CBR400RR NC29

"And if, you don't love me now You will never love me again I can still hear you saying You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)" If you have read the story with the same title on my VFR750 RC24 blog   then you are walking into a familiar yet fairly useful tail. The CBR400RR NC29 normally runs a 525 chain, but race bike. A 520 chain was needed as there is no way I am running a heavier chain than the VFR750. Now fairly well versed in this game I loaded up ebay and  JT sprockets who have a great website  which will show you every machine that a sprocket will fit. It was simple then to find the sprocket for my CBR then compare all the other bikes said sprocket would fit. 520 chain 112 links long  JTF565 front in either 15 tooth (standard) or 14 (faster acceleration) JTA1303 is an aluminium 5520 pitch rear with the same stud size and spacing, designed to fit an R6. I went for 42 tooth. There is the option to go smaller for tracks like Donny where ...

This is a work in progress but as the blog is being written at the same time as I am working (for a change), I thought I might as well publish it to make it a live update of sorts. So do pop back in the future to see when I finally give up and set the lot on fire. The " From Road rashed to race " Blog entry very quickly got a bit out of hand so I have removed some detail and made it more of a story. The real bones of any particular job, such as this one, are now in separate blogs which I will link between whenever relevant. This should make it easier to find useful info whilst still getting it all down. During the time I spent fart assing with engines, for the bikes strip down, I had spent a lot of time head scratching on the computer. Some of that time was on ebay and in doing so I had found the odd useful part. One in particular was a set of forks. They were listed as tidy but missing a damper rod and listed at a fairly low price as a result. N...

Intro The short version is (spoiler duh): There are now two CBR400RR's in the shed. One race and one road. Most stuff would be relevant to either but for the specific bike you should see the Road/Race prefix on the title.   I had always had the CBR400RR as a road bike but on the back burners was the option to turn it to the track should I decide to enter a SS400 class. There was no such class in my club (CRMC) so I was in no hurry to do this so had focused on tidying the old girl up. This was the case up until recently when the CRMC changed the Constitution to allow machines up to 1994 in. There still wasn't a class but the likelihood of one coming up had suddenly grown. I was also well aware that I could race this bike at the Bob Mac' and at the Belgian TT Geddine (and many more) as well adding value to another track bike. In this time though the bike had gotten too nice to race so I searched for an alternative. I resisted Andy Greens suggestions to race the NSR...

If you need to get to part D then parts A.B&C also need to come off and now you can reach part E more easily. Sod it lets just do the alphabet whilst we are here! The CBR had shown that it really needed new tyres in a recent "moment" so the wheels needed to come off. Seeing as the wheels were going to be off I might as well get that powder coating done whilst I am there. The NSR250 MC28  also needed its wheels powder coating and some fresh shoes wouldn't be a bad idea either. Might as well get them done together eh? Tyres were bought off of eBay in the form of a set of Bridgestone battleaxe S20 EVO's for the NSR and Metzeler M3 front and M1 rear for the CBR. This cut the costs right back which was good as this was going to be a very expensive month for me. I took the bare wheels to Viking powder coating near Bardney Lincolnshire who did a fairly good job. At £50 a wheel I expected a touch better, but the price was still good and so far the coating ...

You have an itch, you scratch it, you make it worse, you scratch again anyway. This CBR has an itch and I went and scratched it again. The main itch being a cooling system that was a touch excitable, not letting the bike reach temperature. The blame for that lay mostly with the thermostat presumably which is located, inconveniently, in that nice space behind the barrels and under the carbs, airbox and fuel tank. Such joy. Begin the fun! Off with the tank which was not rubber mounted and had the wrong bolts. Good start. The tank drains into a neat little cup thing so there is only one hose to disconnect that being the fuel feed to the fuel pump. Hang on this thing has a fuel pump? I have never heard that thing run up best order another one. That aside, literally, I had the airbox to crack into. Which, a few screws later proved to contain no furry animals and a grubby K&N air filter. About time I found something good and lucky I have the proper cleaner and oil. Next off...