Project Build

Hey Everybody, Thought I would take a few minutes and post an update on my project build, An HRC Replica bike from 83-85.

This project seems to go in cycles for some reason. It had started to pick up momentum and then we had so much sub-zero weather last winter my heater had a hard time keeping up. And of course I found out that even if I could get that garage to some kind of heat the bikes certainly were not! I somehow aquired more bikes but this time they were not Interceptors but Aermachi H/D's. Somebody I had met found them while cleaning out his building. LOL honest! He had them under some shelf and covered with a tarp for 20 years. So I brought all 4 of those home with me. come spring time I found somebody who was into them but like so many of us doesn't have unlimited resources to buy so I sold them to him for a very small profit as a way of paying this whole bike thing forward.

I have parted out several of the Interceptors and sold a couple of the other ones making more room and helping to cover some of the expense of my project. I am sure a lot of you know what that is like.

I have lately changed the oil pan on my 750. I found that the one from the VF1000R is exately the same contour shape and deeper. I also swapped out the oil pump from the 1000R to my 750 as well for the extra flow. I am attaching a few pictures for you all to see. The first shows the 750 and 1000 oil pans side by side. You can see how much deeper it is. It becomes even more apparent in the other photos. I had to have the front exhaust pipe down tubes lengthened to clear the pan. You can see the extra piece of new pipe that was added. I think the pictures give a much better idea of how much deeper it really is. I am pleased with the way it turned out and the cost was minimal to me for what I got.



I had hoped that the Fox Remote reservoir shock I got on a VF1000R I bought for parts would work on the 750. It doesn't because it is to long. I am hoping my guys at Traxxion Dynamic's can fix that problem for me.

I am also pretty excited as I have a kit coming that will have all the correct needles and other things. It will make setting up those 36mm VF1000 carbs a lot easier than the last time I did that. The other thing that is coming for the bike is a shift kit. Having used these before I am a believer and this will be for me a good thing.

I knew when I started this build that most all of the parts are not going to be readily available to me. So i have spent some time at looking for ways to duplicate some of those parts. Hopefully in the next month I will have some of them done and post some more pictures. You guys will I am sure let me know if I did a good job or they failed! LOL

I thought that some of you might like to see what the VF1000R deep oil pan looks like all mounted up.

Things I am looking for now are the "Dual Oil Pump" from an 86 VF1000R, and or from a VF1000FII Bol D'Or model. You can tell if they have it because they came stock with an oil cooler.

I am also looking for a set of RC30 Carb Flloat Bowls.

If anybody has those things and would like to sell them or knows of somebody I can contact who may I sure would appreciate a heads up on them.

I promise not to be so long to the next post as I want this thing even if not finished to at least be rideable for the Slimy Crud Ride in Oct. We will see if I can get er done enough. People need to see these cool bikes!!!

 

Hi there. I went down the same route. I came a cross of VF1100S pipes so it took some more fiddeling around to get them fixed. And also the VF1000 carbs. I'm running 45 pilot and 150 mains with a K&N filter. I also put an extra oilfeed to the heads by using an adapterplate behind the filter and using a CBR600 oil filter.

Good luck on your build.

 

Thanks for the comment. I am going to do the modification to the oil feed for the heads that takes the oil from the main galley and then splits to each cylinder head. Partly because that was how they did it on the HRC bikes, and also I had done it before on an earlier Interceptor. I also did something very similar to a number of Hawk GT motors that I built because I thought it was beneficial. For the Hawk motors I had some special aluminum crush washers made that would sleeve the banjo fittings down to the special 6mm bolts used on the heads of that motor.

