Here we go again

It seems a shame to have to strip the motor again as it's only done one run since the last rebuild. It would be better if there were a great big pile of go faster parts to fit into it - a 1500cc big bore kit would be great, and fancier cams etc .... but no, the only reason for it to come apart this time is to fit the new gearbox.

Wasted?: 3litres of fully synthetic oil, 2 or 3 gaskets, and a set of piston circlips.
Gained?: nowt but the ability to take a gsx engine apart possibly blindfolded. I'll have to work on blindfolded reassembly however.
Anyway, it seemed even easier this time, the hardest part was getting the starter nut off, but I've made up a puller now so next time so it should give in a bit easier.
Whilst it's apart I'll do a few jobs such as repaint the crankcases, and when i go to collect the gearbox I'll take the bottom half with me to have the 'trapdoor' modification done, this involves removing some of the webbing out of the bottom of the gearbox. The purpose? The purpose is to enable the removal of bent shift forks from the engine without having to strip the engine. They can be accessed through the sump, it's not easy and there's a good chance you'd end up with oil dripping in your eye, but it can be done between races if needs be. I don't intend bending any shift forks or shafts but I'll do the mods just incase.
I've added an electrical connector to the 3rd gear wire on the gear change indicator mechanism, This is the final part of the electrical changes needed for the auto box, once 3rd gear is reached a pin in the selector drum will complete a circuit and switch over a latching relay, re-enabling the shift kill mechanism. This diagram shows the circuit.

As good as it is bad

eBay ....
Sometimes i just bid on an item because it hasn't had many bids and i can't see it go for such a miserly sum. What happens then is nobody else feels the same way and i end up with it. In this instance I'm still not sure if it was a good buy or not. I bought a Vance & Hines Pro Stock type sidewinder exhaust, it's a bigger bore version of the sidewinder than the current one. The motivation for buying it was the pipe that's on the bike now has a small hole in the collector, and a couple of patches, so is a little worse for wear (but perfectly usable) the hole would let air in and potentially cause false readings on the Lambda sensor.
This one then has no holes and no patches but it has a few dents and grazes and is missing the header clamps or spigots that attach it to the cylinder head. The hope is that some will become available and I'll be able to use it. If not it'll get put to one side and used on the next drag bike i build.

I started taking the engine out a few days ago, i just left it draining the oil and unbolted everything holding it in. At weekend I'll pull it apart as i have a hunch that The Auto box could be ready this weekend too!

After a fair bit of messing with my laptop which decided to freak out just when i needed it, I've had it connected up to the Innovate box and configured its outputs to be compatible with the Nitrous controller. The Schnitz box will accept a 0-5v signal the same as most data logging equipment does, so i just set it to give a 0v signal at 10A/F working up to a 5v signal at 20A/F.
Where Air/Fuel ratio is concerned 14 is about right with 10 being very rich and 20 being very lean. I'm not sure what ratio to set the Schnitz box to deactivate the nitrous, I'll have to ask around for advice on that one.
It was however very easy to program and will hopefully prove invaluable.

Sorted for stopping and starting

With the best part of 2 weeks off work for the Christmas break it's given me a chance to get a few things done to the bike. I've not got the auto box yet so that's not one of the things I've been able to do, but i have finished most of the wiring for the LM-1 Wideband thingy, and now have a reset button with built in LED on the dash so that i can set the bike with shift kill disabled for when the auto is fitted.
Another issue tackled is the removal of the second fuel pump and regulator. Instead i've run 2 separate feeds to each pair of carbs, with an inline fuel tap to each. The nitrous pump is then fed from both these hoses via a Y Piece. I have concerns though that the nitrous pump will siphon off too much fuel and deprive the carbs of any. I'll just run the pump when i get the bike outside and see what happens.

For Christmas i have a new gadget for when we go racing .... a FlyCamOne2. The Flycamone is a miniature video camera that is designed with Model Airplanes in mind but is extremely suitable for attaching to a bike for capturing onboard footage!
I did some research into helmet type cameras at first but they are all pretty expensive, most are just a camera lens and still require attaching to a recording device which you need to attach somewhere else. Also the quality of the recording on most of them is not what i would expect.
The flycam however is different, it's very very small as you can see from the pictures and is fully self contained. Recording to an ordinary SD flash card. The 1Gb card i fitted cost £4 and allows upto 40 minutes of recording at a resolution of 640x480.
The video quality is very good and the only trade off is the sound quality which isn't it's strong point. From what i can gather they are almost indestructible too so should survive a drag race or two!
Because it weighs almost nothing it can be attached using just a tiny square of velcro and it can be mounted pretty much anywhere and any way up as the lens can swivel through 90 degrees.
And because it's designed with models in mind it has facility to be switched on remotely with pin outs for a remote switch.
There are some good reviews of the Flycamone2 on the net and some sample videos that show the quality of the video. Heres one from Youtube.

Starter cart MK2 has progressed nicely too, it's all finished other than the frame need priming and painting. It has an all aluminium battery box that levels the batteries and i've stripped the innards out of my halfords 12v tyre inflator and squeezed them into the box along with the batteries. So we have compressed air on tap! handy for when the tyre pressure needs adjusting or the air shifter requires topping up after long waits in the pairing lanes.

And lastly ... I've bought and fitted a brand new front brake disk, and the caliper has been stripped down, the pistons polished and new seals fitted. The reason for all this is the old disc had badly worn bobbins which made it impossible to center the caliper and made a constant clicking noise when pushing the bike around.