Funny MUI story from another forum

[Cammie]

MUI=Modding Under the Influence

Rassie's riser bar conversion story...how not to
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This story is not supposed to be used as a guide to do any mechanical work on any motorcycle and any advice offered may be hazardous to your health and property. Be forewarned. Now read on and enjoy.

By way of an introduction to folks who do not know me yet. My name is Rassie van Aswegen or Rusty van Asswagon since I have become an American. I was born in the central parts of South Africa back when General Motors was still Corporal Motors. About 10 years ago I traded my loin cloth in for a full set of leathers and some business attire, moved to the USA and now live happily in Pennsylvania when it is not covered in snow.

I was actually shopping around for a salvaged (did I mention I am cheap) RC51 when I happened to spot the SV for a really good deal. It is not an RC51 like I really wanted and I struggled with that for a while but it is a V-twin and Suzuki’s have great racing credentials so that has to count for something, besides it is not like I bought a Harley. So I decided to go for it anyway. I have since come to love the SV and it turned out to be a better decision than an RC51 would have been for several reasons but that is another story.

In all fairness to my superior deal making capabilities and trauma aside the bike only had 320 miles on it and from a distance looked like it was in perfect shape. Besides by the time I left with it on the trailer the guy I bought it from was scratching his head as to how I talked him into providing all the required parts to fix it, included in the price no less. Now that right there should have sent off the alarm bells. Like my grand pappy always used to say “when it is too good to be true, it probably is”. Long story short I am still waiting for the parts to arrive but in my defense it was still a good deal. Live and learn.

OK so back to the story. My buddy Kappie, who owns a VTR1000, and I went to ride the Tail of the Dragon late last year. We also did a 220 mile ride up and then down again on the Blue Ridge parkway. After day two on the parkway I felt like someone had used my body to make one of those Karate movies with Jet Li in it. You know those where some Asian dudes, without shirts, making pissed off cat like sounds, come out of nowhere and kick the shit out of our hero Jet, just so he can make a miraculous comeback at that exact moment just before he dies and still manages to then turn around, achieve unaided flight, turn the whole place into confetti and the Asian guys into bags of hamburger meat, super sweet, he must be an SV owner. Anyway I digress again. My legs, shoulders, back and wrists were killing me after 6 hours of riding. I guess the fact that I have a GSXR750 front end on my SV (another story for later) did not help my riding position much other than on the race track pretending to be Kevin Scwantz. So after we got back from the trip I decide to look into fitting a regular motocross type handle bar on the SV. That is off course a decision based on the fact that I am cheap, since Convertibars or Helibars all cost like $400 bucks, which is way off of my “affordability” scale.

As usual I get a six pack of Michelob Amber Bock brain food and venture into the basement to “strategize”. After looking at one of my downhill racing bicycles I come up with the idea to use stuff from a bicycle to adapt the top clamp to accept the handle bar. I figured I ride like 6 foot drops and shit with my downhill bicycle, it should stand up to the abuse of a measly road ride on my SV just up and down the Blue Ridge parkway. So after about the fourth Amber Bock brain revitalization treatment my brain is starting to fire on all 6 cylinders like an old Honda CBX, creative juices overflowing. I know this since I had to go take a piss twice. Anyway so I go digging into my box of bicycle parts and I quickly find some really juice looking pieces that will be perfect for the job at hand. In particular I found a “gooseneck” type steering stem that inserts into the steering stem of the fork and then bolts down by way of a wedged clamp inside the steering stem. Now that there was the find of the century since the stem part fitted right into the GSXR steering stem. I mean no drilling required, no special fabrication nothing. Just drop the stem into the GSXR steering stem tighten the nut, attach handlebar, switches and levers and off you go. Man was I ever excited especially after I found some carbon fiber handle bars lying at the bottom of the box of parts. This is going to be sweet.

After fiddling with the routing of the cables and hoses for a while I put everything together, bolted everything down (to spec, meaning tighten until it starts to strip then back it of a tad) and stood back to admire my handy work. I even mention to my cat, sitting on the trunk of my wife’s car, how great an innovator and engineer I am. There it was the bicycle steering stem sticking out of the GSXR steering tube, carbon fiber bar attached, everything neat and tidy. Very spindly looking but other than that I could not believe why the motorcycle industry engineers had not though of this before. Now right there, I should have seen the warning signals.
 
