Geek_Law's V-Max Transformation

[Geek_Law]

You craaaaaazy - always use Gary McCoy for these things...

Hmmm ... didn't know about Gary. I'll definitely hit him up next time.

And then other guys that don't get parts shipped out right before they run off and get married and then think they did so you still don't get them when they get back - lol.

Sean

Ha! I wasn't saying anything. :confused2: You've got a pass in my book. I figured you were quite distracted. Heck, how many times do we get married in a life time? Five, maybe six times max :rofl_200: I'm only on #2.

I just assume when I think something should be ready I multiply it by about 3 x to keep my frustration on hold.:damn angry:

Yeah, 3x times whatever the commit sounds about right. Actually, that's about where each of these are gonna end up!

Oh well. Other than my wife's car having to sit out in the rain, it hasn't been all that big of a deal.

Supposedly I'm gonna see some painted parts tomorrow ... we'll see.

 

[zippo6]

Did I read that you have a set of engine guards? :clapping:
Do you want to part with them? If so, how much? Are they black or chrome (or pink to match your summer helmet!:rofl_200

 

[4gasem]

Hey when I did mine I was amazed how hard it was... More BS than anything I ever did before... Although this G8 is catching up quick! lol

Try UFO... If you want pain... He offers it up for free! He'll even rub salt in your wounds for nothing...

 

[Geek_Law]

Did I read that you have a set of engine guards? :clapping:
Do you want to part with them? If so, how much? Are they black or chrome (or pink to match your summer helmet!:rofl_200

The pink summer riding helmet is ABSOLUTELY NOT FOR SALE. Oh wait ...the engine guards. Excuse my outburst. I had planned to sell them, and took them off, and threw them aside like chopped liver. I thought that they would look like crap against the painted belly pan, with them being chrome and all.

Then I threw them in with pile of other stuff to have them powder coated satin black. I'm going to take a closer look at them in black against the belly pan. If I still don't like them, I'll offer them up and and you can have first dibs on newly powdercoated black engine crash bars. Else, I suppose you'll just have to look with yearning upon them as they live out their rightful place under my boots upon me max.

I'll know more in probably 2-3 weeks as all the various bits start being reassembled. I'll have some other stuff too, but not quite sure what as of yet:ummm:

Hey when I did mine I was amazed how hard it was... More BS than anything I ever did before... Although this G8 is catching up quick! lol

Try UFO... If you want pain... He offers it up for free! He'll even rub salt in your wounds for nothing...

Yeah, I had come across the UFO stuff, but I read here, a couple of times, that he didn't do right by some folks, and didn't work to set things right. I don't know the details, and frankly don't care. I took my business elsewhere.

I am a strong believer in bad karma.

 

[4gasem]

Yeah I wish someone would have told me the same... Boxenstopp is another good one...

Chris

 

[Geek_Law]

ANOTHER STATUS UPDATE:

Woohoo ... progress has been officially made.

I drove up to Vancouver Washington this afternoon at 4pm, and just got home now, 8pm. But, the painter had all the parts repaired, modified, primed blocked and reprimed, and certain parts had the yellow base coat on them so that we could drop paint lines.

And then when I got home, Sean's busa caliper adapters were in my mail box! Happy day. Thanks Sean.

I'll start posting pics of the various parts below.

 

[Geek_Law]

[[[[[[[ EDIT EDIT EDIT ===> REMOVED INLINE PICS AND ATTACHED INSTEAD - SEE BELOW ]]]]]

Okay, so I've got some pics here now. I'll just put some notes here at the top, and y'all can look at them as much or as little as you wish. A couple of things to keep in mind:

[] The paint is a yellow base with pearl on top. The pearl cannot be seen because there is no sunlight and because there is no clearcoat on the parts. Also, the paint looks very flat, but it will appear shiny once the clear coat is on.

[] Secondly, those of you with a keen eye will notice that some of the pieces have modified shapes. I'll just point them out here. The front fender now has the rear lip tapered, so it is all smooth behind the mount point. The side panels are the most obvious difference, with a much more modern smooth slope rather than the ridge and the horizontal lines on the bottom of each panel. The side scoops, as much as I love Yamaha for doing a great job with the max, have been debranded. Same with the tank. Finally, the RAD covers have had both holes filled on each side, so no more reflector and no more stainless steel insert.

