rgvlee

Well I decided to spend some time in the shed yesterday and do some work on the rgv250.

This time around I’m rebuilding the brake system. Top to bottom, new seals, braided lines and pads. This post covers the front end, I’m doing the back sometime this week.

Braided lines and pads

Seals

I decided to remove the entire system as it was easier (and cleaner) to deal with.

MC apart. Suzuki provide the entire MC internals so you simply strip, throw away the old and insert the new. They are very simple, 2 circlips hold the lot together. Once you remove the 2 dust seals it’s plain sailing. Reassemble with some brake fluid on the seals.

Then I split the calipers 1 at a time, popped the pistons, cleaned, and reassembled with new seals. I used rubber grease (I used castrol) to lube the seals that you can get from any auto store. Just a light smear is all that is required. I put a bit on the dust seal as well, but wiped the leading edge so it doesn’t attract dirt. I also put a very small amount of copper grease (anti-seize) on the leading piston edge to top brake squeal and a bit on the pad retaining pin as they were both hard to remove. All of the pads were lightly run over a rough surface, in my case a paver as all the concrete in sight was wet from the rain, prior to fitting.

1 caliper half done. The pistons were very dirty. I ended up cleaning them with a scotch pad and 1200 W+D to clean them up. After so many years of use with what looks like no maintenance, there is some pitting on them but they are smooth and should be fine as it’s all past the main seal.

My way of popping the second piston to avoid flying metal objects in the workshop.

All of the old seals were stuffed. 1 of the pistons was seized and took about 20 mins to pop. The lower pistons had a large amount of corrosion in the dust seal groove which I removed with a hook. If I had more time I would have had the calipers professionally blasted.

Back together and bled.

The braided line set from HEL replaces the splitter on the lower triple, which a) looks better and b) enables you to use a headstock stand.

I did try reverse bleeding the calipers with a syringe, but I must not have the hang of it as it didn’t seem to push the air out of the system as I thought it would. I will try it again though.

I ended up fitting some speedbleeders to the calipers and had great progressive lever feel after about 20 minutes, as good as my R6, so I am not sure what all the fuss is about regarding replacing the MC with one from a late model bike.

Old

New

Thanks to

Deet for hooking me up with the SP forks;

GD Engineering for removing the broken mudguard bolt and fork rebuild; and

Tim for his help fitting up the new front end.

I haven’t taken it for a ride yet, I’m waiting for the good weather to return this week. The rebound seems to be a lot more controlled than the stock forks.

VJ22 RGV250SP forks for Misty courtesy of rgvspares.com. 

After doing a fair bit on the R6 and the flip up licence plate project, I thought it was time to spend a few hours working on misty. For now I’ve: 

Changed the plugs from BR9ECM to BR10ECM (summer here so it’s been pretty hot, lots of high 30s/low 40s days).

Installed a new powervalve drain bottle, the old one was starting to look pretty average. Travel shampoo bottle for those of you playing at home, you just need to drill 2 holes - one for the hose and another small one so the system can breathe.

Dropped the needle a clip for each carburettor and installed 260/270 main jets (1 size smaller for each carburettor). I’ve also reset the main air jet flo commander back to 3 turns open.

I am hoping the carburettor changes will help the very small 8K flat spot that I have noticed at half throttle. I know I am breaking the golden rule of change one thing at a time, but it’s definitely running rich. The 260/270 jet change I think is granted, the needle we will see. As the problem is at half throttle and it was responding to a leaner MAJ I think this change will work. We will see.

I am still waiting for the penske rear shock to arrive, hopefully it won’t be too long now. I will fit it as soon as it arrives as it is something that I am really looking forward to.

Nearly done. Just need to sort the rear fender/licence plate and lube the chain.

I ended up going with a zero gravity screen. The puig is a better quality screen, but the zero gravity has the line I was looking for and the finish seems tougher if that makes any sense.

Clutch microswitch back on. The screw had a bit of loctite blue in there so I put a little dab on the thread.

Stator cover off. Old stator cover had some minor damage from a side stand drop. I figured I’d change it now whilst I have everything apart.

Rear wheel out so I can put on the new rear sprocket and clean up the swingarm.

New front sprocket. I’m going 15T on the front this time.

New rear sprocket. 50T on the back. All up, -1 +2 gear change compared to stock.