Anyway I fire the SV up and sit there admiring my work while it settles into a lumpy V-twin idle. When the needle hit “nice and toasty” I kick it into gear let the clutch out slowly and started heading out the garage. Now as you exit my garage there are some shrubs to the left before you get to the driveway. You basically aim for the gap between the shrubs on your left to head down the driveway towards the street. So I started to nudge the bars to the right to set me up for the left turn when all of a sudden the bars went to full right lock, at the same time the throttle got whacked wide open since the wheel was pulling left and the bar to the right. The SV starts to buck forward and heads straight for the shrubbery to my left, bouncing off the bumper of my wife’s car that is parked as you exit the garage.
 
My cat that was sitting on the trunk of the car freaks out and jumps right onto my head, clawing away at my face, scalp and whatever else it is desperately trying to attach too. I go plowing through the shrubs, ride over a gnome that was strategically placed in front of the shrub and hit the large concrete fountain with surrounding angels just behind it. The bike stands up on it’s nose and both the cat and I go flying over the locked out bars that have now come out of the steering tube only held on by wiring and hydraulic pipes. As I pull myself together and get up off the ground to inspect my situation, cat nowhere in sight, my know it all neighbor who is a workshop manager at the Subaru dealer walks over to see what happened. He helps me pick up the bike and inspects my now not so sweet looking handle bar conversion. He reckons that the amount of surface the clamp inside had to grip on was easily overcome by the force generated by the tire and the weight of the front end. Hence it would never have held together anyway. Smart ass, damn he keeps doing that to me, oh well live and learn.

It took me 3 hours to polish the scratches off my wife’s car and another 3 to restore the garden to it previous condition. The cat is still missing and I look like a 16 year old zit riddled teenager with hundreds of holes in my face from the cat claws.

Live and learn. 

[Cammie]

Here's another (forgive the Harley bashing but I did nolt want to edit the story)

Rassie’s Moriwaki Honda CBR1000RRFC story.
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This story is not supposed to be used as a guide to do any mechanical work on any motorcycle and any advice offered may be hazardous to your health and property. Be forewarned. Also just in case anyone was wondering the “actual” project turned out just fine. I will try to scan some pictures and post them later. Now read on and enjoy.

Back when bikes were still big and heavy, men were strong, tattoo’s were scary, Yul Brunner and Telly Savallas were the only totally bald guys on the planet and only poofter’s wore earrings, I had this burning desire to own a Honda CBR11000RC. Almost the same sort of desire I had for Bo Derek since if my memory serves me right it was about the same time that the movie “10” was released.

Since I was poor and cheap, even back then, I decided to build one myself using parts from different bikes from the Honda family. This decision was based on the fact that I already had a rolling CB750F chassis sitting in my garage. My buddy Georgie had a VF750F (first Honda V4) front end sitting in his garage. The VF was just released about 6 months before so the technology was brand new. He also had a backup Moriwaki CB750F race motor with a set of 1000cc Moriwaki pistons already installed sitting in his garage. You can see where I am going here right. Well after some brain treatments via a 6 pack, four out of the five people in my head were all saying, this looks like you can actually build a next generation CBR1100RC. I ignored the other person (#5) in my head who was in violent disagreement with the idea, citing safety, monitory and sanity issues mainly, to punish him for being such a killjoy I drank his beer. So the idea was to create sort of an early CBR900RR if you like, call it the birth of the CBR1000RRFC (the RR standing for Rassie Racing off course).