At the top, you'll see pics from when I first arrived at the painter's, and at the bottom, you'll see that several pieces have tape lines on them for masking off the base yellow from the second color.

I'm pretty excited about getting the finished parts back. Supposedly they will all be done on Saturday. We'll see if that holds true or not.

 

[Geek_Law]

Here's a reminder of what all the pieces looked like prior to paint. I think I like them better now:

[[[[[[[ EDIT EDIT EDIT ===> REMOVED INLINE PICS AND ATTACHED INSTEAD ]]]]]

 

[4gasem]

WOW that's almost identical color to the '94 max. Is everything going to be yellow?

Chris

 

[gamorg02]

hey geek. they block photobucket here at work, do u mind uploading the pics using the attachments on the forum as well as putting inline so i can take a peak?

 

[Geek_Law]

WOW that's almost identical color to the '94 max. Is everything going to be yellow?

Chris

All the tins will have a yellow base with pearl and clear, so a "tri-coat." The tank, front fender, and rear fender will have black flames with silver highlights blended into the flicks.

The side scoops will be yellow on top, and black from the tapeline down, following the contour along the length and falling in between the two round semi-circles.

That leaves the side panels, the instrument cluster cover, the radiator shroud and face (and scoop inserts), and the belly pan/lower scoop all solid yellow. Well actually, the tri-coat yellow, so it will have a bit of a metallic or pearly look.

Most of the parts on the engine, at least everything that I was able to remove, is going to be, or may already be, powder coated satin black. I need to do a bit of sanding on the block itself as well, and re-paint some spots that have peeled off. From memory, those parts are the water pump cover, the stator cover, the clutch cover, the middle gear cover, the exhaust header covers (which I'm hoping are far enough away that they don't melt the clear coat ... hmmmm ...) and the little rectangular trim pieces.

I don't know what you call them, but the two round things over the carbs, as well as the little "Y" shaped thing will stay chrome, and I'm undecided regarding the three silver strips that run at a 45-degree angle over each of the four cylinders.

The calipers are being powder coated yellow just to liven things up a bit. You know ... to keep the whole thing from looking plain.

hey geek. they block photobucket here at work, do u mind uploading the pics using the attachments on the forum as well as putting inline so i can take a peak?

Sure. I'll try and load a couple of the more interesting ones up via the attachments function, assuming I can figure it out.

Keep in mind these aren't finished, but rather, just show some progress being made.

 

[gamorg02]

nice. i can see now! heh. looks goo so far.

 

[Geek_Law]

STATUS UPDATE:

Today was a good news bad news day. Here's the latest:

My wife called to inform me that many packages came! Yippee.

So I get home and find two boxes of seals/gaskets. One from the right prick bastards in NY who sat on my F*ing order for MORE than two weeks after charging my card $90.00 because one $6.00 gasket was on back order, and didn't think that I'd appreciate a phone call or even an email, but instead waited for me to call them. Assholes. Anyway, their shit arrived, less the missing gasket. They were nice enough to refund the price of the gasket that they failed to send, but of course, they still charged me the shipping for it. So that was a bonus. It's not worth another call to them to sort it out.

Anyway, I ordered the missing gasket from North County Yamaha in So. California on TUESDAY ... and that arrived today. Awesome service. I have no idea why I didn't just start there.

Also arrived today was my horizontal side mount license plate frame with red lights or brake light and also white downfacing lights for the license plate.

So, when I got home, my wife and I ran over to ace, purchased $30.00 worth of random nuts and bolts for reassembling the engine covers and also hardware to mount the license plate holder, came home, got the license plate holder mounted, and admired my completely stripped down totally inoperable motorcycle with a shiny new license plate mount.

More good news arrived when I called the powder coater. He says that he'll be done tomorrow (saturday) evening with ALL the engine covers and also the brake calipers too!