There was another bonus for me with the VF1000R parts. I was using the 1000R wheels because they looked like the NS Comstar wheels used on the HRC bikes. The rear brake rotor is very different form the VF750F one. So I simply used the VF1000R rear caliper and bracket. I had to find someplace to connect the brake caliper stay arm as the 750 uses one on the top of the swingam and the VF1000R is on the bottom side. As I had done a lot of research I found that the earliest HRC bikes seemed to use the right side of the stock center stand bracket. On later versions the HRC bikes had a tab welded on the bottom side of the swingarm and used a much shorter stay arm. It worked perfectly for me. I had some metal bushings that were the size of the hole in the center stand bracket and made a hole for the stay arm to fit with it.
The original VF750F rear caliper and bracket were stationary. The VF1000R needs to be able to pivot with the suspension movement. The VF1000R rear caliper bracket has a bearing in it and sits on a sleeve that the axle goes thru allowing the unit to pivot as needed with the suspension. It worked out great for me. I got the caliper hanging on the bottom of the swingarm like the HRC bikes and everything works like it should. I considered it a bonus! And I do like the way it looks as well. That VF1000R just keeps on giving me good stuff for my 750. It was an even better part doaner than I thought it would be.

Hopefully some pictures in the next week or so.

 

Well I finished making my first HRC replica cover. It isn't perfect by any means, but for me it looks pretty good. It is my first attempt at doing something like this a lot of fun as well. I guess I should just let the pictures speak for themselves. And before you all jump all over that ugly crashed on cover I put along side it LOL! Iwas available and I just wanted to show a stock cover alongside the one I did. One more thing for me to check off my list. The photo at the beginning is what I went by to make this cover.

 

Nice one :biggrin:
Did you weld a nut to the back of the cover?

 

Email me on the VF1000RE oil pump. I am supposed to have one out in the garage and we can work out a deal.

Larry

 

Hey Joep,

No I didn't use a nut welded onto the back of the cover. After I made the hole for each of the plugs I had somebody put weld around the edge of the hole for me. Then I made a 30mmx1.5mm tap and threaded both the little amount of the cover thickness and the weld around the hole. There is about 5/16" space between the underside of the cover and the flywheel. It was tougher to get things right where I brought in the bottom of the cover 1/2" like the HRC ones for that last little bit of ground clearance. The other hardest part of the cover was actually the HRC logo on the cover. I made a life size copy from the photo I posted above of Rubens HRC bike and then laid that out on aluminum stock to cut it out. It took me for attempts before I finally got the one I used but it was worth it to me. If you have any other questions let me know.

Thanks for looking at it.

 

Hi Dan,
Looking very good. I really like your HRC cover. I'm wondering how you made the tap to thread the hole for the XR(?) cover.

 

Hey Tom,
Thanks for the compliment. High praise coming from you. Not wanting to spend $100-150 for a 30mmx1.5 tap I bought a couple of steel bolts in that size for $5 each and a nut. Ran the nut up the bolt a ways. Then I used a carbide bit in my Dremel tool and made a series of 5 groves around the bolt. I backed the nut off to make sure the threads were clean and then simply used the bolt like a tap. The grooves I put in the bolt helped to cut the threads. With the cover thickness being about 1/8" and I had also had 1/8" of weld added around the hole before opening it to the size for my tap to cut the threads. I know it is kind of primitive but for something that big it worked out. I took my time making sure the hole was the needed size. For the timing hole plug I simply used a sparkplug thread chaser to create the needed threads and it worked just fine. (For me anyways LOL)
We just got back from the Barber Vintage Festival. All I can say is "WOW" it sure was worth going to.

Hope that helps with how I did it.

Dan

 

Dan,

You have mail. Found something you want.

Larry

 

Nice job on your mods! It's one thing to change the pipes and jetting, but to make covers, and weld in a new section of pipe, and put a different pump on etc. is really cool. I remember racing at the same time as Reuben McMurter. He was a jerk! Real cocky! It was nice when Steve Crevier and Micheal Mercier etc. started beating him! The Canadian Superbike series started outdoing the U.S. series for a while in the late 80's, even. We had some nice equipment here at one time.

 

Wow, nice work, a true Macgyver ! The idea of making the tap out of a bolt is genius.
Have you seen this 1983 HRC vf750 for sale in Nova Scotia... http://git.me/used/moto/ca/11809326780564584448/Ron-Haslam-Factory-Honda-Superbike-This-is-a-once-in-a-life

 

Thanks for the compliment. I have a number of other things to do yet with it. I will be real interested to see how the copy of the HRC radiator turns out. Have been talking with somebody else about how to recreate it and we have a good idea. But like a lot of idea's we won't really know until we do it. I will of course keep you guys posted on the results.

