Ignition Coil Conversion

Ok so the old style ignition plugs and coils are big, cumbersome, and outdated, they also will make fitting the new fairings i have planned difficult to fit. Time for a revamp...

 - so here is the front left coil, where i sprayed it black and also turned the unit around to see if i could make them fit in with my new ideas

 -Front right coil... even with them black and turned around, they arent goin to work with the new fairings, or they will work but it will look messy.

 - The coils and plugs for cylinder 1 and 3. if im going to replace the front coils, i may aswell do the whole lot and my guesses are i will probably make a nice little weight saving on the way.

 - All the coils, plugs and related bolts/fixings removed!

 - I decided to go with CBR1000rr ignition coils... theyre the same length as the vfr's and use the same 2 pin wiring connections.

 - I wired up the cbr ignition loom to the vfrs, whacked em all in and hey presto jobs a goodun!... nice and neat direct ignition coils fitted, a less messy looking system that saves weight too.

 - The only remnants of the old coils are holes for the rubber grommet nuts to fit the old units to the frame.
I'll think of a way to patch these over at some point.

- A lot cleaner looking, this has been a successful little mod

Footrests and Exhaust

A quick little mod i wanted to make was the with the rearsets... I was bidding on some Harris ones to replace, but they ended up selling for silly money and this project isn't about throwing shed loads of money at the bike.

So what to do... get rid of the hero blobs... your knees are a much better lean angle indicator!

Heres the original set up:

I took the pegs off and then realised the standard vfr rider pegs weigh more than expected. I grabbed a spare pair of pillion pegs, cut and drilled them to fit, and instantly its better looking, lighter and cost me nothing

Bought some pillion hangers with nice detailed pegs.

 






Decided to spray them to match the rear subframe and keep the majority of the bike black.

 Then added a the lockable latch.

So the exhaust has been abit of a head scratch for me in terms of what to do... originally i wanted to create an underseat exhaust, but this is probably a little out of my reach as i don't have the materials or equipment to make this happen.
The main look i wanted to achieve was to make most of the rear wheel (as visible as possible). So next i thought about a micro or stubby can... but researching lengths etc, these cans would still hide some of the wheel.
Here it is without a silencer...

 Ideally i want it to look just like this... if anyone has any ideas how i could achieve this please make a comment... and yes i do need a silencer before anyone suggest running without one.

For the time being i have just stuck with my Scorpion race can, but bent the link pipe enough so that i could angle the can higher (following the straight line of the subframe), making the wheel more visible than the original set up, and held in place with a small bracket i whipped up.

Finished the exhaust off with some titanium heat wrap:

Headlight/Indicator/Tail Tidy

So need to sort out the reg plate/holder... the 'Volar' intergrated light doesnt have a white down beam to illuminate a licence plate, so ive bought these small 'Viti con LED' lights that bolt directly on the tail tidy ive got...








Tail Tidy in place and lights wired up directly into the side light loom...

 ...Reg plate on...

illuminates nicely, job done :)

Next on the wiring agenda which should be the last in the electrics dept is to sort out the connections for the new Headlight unit and Indicators.
The vfr800 has a great headlight unit in terms of illuminating qualities due to it duel High/Low beams (nice and symmetrical as well), yet is a big unit and displays a touring style bike look. I want to change to headlight to something smaller, willing to compromise on the illumination aspect if necessary.
The the Headlight of choice, continuing with the HONDA continuity, will be a cbr600rr's... changes that need to be made to make this happen are all down to the connectors. And i know people may point out that the cbrs single headlight on low beam looks odd and i may get comments like 'one of your headlights are out', but honda designed the cbrs headlight to be like this, so that oncoming cars at night wont confuse the light as a cars headlight 150yards away (2 beams from a headlight at 30yard would look like a cars headlight at 150yards away).

There is a mod for anyone wanting to keep duel low/high beam on a cbr headlight unit and would require no changes to the wiring. Simply buy H4 bulbs and cut the metal plates the bulb sits in to fit into the cbr light housing. Really simple! Why am i not doing this? - purely because if a headlight blows then everytime you would have to buy a new H4 bulb and then cut the metal mounting plate for it to fit. Rigging up the wiring to the cbrs system means whenever a bulb blows i can simply just buy a H7 bulb and replace it straight away.

 - The vfr uses a H4 connection (left), utilising 3 wires per bulb (high beam, low beam and neutral)... where as the cbr uses a H7 type connection, using only 2 wires per bulb 1.(high beam and neutral) 2.(low beam and neutral)

- The headlight wires get removed from the plastic locating blocks, the spade connectors removed and the wiring loom is stripped back to the start of the left hand indicator wiring stem.

- The 2 sides of headlight wires are matched up so that the low beam (white) wires can be joined together, and the high beam (blue) wires can be extended for the right side headlight.

- The cbr headlight unit has its small central sidelight, similar to a vfrs but with different connectors... connectors removed, replaced with new bullet ones.

- At this point the indicator wires were stripped back and new bullet connectors soldered on to them.
















- Using new H4 connectors and simply removing the 3rd wire works perfectly for the new connection. this is then wired up to the loom.

