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What Do You Drive Or Ride ? No bullshit inside here please



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Old 07-22-2008, 11:33 PM   #16
nthfinity
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It's none of our business how you live your life, and by no means are we here to judge others choices

short of becoming keyboard jockeys when it comes to opinions on autos and such... We love a good discussion

We are happy to have you part of the MW community
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Old 07-23-2008, 03:29 AM   #17
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Hi

Thank you very much for that - i highly appreciate it I still haven't gotten to those pictures as i keep getting held off - some things come to my mind and i do them first, and quicker as expected there comes the time to go to work........

I hope i'm able to do that tomorrow

Best regards.....

Thanh
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Old 07-23-2008, 04:19 AM   #18
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Hello again

Hereb is what i was working on today - this goes into the box on my Yamaha. It's a genuine "GIVI" box and it is already prepared to have a brake light there, however such was not installed (i have never seen them WITH the light installed.....) and since i recently built myself a LED tail light (with brake light function) and therefor had to order 100 of the LED's via E-Bay, i had 80 "left over" - i needed something to do with them

So here goes my extra brake light:







I have not yet wired it to the bike as i need some sort of connector first, otherwise i won't be able to take the box off again. I probably won't get to that before the weekend.

By the way i am currently also playing with the idea of doing some LED tail lights/brake lights for the Volvo........

Best regards.....

Thanh
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Old 07-23-2008, 04:19 AM   #19
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i second that "tank" caption, i rolled an old ass 240dl and still was is good shape besides the paint scratches
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Old 07-23-2008, 09:55 PM   #20
Thanh-BKK
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Hi.

So now i'm done sorting out the pictures, sitting here and looking at the Photobucket site.... crawling at speeds worse than a 14k modem!

I hope i get that done before i have to go to work again........

Thanh
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Old 07-24-2008, 12:12 AM   #21
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Gosh.

More than TWO HOURS have passed, i have completed wiring my brake light... and stupid Photobucket still has not uploaded even one single picture!

I have to go to the office now, so i'll try this again tomorrow.

Best regards......

Thanh
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Old 07-24-2008, 07:34 PM   #22
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Hello

Today Photobucket has a better day, so here i am again, finally, with the promised pics. I will start with how the poor bike looked when i got it - a pile of junk, with nothing but the engine still working.... every single one (!) electric bulb was burned out, the battery was dead, indicator relay and horn were missing, speedmeter and tachometer cables missing, both brakes no function.... in short, REALLY poor condition.

But see for yourself (pictures then taken with Nokia 3230 cam phone):

























But then i paid only 5,000 Baht for it - that was in August or September 2005, and by then still cheap for a bike like this - the gas prices had not yet gone through the roof and people were still loving two-strokes for their power.

To be continued.
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Old 07-24-2008, 07:43 PM   #23
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As both tax and insurance had expired longer time ago, i had to expose the bike to a "road-worthiness" type of test in order to change registration and bring it back on the road. The following picture shows the bike just a couple of days after i bought it, and minutes before taking off for that test:



Only the "absolutely necessary" things had been fixed - new tyres, all electrical bits working, brakes working, speedmeter and tachometer cables installed, new seat leather (vinyl or something), tank cap, all foot rests and chain/sprockets set. Also i removed other unnecessary bits (that front fairing and the main stand).

Next picture is a few days later, after i had my new license plate (with the iconic "404 - file not found" number) and fixed the last bits, such as the seat locks:



To be continued.
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Old 07-24-2008, 07:53 PM   #24
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Now, TECHNICALLY up to standard, i had to do something about the still "junk-like" look of the bike. As we have some rather weird laws in Thailand, concerning motor vehicles, it is illegal to change such vehicle's colour. Which means no less than if my bike rolled off the assembly line in black, it still has to be black the day it is scrapped and de-registered.

However it is not specified WHAT TYPE of black. So i went for a somewhat radical paint job - flat black, please, all over.

Now, i use that bike daily, and for that reason i had no time to do a decent job. It may not look like it on the pictures (still with my Nokia 3230), but this paint job took no more than a couple of hours - the bike was NOT taken apart (!!) and certainly not sanded, not even really CLEANED before spraying 4 cans of flat black over it. Still looks pretty much ok for such a sloppy job:



The very next day i enhanced the looks further - that old stock headlight and stock indicators had to go, chrome please - these bits are actually Kawasaki parts, for the GTO Mk6. But look nice on a Yamaha RXZ, too! Also the mirors were replaced, and both front and rear mud flaps installed (those are home-made by the way):







To be continued.
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Old 07-24-2008, 08:14 PM   #25
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Now, at some stage i installed the rear box onto the bike, and also the thing which, a little later, would yield the bike's nick name "Bulldozer": The bull bar!





And so here we go, for an interim summary, conditions and looks of the machine on November 26th, 2006, over a year after i bought it as a heap of junk (the rims have since been swapped for high-quality aluminium ones from Japan, a second brake light has been installed with blue LED's, and 13,000 kilometers had been done as i got it with 41,000 on the clock:





































To be continued.
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Old 07-24-2008, 08:28 PM   #26
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Next, i went for a more radical overhaul once again - the second, and so far last, paint job. Flat black is a nightmare to keep clean, so i went for glosy black again....... this time i actually took the bike apart, at least partly, and also for the first time the "Bulldozer" theme is applied.