This was the plan. Take the 750 frame, add the Moriwaki motor, VF front end and some other bitts and pieces I had lying around and hey presto you have a bike that is even better than an 11RC and even more of a conversation piece at the local breakfast run than the new, for then, VF750F. Breakfast runs, damn that brings back memories. Back in those days we did not need track days since we had breakfast runs and all the cops were also bikers who understood the need for young tough testosterone infused men to blow off some steam every once in a while. Hence they mostly looked the other way when we were riding our favorite back roads in full leathers styled after the likes of Eddie Lawson, Barry Sheene and Ron Haslam. They even showed up at our favorite breakfast joints to check out the biker bling. Oh and another thing I cannot remember ever seeing a Harley there, back then Harley riders were the dudes with the scary tattoo’s and long hair who could be found working on their steeds more often than riding them. I believe the Japanese actually tried to copy a Harley back then but when they finished their R&D they were unable to manufacture a bike that met the functionality specifications which was as far as they could see to, be shaped like a brick, always leak oil, fully chromed, vibrate such that parts kept falling off, only made a few horses and styled based on farm implements. The reason was simple their manufacturing technology was just to advanced. Besides their test mule prototype based on the specifications was a small chromed box rated at 1.375 hp that would start up after several attempts, vibrate like hell, leak oil like crazy and would break after 30 minutes, requiring 2 hours of repair before restarting the cycle, it just did not make sense and they figured it probably would not sell so they abandoned the project and made the Honda CB750. Hindsight is 20, 20 right and clearly they did not get it, hello it is a fashion accessory already, you wear it more than ride it. You Harley chaps from York, PA will know.

Anyway I digress and the memories keep flooding in, now back then it was not exactly the same as today in other ways either, since bikes were crap by today’s standards. For instance my once “super kick ass” mean Suzuki GT750 water cooled two stroke would wobble like a bitch whenever you unloaded the rear by getting off the throttle anywhere just shy of straight up. Talk about your tank slappers, this puppy felt like it had a hinge in the middle. That is another story for another day and I digress once again, my apologies.

So to get back to the story. I made some phone calls to Georgie’s place and he agreed to sell me the motor and the front end and since he is a bike mechanic, he made sure there were no guarantees thrown into the deal. He also made me sign a paper that had something to do with an “indemnity” or such, stating that he had seen my previous work. I took it as a compliment and signed the damn paper. That evening I had everything sitting in my garage, ready to start building my dream bike. As usual I had to strip everything to clean and inspect it. So after about 3 hours of cleaning and inspecting I had the motor sitting on my bench and the front end all nice and shiny complete with that sweet looking 16 inch front wheel and those big twin piston brakes, like I said state of the art man. I resisted the urge to strip the forks since they were still fairly new. I started making a list of parts that I would need and found to my amazement that I only needed an 11RC gas tank. These things were as scarce, but I had hope. I called my favorite salvage dealer Evil Eric over at the Bike Hospital and what do you know, he had one but it needed some work. Since it is made of aluminum it meant a quick trip to my other buddy Martin over at Racecraft, my local bike shop, to weld on some wire so we could pull the dents. Now I have everything I needed except a battery to complete the project.

Since back then they did not have digital cameras I had to do everything based on experience and instinct. Now that there should have sent the alarm bells ringing. Anyway only person #5 was listening to that and we were not talking since I drank his beer the day before. I decided to call my best buddy Fuzzy for some help. Now just to fill you in on my circle of friends, Fuzzy and I come a long way, he is a bike expert, ladies man, a man amongst men and he is also the strongest person I know, except maybe Jet Li or perhaps Chuck Norris or maybe Jack Bauer from 24, but it will be close. That fight would probably result in the death of all four of them and the rest of the planet would probably suffer severe damage in the aftermath, resulting in the next ice age. As you can imagine then with Fuzzy around you did not need any hydraulics, torque wrenches, air tools or heavy lifting equipment. It was a question of hey Fuzzy can you get that motor over there for me and when you turn around he is standing there with it asking “where do you want me to put it?”, like it is a small baby he is holding, no strain, no stress just raw unadulterated power. Have a bolt you can not get loose, call Fuzzy over, had a Gold Wing fall over on you pinning you down, screw 911, call Fuzzy. Did I mention that he is also smart as hell and even has his own world wide patented invention. Anyway you get the picture, he is one bad ass cool dude.