As for Reuben, I consider myself lucky enough to have known a lot of racers over the years. Well known, lesser well known, and pretty unknown too. I have found that a lot of them have that "Real Cocky" Gene in their makeup. I think that for many of them it is part of why they are what they are. Just some are maybe more vocal than others about it. The times I have interacted with Reuben, he was very pleasant an personable to me. So I don't think of him that way. You mention Steve Crevier and I have been out to dinner with him on a number of occasions back when and he was always funny and joking and a great time. I can also admit to having spent a lot of weekends at places like Shannonville and a couple of other race tracks in Canada both while crewing on a team during the Can-Am Trans-Am series as well as later with bikes and I met a lot of great people.

Hope you will like some of the other things I will be doing to the VF and thanks again for the compliment.

 

Today was busy with putting up a ceiling in the garage so the project build actually got outside. I had to take a couple of pictures so you guys can see how it is coming along.

 

Nice wheels, and radiator too.

 

Any info on those pipes?... that's the first time I've seen another set.

 

On the pipes I thought the pipes themselves were Kerker. The mufflers were from a D&D exhaust I had for another VF750F back in the 80's. The mufflers are pretty loud and back then I changed them out to Supertrapp mufflers so I could actually run it harder on the street without attracting every officer within 2 miles. The D&D was a very close copy of the original HRC pipe and this one is pretty close. The D&D for me was kind of cheesy as they used to use a bolt and split the pipe end to clamp onto the next piece. I am going with springs on this one for sure.

gt750: I guess you were joking as there is not a radiator on the bike yet. Have a couple ideas but haven't done them yet. The attached picture is what it needs to look like for the HRC bike and ther eis not anything like it that I have found.

 

Thanks for the reply. It would be really weird if somebody mix n matched the same stuff. I got mine complete years ago off of a customer bike because it was too loud. My header pipes really don't remind me of Kerker stuff though. Mine also had smaller baffles that you could wrap with insulation and slip them into the larger baffle openings. I too was worried about how the baffles were secured to the headers and installed some clamps right in front and safety wired them together so I wouldn't lose one in a race. I never did have a clamp come loose though over years of racing.

Looking really cool! Keep it up!

 

Well it has been a little while since I posted any progress on my HRC VF750F race replica build. Between trying to finish the garage rebuild that my son said "Should only take us two weekends" To then having all of the free time taken up with my wife and I doing Mr & Mrs Santa Claus appearances, I am just now getting back to actually working on the project again. Hooray!!

On the HRC bikes they replaced the stock tach and fuel gauges. They used a Nippon tach and replaced the fuel guage with a Celsius Temp gauge. I found that KOSO NA had a new series of tachometers and a speedo unit that were very affordable so I went with the 15,000 tach which is not an exact duplicate of the race piece but pretty close. The KOSO unit goes from 1,000-15,000 and the race unit went 3,000-15,000. It worked for me and loos the deal. Plus the KOSO unit utilizes a stepper motor so is extremely accurate and very durable. The Temp unit I got from them has a metal finish that I will paint black later.
I felt that installing them was pretty straight forward. I disassembled the gauge unit and removed the clear facings from the front plate. The tach was exactly the same size as the clear facing and the aluminum outer plate. The temp gauge was slightly larger and deeper so I had to remove the back part of the gauge panel unit so it would fit through. Both of the gauges actually install from the very outside through the aluminum face plate. I was very pleased with the way it turned out. I hope the pictures show the difference ok. I took one to show before and a couple for after as well as including a pictures from an old Sport Rider that shows the actual HRC bike and gauges.

This was another step to recreating the HRC bike and it felt good to get back to work on it again. I hope you all enjoy the pictures and hopefully it will not be so long to the next post now.

 

Looking great Dan. I will definitely do a replica 750 some day to add to the "HRC" stable. Love the progress.