 Having got the latest order from Rally Design I have now installed the new brake fluid reservoir which replaces the one I wrenched to pieces the other week. Unlike last time I’ve had to snip off a bit of plastic and use one of the other outlets on the reservoir for the clutch master cylinder. For some reason the extra outlets are smaller bore than the main brake ones which seems a bit daft as the master cylinders are the same. I guess Mr Saab, who made this device, has some sort of other plans for it.
Apart from the hose to the clutch slave cylinder this is now all done. I’ve only not done that last bit because I haven’t got the banjo bolt for the slave cylinder end. This is a slightly wierd size at M10 x 1.25mm. I’ve ordered one from Demon Tweeks but it hasn’t arrived yet. Before filling and bleeding everything I want to remake the front brake flexi-hoses. A while ago now I bought some 1/8″ NPTF fittings which will work rather better than the adapters I was previously using. I just never got around to making the hoses before. (Not for the first time, I’m left in bewildered amazement at the sheer variety of pressure fittings.) |
 Next up was the water pump. Dan suggested that it’d be best to cut a vee in the inlet pipe and bend it over for welding as that way we wouldn’t have trouble holding it while welding it. That seemed sensible so I did a bit of geometry and worked out how big the vee should be, and then grabbed a hacksaw and guessed where it should be.
I was left with this neat little arrangement. So, I then tapped it very gently to bend it over and it snapped off!Not surprisingly really, in retrospect, because it’s a casting. So, Dan and I will have to hold it in place for welding with blutack and prayer. |
 It looks, though, as if it’ll do the job nicely. This is it held in place with a couple of little bits of masking tape. This photo actually looks almost identical to the one that Neil CB sent me of the modifications that they did to his pump for the same reason, so that’s fairly comforting.
So, I’m creeping forwards again. Another big step today was that I did some phoning around about the exhaust. I’ve not yet had a quote back from the chap I spoke to yesterday. The last time I had an exhaust made it was done by Tony Law Exhausts in Leeds. I was very pleased with the work they did for me then but I hadn’t bothered phoning them this time as I wasn’t sure that I could be bothered to drive all the way up there just to dump a car off. What’s more, the only vehicle I’ve got at the moment with a towbar is the bus, which is absolutely not the vehicle to drive up to Leeds in first thing in the morning. All the same I phoned them, and I ended up booking it in to have an exhaust made on February 4th! So, that gives me just under a month to completely finish everything else. Eeek is about the only work I can think of at that point. |
 I’ve also started finalising the rest of the plumbing. I’ve done the top hose, which was pretty straightforward. However, there’s a bit of an issue with the bottom hose.If you look at this picture of the engine as it came out of the bike you can see the bottom hose pointing out of the picture half way up on the right hand side. Note also that it’s much higher up than the inlet to the pump and that the exit of the oil intercooler connects into it with a swept-tee.
In the car installation the natural thing to do with the bottom hose is to keep it at the level of the bottom of the chassis and along to the front of the car. The problem is that this means the intercooler outlet will have quite a significant hump in it which might mean that it’s a natural place for air to accumulate meaning that water doesn’t flow through the intercooler at all. The CBR900 uses a different arrangement in that it has a special inlet port on the pump for the intercooler outlet rather than this swept-tee arrangement. What I think this means is that I’m going to have to re-think the arrangement of the bottom hose and run it at about the level of the standard hose that you can see in the photo. My concern about this is that in the car installation, where essentially the hose has to turn across the face of the engine towards the front of the car (the left of the photo) is that the hose is rather closer to the exhaust headers than I would like. Perhaps I’m worrying unnecessarily and the fact that the hose is full of water will keep it cool enough but I don’t really like it. Perhaps I’ll just have to wrap it with heat resistant stuff. Or perhaps silicone hose is good enough anyway in such a configuration? Could be… |
hi, looking at your oil cooler problem would it be possible to rotate the outer housing making the inlet more horizontal.
gav
No, there’s no room to do that. Anyway, I’ve since welded it back together and it seems to be hunky-dory now.