So Fuzzy comes over, we get a six pack of brain revitalizing and personality enhancing drinks, and we look at the parts lying all over the floor in my garage. We start by piecing things together. First we put the VF750F front end on the CB750F frame. Not a bad fit, a little shorter wheelbase, which will make for faster steering and therefore better handling. However the steering stem is too short and does not stick out through the top of the steering head. I check around the garage and spot some galvanized steel plumbing tubing with threads cut inside on one end and outside on the other. Upon closer inspection it screws right onto the steering tube where the original nut is supposed to go and after filing the hole in the top clamp bigger, it fits over the pipe and hey presto, longer steering stem. Problem solved and so easily too. Must admit the Home Depot style plumbing grade nut I used to tighten the top triple clamp down did not look really nice, but hey it is a custom bike right. Fuzzy just shook his head in amazement at my ingenuity.

Next I ask Fuzzy to get the motor, always scares the shit out of me when I do that, since when I turn around there he is standing with the motor in his arms, all casual like, imagine what a person like that could do to you, good thing he is mild mannered. I ask him “very nicely” to maneuver it into the frame and make a mental note to limit his intake of brain revitalization drinks to two, just in case, power without control is dangerous. It fits perfectly and we bolt it down to spec. Man I cannot believe how easy all this is. Alarm bell’s, hello person #5 calling over here. Anyway I ignore the SOB and continue pushing forward. I connect up all the cables, which involved some really tight cable routing and even some kinking. Now I know what you are thinking but I checked that the cable will still move, some. Next I mounted some Marzocchi rear shocks I had sitting around. They were a little longer than stock and will improve turn in even more by raising the rear end some. The rolling bike without fairings and tank looked pretty trick. We used an 11RC rear wheel and a VF front wheel. They were of similar design and everything looked remarkably “factory”. All we had to do now was figure out the electrics and we could try to start it. Now the electrics, this is where it starts getting tricky.

As you can imagine, being electrically challenged, at least when it comes to bike wiring, this task was not to be taken lightly. Since I did not have a battery I decided to connect the wiring harness directly to an outlet. Hey to the uneducated 12v and 120v is just a measly one 0 apart. Anyway as I said I did not take this lightly so I inserted a fuse in the live wire running from the outlet, you cannot be to careful with this stuff. I figured any current will work and besides I had read somewhere that it is the amperage that kills not the voltage and I had no other way to see if any lights would go on or not and it could not wait until I got a battery. At first nothing happened, then I turned the ignition on. All the lights on the bike and clocks flashed all at once, and I mean flashed, like the flashes they used in the olden days, you know those that produced a popping sound. Next the fuse box went up in flames. Took me 3 hours to change all the bulbs replace the burnt wiring and put in new fuses. I now realize that voltage does count and that 12v and 120v volt is not even close. Live and learn.

While I was waiting for the battery I decided to work on the paint and body. The tank had most of the dents removed and only required a small amount of bondo. The rest of the fairings were made by my other buddy Joopie who made an “undercover” living out of copying bike fairings in fiberglass. He ran his operation like he was involved in software piracy or drug dealing. He never openly advertised his services and when you called he would always ask who you were before answering any questions. I think he must have honed his sales and business skills selling weed or something. I am not sure but I think he still does the same thing today and may have branched into CD’s and DVD’s . Anyway his parts were very well made and required almost no work to prep for paint. So I got all the parts and painted them in no time at all. I used a basecoat of very dark, midnight, extremely off-white, black hole, black and then painted some Blue, Red and Green iridescent pearlescent flakes over the black in 3 separate sections. This made the bike look black until it caught some rays of light when the flakes would produce red, green and blue hues. Almost like today’s flip flop paints. Very trick looking. Remarkably this went off without a hitch if you exclude the fact that all the parts fell off my rickety home made painting platforms at least once and had to be re-flatted and sanded 3 times and the fact that a dust storm came through after the second coat of clear, so I had to sand the parts down again and shoot on another coat of clear, all in all not to bad. Like I said pretty uneventful.

So the next day I diligently and meticulously followed the instructions to fill the battery and then charge it properly, for at least 8 minutes, as indicated. When I installed the new battery I was not going to take any chances with the electrics so I put a 110v fuse between the battery and the positive lead wire. I switched on the ignition and nothing happened. Damn. This will require some brain function enhancing fluids so I went to get a six pack out of the fridge. After about 3 hours of inspection and ample thought enhancing fluids I realized that the battery was dead. I checked the instructions again and noticed that it said “charge for 8 hours” not 8 minutes so I connected it up again and got another 6 pack of female beauty enhancing beverages and decided to wait it out.