The headlight switch inside the unit on the left handle bar needs to be modified so that current is only drawn to the low beam on a low beam setting and both high and low beams receive currrent on the high beam setting... i achieved this by taking the switch apart and bridging the low beam switch plate with the main headlight loop plate with some solder.
This configuration will give:
Low beam = left bulb ON / right bulb OFF
High beam = left bulb ON / right bulb ON


Wiring all finished and insulated back up!

Rear End and Wire Management

After the rear light was wired up, everything else needed to be altered to be able to fit in the new subframe and on the undertray.

Firstly the rectifier needed to be moved. As with all rectifiers, they get HOT, so it needs to be located in vented place. I didnt want the rectifier to be visible as i didnt want the clean look of the bike to be compromised. So with the rear fairing i have chosen which is from a cbr600rr, it has air vents up by the pillion seat which would be a perfect place to locate the rectifier so that its hidden but gets the sufficient air flow to cool the unit down. 

To make this possible the wires to the unit need to be extended. An extra 250mm (approx) of 30 amp wire was added to the 7 wires of the unit. The unit then cabled tied in position.

The Earth cable also needed to be extended aswell as the 4 neutral wires leading to the battery. All other wires are put into position and units like the ecm/ecu and relays are Velcro-ed into place on top of heat resistant foam. A Battery cover was made to finish.  

So heres a sneak peek of the vfr800rr rear end. Its not been cleaned and a few other finishing touches need to be made but I think shes lookin good :)

Rear Integrated Light Unit

Hey all, sorry for the long delay since my last post, but im back working on the bike with the goal of having it finished very soon.

Coming back to work on the bike and I find that my fuel pump isn't priming... Great... Working round the whole bikes electrics i check the continuity and voltage across the loom that the fuel pump would use... All working fine... I take the fuel pump out to have a good look at then it stares me in right in the face!

A good tip for people having trouble with their fuel pump not priming is to check all the connector in the circuit carefully as this will be the problem 90% of the time. In my case one of the male connectors on the base of the fuel pump had corroded pretty bad and gone rusty. As it was in a difficult position to clean i used a dremmel to remove the rust and then applied contact cleaner... Jobs a goodun.

Ok back to the actual post. To save weight and carrying on the theme of giving the bike cleaner lines, i wanted to install an integrated tail light unit. The units that used LED's and integrate the side light, brake light and indicators all in one small compact unit. So to match up with the CBR600rr rear end i have planned for the bike i purchase a 'solar cbr600rr integrated tail light unit' off of ebay. the unit was cheap but removing it from its packaging it looks to be fairly decent quality. Problem with the unit is that it came with no instructions and im trying to wire it up to a vfr not a cbr...

-Heres the unit, as it came, no extra fittings or instructions given. A;so the connectors at the end and the wiring system is completely different to the vfr.

- I firstly shortened the units wires losing the connectors it came with, stripping the ends ready.

-I put shrink wrap around the majority of the wire to keep it neat and for some protection. Also i soldered some male bullet connectors on the ends.

- i made a plastic bracket and attached this to the undertray i made so that the light could be bolted to this using some wing nuts. before fixing it was made sure it was in the right position by using the rear fairing i will be using.

- Here are the cluster of wires used for the VFR's rear tail light unit. Here you can see the completely different wiring colours/connectors/numbers/set-up.

- Here the two wiring systems together. I striped the vfr wire connector and separated them all. Then using a multi meter i deducted what each wire for the vfr did and then applying a direct voltage to the tail unit to find out which wire made which function.

- Heres the wire matching system i deducted, the colours on the left being the ones on the tail unit and the ones on the right are the vfr's.

- The image to the left is the female bullet connectors i used, using a nail u can tap the inside out of the composite sleeve. Then the image on the right shows the sleeves place on the wires first and then the female connectors are then soldiered into position.

- All the wires soldered up, sleeved place back over and males and females connected respectfully.

- Unit and wires all in place, looking quite neat and giving a good weight loss from the big vfr tail light unit.

- Moment of truth and it all works beauuuutifully. And for that i will commend the solar product - its bright and clear, the only criticism i have is that the indicator blinks a little too fast, if this bothers you too much you could just add some resistors in the series but for me its fine.

Please see below a video of the integrated tail unit in operation:

Undertray

So by using a cbr600rr rear subframe, a new undertray is needed. A new undertray would be a big benefit in terms of weight saving anyway as the oem vfr800fi undertray is a beast, it does its job well, but there is a whole lot of plastic there, which is no longer needed. Also on my vfr I was lugging around a scottoiler which weighs atleast 1kg wet, which i can now get rid of.

stock undertray removed along with scottoiler

Instead of buying a stock cbr600rr undertray, making my own will mean a better fit for this custom job and the potential to make a lighter component.

A rough template is made from cardboard, giving the basic dimensions of what the undertray needs to be. This was then put in place under the rear subframe and adjustments made where necessary.

The template was then transferred to fiberglass sheets and cut as needed. The first layer was one whole piece of fiberglass then layers of strips were added till the desire strength was attained.

Once the fiberglass had cured, it was painted in a sealant black paint, then attached to the subframe. A slot for the battery was cut out, and then a battery holder was constructed.

Battery container made and attached to the undertray. silicon sealant was added to the edges of the undertray just to give a better barrier from the electrics inside against the elements.

Job done, and the undertray is much lighter than the old one (well only about 2kg saved with getting rid of the scott oiler aswell, but every little helps). Next attachments need to be added like the reg plate and rear light, which will be done later.