Got myself a VTR the other month and loving it. It’s not my daily ride have got a Suzuki DL1000 for that so I’m used to twins, this is more of a toy to tinker with and do a few track days or a blast through the hills without the wife on the back. The bike had been lying up for a few years and has nearly 90k km on the clock so had to do a few jobs to get it road ready. Striped and cleaned the carbs all standard jet sizes, restrictors still in place. Striped and cleaned the brake calipers and master cylinders. New pads all round and a new rear disc also cleaned the clutch master and slave cylinder and fitted steel lines to the front brakes. Have fitted new springs to the front forks to suit my slim 110kg but waiting for new seals and bushes before doing a full rebuild and the mods listed on the site. Thing still to do are the CCT’s, still got on autos I’ll probably convert them myself to manuals. One thing I have done is lighten the flywheel but found some strange things so thought ide tell you about it. Striped down the fly wheel. No drama getting it off, just bought a bolt ($5) with the right thread screwed it in, nipped it up and taped the end and off it pops. Striped down all the bits off it and weighed it and took a couple of pictures.
Note the number of balance holes and location. 3.3kg
So I took it to work and put it in the lathe, I’m a fitter turner by trade. I clocked the face and the OD true. To my surprise I found the bore to be running out by 0.2mm TIR. So I turned it to size then decided to turn up a mandrel to skim all the diameters and faces true to the bore. So once I done that I thought I’d put the mandrel on some rollers to check the balance. I never checked the balance before I started so don’t know how well it was balanced to start with. But I did find that there was a heave side to it. So I drilled a few holes in the face until it was balanced. (ignore the dimple by itself) see how close them holes are to where the original ones were. So I weighted it again 2.6kg that a loss of 0.7kg or 21% lighter. I put it all back together and went for a blast round the doors the good news is it works. Never noticed much difference round the doors as I couldn’t thrash it. Will have to wait until a go back to the local circuit for a track day.
Things I still want to do is move the raditior to under the seat and trim the fairing down to show more of the engine off.
So thanks for all the info I have found on the forum.
Robert Charlton