After watching the needle on the charger for about 30 minutes I started getting some new ideas about turning my charger into a “quick” charger but for once mister #5 in my head made sense as he reminded me of the previous 12v vs. 120v episode. The other four voices in my head did put up a good fight though and I think it would have been interesting to see if I could invent technology to quick charge a battery. There were so many sweet looking electrical parts lying around in may garage but in the end, I decided to go over to Fuzzy’s place to hang out until the charge was completed. No sense in reinventing the wheel.

So the next morning I was all excited when I rolled over the wife on my way to the bathroom. She was not to happy but I take what I can get. Anyway back in the garage I installed the battery again and connected all the wiring. This time the ignition light came on when I turned the switch. I hit the starter and after a couple of huffs and puffs the motor fired right up. This turned out to be a big mistake since I had only test fitted the Kerker exhaust system with some loose wire. As the thing fired up it spat the rear slip on off and blew the headers off the front and the resulting noise woke up half my neighborhood. Even so much so that Joe Pereira, who you may or may not know was the president of the “Hells Angels” chapter in my town back then, came running over from his place a couple of houses up the road. He thought he had heard a Harley. I told him to piss off, no Harley’s here man, we are respectable people over here. I immediately switched off the bike to save myself further embarrassment, I mean a Harley, damn. Anyway after re-installing the exhaust and tightening up all the bolts to spec and knowing that it runs I was ready to put on all the fairings and take this baby out for a test run.

Well it sounded really simple and even though Joopie’s fairings look really nice they do not necessarily fit really nice. So after some drilling and filing and scratching of fresh paint I had all the fairings mounted. Note to person #5, test fit all parts prior to paint. I mean he has to get some credit right. Anyway there I was all kitted out in helmet leathers the whole trip ready to ride my new radical CB1000RRFC. Man was I ever excited. I started it up and let it warm up a little until it was idling nicely without the choke. I rev it a little to make sure the motor is running fine. I pull in the clutch, kick it in first, smile as the wife takes a picture, and set off up the street. Now my street where I was living was long and straight and had a 2 way stop about half a mile up the road. So as soon as I have the bike nice and straight up I open the throttle in first and the bike takes off. Man does the thing kick ass. It revs really quick and before you can say “knife” it is into second gear. Now during all this commotion, mainly caused by the Kerker racing exhaust, one of the neighborhood dogs, which back then was not required to be on a leash, comes running up to the street to investigate, probably thinking there is something coming that it can chase, and rightly so, since yours truly is hauling ass up the street now probably already doing about 65mph. I spot the dog and start to roll off the throttle, nothing happens, my mind races back to the kink in the throttle cable, person #5 makes a rude comment, I tell him to piss off, this is not a good time, the stop sign is now approaching fast.

Since I am such a fast thinker I hit the kill switch and slam on the brakes. The front end starts to compress, putting a serious load on the steering stem. I instinctively look down at the nut holding the top clamp on, what nut, oh shit, and the next thing I know the front wheel is riding up against the exhaust resulting in more front braking than I can handle, I start to move forward, faster than the bike. My ass clears the seat, the dog latches on to my now exposed ass, and we both go flying over the bars straight past the stop sign, right into the path of Joe on his Harley. Joe slams on the brakes nothing happens (Harley brakes suck) luckily he was on a Harley so he was naturally going really slow. He manages to come to a stop right next to the dog and I. He jumps to one side the Harley falls to the other side on top of me, pinning me down. The dog bites into my leg since the Harley exhaust is now burning it’s tail. Someone yells “Call 911”. All I can say is no damn it, call Fuzzy, and then I passed out.

When I finally regained my faculties I was sitting on the curb, the wife inspecting the bite marks left by the dog on my ass and leg. Joe was complaining about scratched chrome. The dog was sniffing my crotch and voice #5 in my head was now the chief talker, basking in the glory of his “I told you so’s”. It took me 3 hours to polish the scratches out of the chrome on Joe’s Harley. Took 3 hours to fit the right size triple clamp on the CB1100RRFC, replace the kinked cable with a longer one and repaint the lower fairing.
 
Live an learn.

[JC]

Haha, fun stories!