Lucky Phil

How fing ugly is that active cruise control radar box on the front! Like an after thought, Seriously. Phil

Yep they used to do that. Phil

No it's, either a Stucchi or a Stucchi copy. They Mistral cross overs are rubbish as were the FBF ones. Phil

My grandfather lost vision in one eye totally as a child but he seemed to live a normal life with regards to depth perception. A guy my age in the office back when I worked also lost an eye vision wise totally as a child and he road bikes and raced as well. Another guy I knew back in the 80's who was a Ducati rider and racer only had one eye physically. He lost one in a racing crash when his glasses frame pierced his eye. He still road and raced and also was a crazy keen free rock climber. His profession was a bride player believe it or not. I don't know how any of them dealt with the depth perception issue though.

I'm trying to remember if the plates are cast or forged and unless something has changed over the last 10 years you'll not have much luck anodising them if they are cast. Your local anodiser won't usually touch any cast part because the surface finish never turns out well and will be powdery and blotchy. The Italian manufacturers such as Brembo have some sort of special anodising process for cast parts such as master cylinders and callipers etc that your average anodiser here and in the states does not. It's the reason cast ally car wheels aren't anodised but usually power coated. Billet and forged parts are different though. These days you can get powder coating that closely replicates an anodised finish anyway.

Oil either passes through or bypasses the oil cooler governed by the thermostatic valve in the oil distribution unit in the sump depending on the oil temperature. Phil

The other day I was mounting this C-tec remote charging thing to the car. It's mounted behind and under the back of the hood and has 3 LED's that blink once/second depending on the battery state of charge. Green/orange/red. I got sick of opening the hood to connect the battery tender so I installed this which required cutting the wires and re soldering them in this particular instillation. My pet hate/nightmare is soldering loose wires together insitu, it's a propper bastard. There's a few options out there for the job on the bench but I wanted something for the bench and in situ. Here it is, brilliant. The tongs have spring loaded blades to hold the wire halves and you simply squeeze the pliers and guide the bared ends of the wires together as the strands mesh then when you have the mesh correct you lock the pliers. The ends are held firmly in place so you have 2 hands free for the soldering and the joint doesn't move. Brilliant and worth the $15aud or 2 cents USD. Well worth the expense. The Ctec thing is also great. I don't like leaving anything on a tender. I've seen them fail and destroy the battery and surrounding stuff so I connect the tender and when it's charged the battery I remove it.

Your readings "go off fast" because they are never correct the first time and here's the reason why. This is what a set of rocker arms look like at 40,000klm on a well looked after V11 sport engine. What are the chances of an accurate valve clearance check repeatability when the rocker pads look like this and the feeler gauge blade straddles this wear area when you check the clearances? You wont actually get the gap where the pad face meets the valve but some sort of average between the unworn and worn spot which will be less than where the valve stem meets the rocker pad on the wear area. So set your valves to 0.15 and end up with around 0.2-0.25 or so. Next time you do the clearances you have the gauge slightly off centre and on the worn area only and bingo a totally different reading and you scratching your head about clearances. You either need to use the feeler at the wear point or replace the rockers. It's a common issue. Pointless analysing Gauge "feel" until you've dealt with this.

Some colours respond well to photographing in certain lights and a fill in flash can make the paint "pop" as well. Silver V11 Sports always look great to me in images but not as impressive in the flesh. Not bad or anything but never as good. Thats why I don't choose car or bike colours from the computer, I always want to see it in the flesh. The only colour Supra I could see in the flesh was a red one so thats what I bought. I mean you can't really go wrong with red but I'm not choosing a car colour off a brochure or computer image. So now we have 3 red cars! When the wife says "do you want to take the Red car for a spin" I still know what car she's referring to though.

Worth a try but if it's rusted together it's unlikely to work. A grease gun can only exert so much pressure, certainly less than a pair of hydraulic jacks plus my brand new shaft assy isn't totally sealed. When you slide it apart you can feel air escaping. There's a bleed hole somewhere. Phil

Heat and working it back and forth and some penetrating oil/concoction of your choice. Two things. You need to destroy the oring in the sliding section so the penetrating oil can access the splines and the heat needs to be applied to the bevel box end of the shaft as the female end is just a shield over the splined portion.

The reg doesn't need that much airflow as the fins and body act as a heatsink as well as cooling fins. Getting it into the airflow at your location also gets it into the road crud and rain water spray. Here's where mine is fitted and the second image is the location of the Reg on my 1198 Ducati. See the battery, below the battery is the EMU and under that is the REG, right behind the back of the oil cooler outlet and under a side fairing. Both seem to work ok. They aren't old Pommie bike charging systems. Phil

Looks brand new. good choice in mirrors. Phil

I'm thinking he wants the "original" as in the hard copy hand book owners manual, you know for "originality" May have interpreted the post wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. Phil

Wicking grade is low viscosity loctite and is designed to migrate into threads with the fastener already installed and torqued. It's also used extensively as a porosity filler when having porose castings commercially repaired. I used it to fix the porosity on my Daytona heads and did a how to thread on it. Phil

Use some loctite 638. Phil

Pull the side cover. If the post isn't loose clean the area down with solvent to flush out the oil thats migrated between the pin and the housing then apply Loctite wicking grade compound and re assemble. Phil

There's enough muppets around that can't be trusted to operate a vehicle in 2 dimensions let alone 3. I'm the exception of course so I'd love one:). No mention of range and performance. Phil

So for the 99-2001 bikes the distance is 3mm above the top triple and for the later Le mans and V11 Sport 2003 it's 36 mm and the Ballabio its 32mm. For the Ohlins bikes it's 30mm for the Rosso Corse and 26mm for the Cafe Sport. These are all starting points of course. The only thing to remember is if you raise the forks through the triples you need to make sure you don't run into ground clearance issues and the front guard hitting the oil cooler on full bump and that you still maintain the full 54mm fork OD dia in the lower triple clamp.

Yep. My bikes front end is basically the later long fork and top clip-on version.

The fork length varies depending on whether your bike has the clip-ons mounted above the top clamp or below. So the later bikes with the 43mm forks and top mount clip-on have forks 19mm longer in free length than the earlier swan neck clip-on bikes. The extra length is to accommodate the clip-ons above the top clamp obviously. Ohlins legs are 3mm longer again than the Marzocchi 43mm forks. So 22mm longer than the early forks. Phil