickly on roads I knew, I was crap at reading roads I didn't know. Essentially I wanted to lengthen to odds of having an accident by improving my riding ability and confidence. I was assigned to a local group and an observer got in touch. We did an initial chat about what I wanted to achieve and a first observational ride. This is just to pick up what I was doing at the time and form a plan to get me to the point where I could pass the IAM test. It's important to note that this isn't a personal improvement plan as such as it aims to get everyone who goes through the process to the same point following the same system. However, you will end up working on the bits you're worse at. As expected I was poor at reading roads, my lines were all over the place and my observation wasn't great. I also went the wrong way around a mini-roundabout which is a bad thing... who knew. So over the next year I did... [list=]About 3 observed rides with observers assigned to me at the monthly meet (I should have done more of these but they were always first thing on sunday) [list=]Two look, lean and roll courses at a local lorry training ground they hired (got to the edge of my tyres in 1st gear, superb exercises)[list=]Two bike skills days at Thruxton (not track days but extremely cool nevertheless) ...and I got written course material. Reading the police riders handbook also was useful. The observed rides took 2-3 hours each with my observer riding in front occasionally to show me examples but mostly me riding ahead being directed by their signals. What would tend to be the pattern to a run would be I'd ride ahead and we'd stop after 20 minutes or so discuss that part of the ride and then talk about what we'd do next. We'd do sections of the run out in the country, on the motorway, through town and so on. At the end of the ride we would sit down, discuss the ride and then mark the ride in terms of a score sheet provided by the IAM. This gave a good indication of process and what to focus on next. Between the rides it was crucial to get out and practice what we'd been discussing. For me this meant mainly working on road reading and using the correct lines to help with that. Additionally my slow speed riding was pretty poor so I'd practice that quite a lot too. When I was ready for the test I then did what they call a cross-check which is an observed ride by a different observer. This is pretty much a mock test but a lot more informal so you get the opportunity to learn from it rather than just get a result. The last stage is the test itself. I met up with a ex-policeman and we went on a two hour route with me being directed by his indicator signals. This was my opportunity to show all the things I'd learned during the course and to show how well I 'rode the system'. This was preceded by a chat to set me at ease, to test my eye sight and to test my knowledge of the highway code. After the run I gave a summary of the run and we discussed the observer's observations and I got my result. In my case it was a pass but I didn't reach the level of competence to get a first. If you're interested in improving your skills, you're happy learning a specific method that is similar to police riding I guess, you're happy being told what you're doing is wrong and how to improve them and you're happy to put a ton of time in to self-improvement then this is a good process to go through. If you want specific guidance on single aspects of your riding and don't want to do the IAM test then I'd get some 1 on 1 (or whatever) private training. If you're argumentative, take criticism badly or think you know everything already then this is most definitely not for you and you won't have fun. Any questions, please ask. This is just my view having been through the process over the last year, it's not supposed to be representative of how you'll find it and I don't really want to argue with you if you tried it and thought it was crap By the way, I started the course riding my 2007 Honda CBR1000RR and then switched to a KTM 1190 Adventure after 3 months and made my life immeasurably easier. Cheers, Mark

Using engine braking is fine but using the rear brake as your primary brake is a very bad idea. It's not efficient at all so the amount of braking you'll get from it is limited which is ok except when you need more braking than that limit. You're also not effecting any weight transfer to speak of which assists the braking effort as you would be by using the front brake. Lastly you run the risk of stalling the engine should you lock the rear wheel up and in order to get the rear moving again you'll either have to clutch in or bump start the bike by which time you may well be on the floor. By all means use it in conjunction with the front if you like and for low speed manoeuvring but definitely don't use it as the primary brake.

Depends how original I want it I suppose. I guess that search for originality would be a rod for my own back and what I really want is a bike I can ride and doesn't break down. Maybe I'll teach myself to paint the fairing, that would be fun and I could choose my own design based on what I like about the zxrs colour schemes rather than the frankly naff late schemes.