New chain on, 520 RK XW chain. I’m running these chains on both the RS and RGV and I’ve been really happy with them. At this point is was midnight Friday so I decided to call it day at this point.

Day 2:

Battery box out. I wanted fix up some dodgy work on the old battery box so I put a new one in. Not a hard job, also lubed up the boot cable. Huge difference.

All back together. Front sprocket tightened, lock washer (new) on the front sprocket punched, front sprocket cover back on, coolant reservoir back on and the tail all back together.

The high exit follows the line of the tail really well. Very happy with it.

I’m going to get some new fairing bolts this week. All I need to do is lube the chain and bolt the fairings back on and she’s good to go.

L

Old oil and filter out. Still pretty clean, I’ve only done about 700ks on this oil. 6 Months old though so no harm in changing it.

Sump off.

Remember the bolt in the middle. Desmogod knows all about that one Other than that, everything is normal here.

So why did I take the sump off? The old sump had been helicoiled. Being a perfectionist I wanted to fix this. This will also allow the sump to drain fully again (the drain bolt thread is cutaway, when you put a helicoil in this cutaway is covered by the helicoil). I put the drain bolt in by hand and felt straight away how easy it is to strip one of these, I think the cutaway itself is the issue. It’s something that I will have to keep in mind, use a ratchet to break the seal and loosen/tighten the drain bolt by hand.

New sump. I gave this a spray with brake cleaner (leaves no residue) and a blast of air, glad I did as there was a fair amount of metal shavings/castings in there.

Block face cleaned and lightly sanded with W+D to clean the old gasket off. It was easier to work on the bike on the floor than the bench, it allowed me to get under the bike.

Oil pickup cleaned. No point pulling the sump and not cleaning this. There were a couple of little bits on the screen, nothing unexpected though.

New sump on with new bolts

Fun time

Pain in the ass to get on! The slip joins were a pain to line up. I ended up taking the two outside flanges off and put them on the headers, lined up the two inner flanges and wiggled and jiggled the system on. The headers lined up perfectly with the chassis mount. New exhaust gaskets installed too.

The muffler was a comparitive walk in the park, max 2 minutes to install.

That’s the hard stuff done. On the home stretch now, probably a week or so and she’ll be back on the road. I will take some shots of the high exit once I have the rear panels on, it’s hard to visualise the lines without them.

Puig screen. I am not 100% happy with it at this stage, it scratches easily and had a couple from transit. I am going to get it polished.

My new tool, a cable oiler. I put a new clutch cable on whilst I had everything apart. They come dry when you buy them new. The new cable is smooth as silk now, huge difference.

New brake lever.

New clutch lever. Both levers were pretty easy to fit up. Just remember to use a bit of grease on the pivot points and watch the microswitch on the clutch lever.

Old exhaust off.

Up on T stands to fit the new lowering link.

Old link vs new link

Lowering link fitted.

Front sprocket and chain off. This was a mess before I cleaned it. I didn’t get a before photo but trust me, it was bad!

More to come!

Difference -> pilot air jet vs FC adaptor. The FC adaptor is smaller. What this means is with the FC at 5 turns open, the pilot air jet will be smaller than stock! So to compensate I will change the pilot jet from 27.5 to 25. Sorry for the quality, it was one of those things that was hard to get a good shot of with my camera (lee = camera noob).

Fuel bowl off to change pilot jet. You can’t see the pilot jet here, it’s down the largest of the 3 shafts next to the main jet. The big one in the middle is the main jet.

All back together.

I have settled on pilot air FC at 4 turns open and main air FC at 3.5 turns open. I hope to get it on the dyno soon to see how far off I am.

I took the day off work today to do some work on Misty.

I dropped the pilot jet from 27.5 to 25, and returned the flo commander to 3 turns out and I had the same performance as I did with the 27.5 and FC at 5 turns out. FC at 4 turns out with a pilot jet of 25 seems to have fixed up the 1/4 throttle choking I was experiencing which improves cruising considerably.

I did try a couple of plug chops today but didn’t get any reliable readings. I have read that modern unleaded burns too clean to give reliable readings. I am postive it is running rich but I will still exercise caution until I get on the dyno. I will get onto that now that I have fixed up the pilot circuit.

I took some photos of the 1.1 PAJ and the FC PAJ adaptors to show why I have had to go down a size on the PJ, when I bring the camera to work I will upload it.