Getting Hosed

Hmm... weak Canadian humour. Suppose you could call me a hoser. Anyway, I have been able to get some proper rad hoses from Napa, and they fit up quite well to the rad and inlet/outlet spouts of the engine.

The rad hose under the engine would be suitable to splice in a water temp sender. Last time I was at Transcanada, a fellow picked up a digital guage from Scotty. It was for a number of machines, but the label included Raptor 700 and LTZ400 -- either way, it inclued a plastic piece to splice into the rad hose to keep an eye on temps. A really nice guage, a bit cooler than the the trailtech I have on the Ducati. We'll see.

I also took the time to repaint the exhaust cap, and the mount I made for the canister. The cap was cleaned off, and sprayed with basic hi-heat black; the brackets were sprayed with hammerite paint. I love the hammerite stuff. Any of the small brackets and etc are easily coated in the stuff. Properly prepped, primer isn't needed. Saves getting all the niggly bits powdercoated.

Spent most of the time today fabricating a better shifter rod for the rearsets. It was a case of make one version, think about another option, sketch it out, think some more, and decide to go for it. Hard to describe, so I'll let the two pictures do the work. This shows the even shorter rod needed with this design (better for less slop), and the "regular" or GP-shift style options on either the top or bottom tabs. Now it looks like the chain will promptly saw through the rod, but...

I relieved the section of the tube where the chain run is. The tube is 3/4", and the welded in relieved section is with a piece of 1" tube -- very thick stuff. Overall not too heavy, but even with a slightly slack chain, it does not foul on the shift rod. We'll see how it works in actual practice.

I also had the wiring harness inside to label all the connectors with my finally arrived manual. In the warmer temperature, the whole thing became more pliable. I decided to take it outside to see how everything fit on the frame, but it almost immediately got stiff and I didn't want to work with wiring harnesses in the cold -- that is how things get broken. However, I did come up with a well-grounded (ie all steel) mount for the coil, right close to the cylinder. No need to modify/extend the length of sparkplug wire.

The leetle neeeple on top of the cylinder head is the oil return overflow line from the oil tank. Speaking of the oil tank, I decided to find out the acutal volume -- it appears to be about 1.8L -- almost identical to the specs of the oem oil tank from the DRZ. The pic at left shows one of the many aftermarked oil tanks available for the Raptors. Not an identical bolt on (not the different location of the mounting tabs), but might be in the future...