OK.....I got good news and I got bad news.....
First the Good.......Bike is done!!
Once I picked the bike up from the Fab shop it took me about half a day to get her all together. Grimey old fabricator charged me $150 bucks and made me a head stay, swingarm spacers, welded on some motor mounts and made me all the brackets so that I can use stock CR500 pipes and silencers. I told him that asthetics were not a big priority and that I wanted funcionality so the work is not as pretty as some of the stuff I've seen you boys do.....but it works.
Swingarm Spacers
Front motor mounts
I had to modify the IMS tank significantly to make it work but a little patience with the heat gun and she went on......
Before
After
And here is the finished bike.....
I didn't do a whole lot of cleaning and polishing of the bike or motor as I wanted to get it all together, ride it to make sure everything worked and then tear it all down for a good clean up.
So now the BAD news
.......
Acording to the dude that sold me the motor, it has been sitting in his garage for a couple of years. So I drained the tranny oil and filled it with fresh oil, new plug (I used that NGK BR8ECM short plug gapped at .024). Once in the bike I went through my start up routine and it started on the second kick......and boy do it sound mean!! I let the bike idle in the driveway for about 3 minute and noticed that the motor came up to temp QUICK.....after 3 minutes I placed my hand on the jug and it was VERY warm.....so I ripped up and down the street a couple of times and went throught the gears. I noticed that the bike felt kinda low on power and under full throttle in 5th the bike started to stumble.......I pulled back into my driveway and shut her down......I looked down and saw some coolant dripping from the overflow line.....I am running a 1.6 cap and its brand new. So it looks like I'm having cooling issues. I did not mod the radiator like I want. I ended up connecting the two water outlets on the head with some spare radiator hoses and a "T" that I had. I wonder if this is the problem. Also I am running way more coolant than I am water in the radiator but I wouldn't think this is a problem.
Its ugly but this is the best routing I could come up with using the available space under the tank.
And this is the lower radiator setup
The hoses up top have some pretty gnarly turns and bends but no kinks however the tank does press down on them a bit once installed. I wonder if the flow is being restricted here. Another thought I had was air in the system causing cavitation which can also cause overheating.....Do the CR500's get air trapped in the system on fill up? And if so, how can I bleed all the air? I might yank all those hoses and try plugging one outlet and running a single hose to the radiator to see if it helps.
Help me out boys......I wanna ride her!!