Went along to see the bike yesterday, all objectivity went out of the window and bought it despite some obvious issues for £1600... On good side the engine is very very strong and pulls incredibly well, the carbs fuel well having been cleaned and serviced. The suspension is great although I suspect the shock may need refreshing but the front end has been rebuilt. The brakes including discs are all pretty much new although they're not that effective having been stood for ages. All in all it feels really good. On the downside the fairing is clearly not original, there's wall rash on the side not photographed and the stickers are not that similar to the original, a previous owner has started to polish the frame but not that well, the exhaust isn't original and isn't that great and the wiring around the clocks have been bodged. Plan A was to sort out the bits that needed doing and ride it which wouldn't be that hard. It would just need the wiring doing and the brakes sorting out and we'd be off. However plan B is the one I'm going with because as soon as I got on it and heard it I wanted to strip the thing down to the frame and rebuild it so it can be used reliably on track days. I'm not aiming for as new so won't be replacing anything that has a scratch on it but I will be repainting the frame as polished frames have never been my thing and I'll be sorting the bodywork out. I don't know what I'll do with paint but I'll be looking for OE panels and then getting them all painted. The tank and tail are fine, the front end isn't. I don't know what scheme to go for. I'm not massively keen on the original scheme but it would be original. I could replicate the J scheme which is my favourite or I could do something different. No rush to decide. I'll add to this thread when I clear out the garage to make some room and start the project... Cheers, Mark

Removing rust using electrolysis is a good fun project and very effective if you haven't tried it before. https://www.instructables.com/id/Electrolytic-Rust-Removal-aka-Magic/

That's a really useful post, thanks. I started looking in to those gravity fed guns and the kinds of media that can be used. Already have a largish compressor so this will definitely be useful. Just need to work out whether I can be bothered with a cabinet or run a 'total loss system'... that is make a load of mess

I think it's probably unlikely I'll turbo it but never say never. This is a nostalgia buy so I'll be keeping it as original as I can. Having said that I also want to do some classic track days on it so if bits don't work they'll get replaced with something that does.

One thing you could take a look at is the yellow earth block if you haven't already done so. Honda often put all earth connection points through a yellow or black connector block which effectively joins them together through a bar that plugs in to the connector. Over time this connector suffers from corrosion causing all sorts of intermittent errors. I had a problem on a blackbird where the bike would intermittently cut out and it drove me nuts until I read about it, poked the block in the loom and the bike cut out. I cut the connector off and joined all the earth wires by soldering ring connectors to them and bolting them together (I didn't have a soldering iron strong enough to solder them all in one lump) and then connected this to the frame which solved the problem. I don't know where it would be on your bike but on the blackbird it was taped in to the loom on the left side of the bike attached to the rear subframe just behind the battery. Google should be able to help you find it. You'll be looking for a lump taped in to the loom.

Thanks for the info. I'm off to see it on Saturday and will report back. Cheers Mark

Morning, I'm going to see a ZXR750 L1 this weekend. Is there anything bar the usual bike stuff I need to look out for on these bikes? I used to have a J about 25 years ago but it was back when I didn't know what I was doing with bike maintenance, couldn't even ride the thing properly. Thanks, Mark

All of ours varied less between different types of driving on the road although not so much on the track. You didn't get an awful lot more out of them when you took it easy. I think I read is was down to their poor thermal efficiency or something like that. It was the excuse I used to drive it hard. They do kill ignition systems regularly though which makes them run very rich and stink on idle. Then the cat follows shortly after followed by the engine. Coils have to replaced pretty regularly.

Sounds like it was running incredibly rich. Mine's not frugal by I'll always get around 20mpg from it unless I@m on track and then it'll halve that.

Don't know anything about rotaries in bikes but I'd love to have a go on one. This is my rx8 that I just use for playing... We've had three of these so far. Rebuilt the engines in two of them. The red one came with a dead engine for a track project. The silver one was my wife's and had that engine rebuilt when it died. Later transplanted the good engine in to a blue car with a dead engine but much better bodywork. Engines are tiny physically... This is my previous track car. It's an ssc stylus that the previous owner built with an rx7 turbo engine in. Again, tiny engine but lots of plumbing... Had to rebuild the engine in that too. Real flying machine but required lots of maintenance. Great engines. Poor reliability, really bad economy, not a huge amount of torque but they're amazing to drive as they just rev and sing and rev and sing. Cheers, Mark

Still available mainly because I was playing with the new bike rather than trying to sell the old one.

Doesn't work so well on FI bikes if there's no power to run the ecu or the injectors.

The one I linked to, like most, has a lead that you connect to the battery that terminates in a waterproof socket that you plug the charger in to. You can either leaving this poking out of the seat or do something more professional.

These are cheap and mine works well... https://www.mandp.co.uk/oximiser-battery-charger.html Bargain at 16.99