A bit more work

Some parts recently arrived for both the mono and the ex650 which has allowed me some time to tinker in the garage.  I thought that while I was working on the clutch of the ex, installing the slipper mechanism, I should also upgrade the springs with heavy duty items from Barnett.  Although they won't be seen outside the bike, the green springs and red caps lend a festive mood to the machine...

The lever guards arrived from Woodcraft -- see sponsor list to the right for the link to their site.  As you can see from an earlier post, the purpose of these is to prevent unintended locking of the front brake due to incidental contact between bikes.

More evidence of why these guards are a good idea...

I plan on installing the clutch side guard on the brake side of the mono... once it warms up a bit and I have some decent grips to install on that bike.  The plastic pieces of junk I have on there now will do nothing to prevent the blisters I got all of last year.

Speaking of the mono, the muffler I first purchased, an all-carbon m4 exhaust from an R1, proved to be in pretty poor condition -- not as light as you would think, and the area that clamps onto the tailpipe would not properly seal, causing a bit of an air leak... perhaps this was what was causing some of the backfire issue?  Regarless, for $55 I got a slip on for a zx10 -- the tailpipe was put to use on the ex650 (see the scorpion exhaust experiment in earlier posts), and the exhaust can -- new -- was utilized on the mono.  From what I understand, the aluminum construction is a better and more durable option to the thumping singles -- carbon cans suffer due to the thumping firing order (apparently).

As you can see, the rear master cylinder has been removed -- it came leaking, a rebuild kit for it is also leaking... so I need to solve that problem soon.  I splurged on a mityvac brake bleeder on sale on ebay, so hopefully that will help both with this project and the many other times a season I bleed brakes!