Now if he's not lying to me and actually has the stuff done, then I'll be able to get the bike running again this weekend, albeit without any tins :-(

Now for the bad news. The painter said he'd be done with all the parts by Friday. Sooooo ... I called him. Yep, no answer. He screens my calls and just doesn't talk to me instead of answering and saying, "sorry, not done yet." But that's ok. I love the guy. He rocks.

So I don't think I'll have tins this weekend, probably next, but I do think I'll have the engine back together and be able to hear the beast purr again. Something about having the guts of the engine exposed makes me very nervous.

I just tried to goto photobucket, but they are doing maintenance, so I'll post pics when they are back up (of the license plate mount).

 

[4gasem]

The '94 was pearl yellow as well. Good choice! It was the only year for them.

Chris

 

[Geek_Law]

That's pretty cool. I've seen a few yellow max's, but I thought folks had painted them that way. Anyway, it should look pretty cool with the contrast of the black flames on the yellow paint. At least I'm sure hoping it looks cool. Otherwise I've wasted some $$$.

 

[Nicki66]

i\Instead of spending $30 at Ace on nuts and bolts, try this place: http://www.boltdepot.com/Default.aspx

They have allot of the stainless fasteners that are on the Max. Prices are good also.

 

[Geek_Law]

Cool. Thanks for the reference. I'll check that out for sure. Ace is pretty steep, but it works in a bind. Unfortunately, they didn't have some of the longer M6 socket head bolts that I needed to reattach the water pump cover. I'll try your source.

 

[Geek_Law]

Here are some pics of the rear license plate frame that I mounted a couple of days ago:

 

[Geek_Law]

Today was a good day for the bike, but it's 1:00am and I'm exhausted. I got all the stuff back from the powder coater. First order of business, reassemble the brake calipers. What a nightmare.

I think if I did this again, it would take me about 30 minutes to do all three. Today, it took me about 3 hours! But now I know the trick. Oh, and for those who suggested this could be done without splitting the calipers, you're either smokin some crack or you've got special magic voodoo powers that I do not myself have.

The assembly and install was not all roses. The powder coater did not plug all the holes, or did so poorly, so I had to dremel some of the holes to give proper mounting surfaces, especially for the brake lines. One of the holes had so much damned powder coat paint in it that I snapped a bolt head trying to get the bolt into the hole! I didn't have a tap, so I was trying to cheat. Ugh. All is well now.

Here are some pics of the brake calipers below.

 

[Geek_Law]

Ok, somebody was asking about the front wheel. I think it was ghostintheshell, but others have asked me before how hard it is to remove a wheel. Well, I had never done it on the max, but it took about 5 minutes. I took pictures to document the process for the next guy. Seriously though, it's pretty easy.

First, remove the calipers by removing the two bolts on each caliper on each side. this isn't strictly necessay, but just makes life more pleasant for everybody in ear shot. See pics.

Second, remove on the LH side of the front tire, the pinch nut and bolt. See pics.

Third, remove the gigantic bolt that goes all the way through the wheel. I didn't have a big enough metric socket, but discovered that 3/4" was EXACTLY the right size. I used a large 14" ratchet arm and the sucker came straight out. Just loosen it until the threads are clear (i.e., it will stop moving out).

Now you are all loosened up, and everything will just fall apart.

So, fourth, make a quick mental note of the position and orientation of the spacer on the RH side of the bike. Its just a smallish cylinder in between the fork and the wheel, it presses right against the bearing. Yeah, you probably should put that back there.

Now, fifth, make a SECOND mental note of the position of the speedo unit on the LH side of the bike, again, in between the fork and the wheel, pressing up against the bearing again.

EDIT: Wait just a minute, please be sure you have the front wheel up in the air before you go removing the front bolt! Sheesh. I like to use an ATV jack, but just get the wheel in the air however you see fit.

Ok, sixth, pull out the long bolt. Be nice to it. Put it on a paper towel or something.

Ok, that's it. Fine, seventh, pull the wheel out, make a mental note of the RH and LH side or the FORWARD direction, or whatever you need to do to ensure it goes back on the right way. Seriously, make note of which way it goes. Now do whatever you want with the wheel, and assembly is just the reverse order of the above.

See my pics below for a step by step pictorial walk through of how to remove the wheel. Hell, I'll even put my pics of the rotor removal just for kicks.