Also a steering dampener had been installed meantime:



And then i finally went to do something about the frame. Maybe you have spotted it on some of the previous pictures and wondered - the bike doesn't really look "straight", right? Correct you are. The accident which the previous owner had with the bike must have been a pretty heavy one, as the rear frame was broken in several places, and they had welded it very amateurishly, using rebar pieces as reinforcement. That welding, judging by the burn marks on several surrounding bits, was done like my paint job - without taking the bike apart. As a result the rear frame was about as "straight" as a banana - it didn't bother me too much, HOWEVER as i often ride wit hpassenger (my boyfriend) or carry heavy stuff on that bike, it bent more and more, and at some stage even broke once again.

So i decided to intall what i had seen on several motorbikes here in Bangkok, specially those that haul gas cylinders and other heavy goods:

The V-4 suspension!









The sole purpose of this is to stop the frame from bending further downwards. it takes away all comfort as the suspension becomes VERY hard (hardtail Harley riders anyone? THAT's how it feels like!) but also it maes the whole thing more stable - i guess i can drop a 500 kilogram load onto it and won't have a problem. Also note the somewhat weird-looking metal contraption that serves as an additional support for the top case - it serves the same purpose

And as you can see on those pictures, i was meantime also able to finally find the (probably last one in Thailand) genuine Yamaha "Lemang" type exhaust that is supposed to go on the older model RXZ.... it has a very nice sound (the old, stock, one was too loud for my taste - i HATE loud two-stroke engines!) and also more decent power curves - more torque specifically.

To be continued.
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Old 07-24-2008, 08:33 PM   #27
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This is a single-picture-post for a reason. Some day i just HAD to stop in the middle of the road (on a bridge actually) to take this photo of my speedometer. You won't get to see that type of thing all too often



To be continued.
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Old 07-24-2008, 08:45 PM   #28
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And now i got another interim series of pics - dated February 26 of this year, 2008. As you can see, new additional headlights have been installed in the bullbar, and further reinforcements to the rear of the bike - it didn't bent down any more, but started going more and more towards the right. More to THAT issue later





















To be continued.
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Old 07-24-2008, 09:14 PM   #29
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Now with these additional lights there, something had to be done with them. The elctrical system of the RXZ does not supply enough power to run them the way they are supposed to, as headlights - so i made them additional indicators, outfitted with blue LED "bulbs". But that wasn't enough :0 I managed to get hold of a pair of "angel eyes", these BMW-style light rings. With a little modification (had to make them smaller!) i got those in there, have a look:



And also i installed new, decent, hand levers for clutch and brake:





And a new gadget as well: The digital speedometer. With it's help i found that the bike didn't go 160 km/h as indicated on the original speedo, but only about 140! Still fast enough for that frame. here's that speedo:



Magnet on the brake disc, it is screwed in as it has a small bolt on the back, i just had to drill a 3mm hole and cut a tread into it:



The sensor:



And also, meantime (and forgotten to post, aargh!) i did install the rear disc brake, this is mad of a (fake!) Brembo caliper designed for a Piaggio EX 8, a home-made adaptor to get that on the RXZ, a Honda NSR brake pump with another home-made adaptor to get it on the RXZ, a Yamaha VRR rear hub and an oversized brake disc for a TZR.





























That brake caliper has since been replaced by a GENUINE Brembo one, because it was impossible to find spare brake pads for that fake one.... and buying a new caliper every time the pads are down? No, thanks

To be continued.
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Old 07-24-2008, 09:31 PM   #30
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Last for now Next thing i have done was one i should have done MUCH earlier....... something about the FRAME.

As it is impossible to get a spare frame as a whole from Yamaha, i had to find a "spender RXZ". And i did just that - i managed to find an "illegal" one, that had been modified for racing and had no papers, hence could not be legally registered. In the meantime, the price of petrol has skyrocketed in Thailand (used to be 16 Baht per liter when i got the bike, yesterday when i filled up it was 41 Baht per liter!) and the RXZ is no longer a loved bike - two-strokes generally lost much of their favour. So i got this one for no more than 2,000 Baht - and it included a Showa-fork which alone is worth around 10,000 Baht and a highly modified engine, amongs other things containing that bored-up and ported cylinder which has 150 cc displacement and has, according to my mechanic who really knows these things, the potential for 55-60 horsepower with matching expansion exhaust and 34mm carb. With my setup, the Lemang pipe and stock 28 mm carb, it makes approximately 35 horsepower - more than enough and well more than the stock 20 Here is the whole bike that i got:



As you can see, this is the older type where that Lemang pipe belongs to. I like that styling even more than mine - so i took not only the rear part of the frame, but also side panels, rear fairing, tail light and of course that cylinder and piston onto mine. I would have taken the whole engine but that racing clutch is such a hard thing, suitable for racing it is but driving around Bangkok on a daily basis would require me to do body building for my fingers

Now, i could not take the whole frame from it due to the frame number - and that frame had no papers. So i simply cut of the (perfectly straight) bit and then cut off my (perfectly BENT) bit, and welded the "new" one onto mine. Have a look how that looked like before:





Kinda hard to believe that i was actually RIDING that thing! But ride it i did, 31,000 kilometers to the day i changed it.

Now the operation of changing it made the RXZ look the poorest ever since i got it - see the poor soul here:





But from there it emerged as what it is today, including genuine GIVI top case and GIVI monorack:

MY BELOVED BULLDOZER!!



Pictures of my new LED tail light will soon follow.

Best regards......

Thanh
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