MC22 Savant

I have created this thread as sort of an aftermath to the track ready project to tell entertaining stories, updates and or things I am considering doing specifically in relation to my mc22.
**As a quick disclaimer**
People may find some information useful but I certainly wouldn't recommend going about mods or maintenance the way I do or even taking my opinion as fact or copying mods within this thread.

So today I passed my full license test for car and motorcycle and am now completely unrestricted with many points and the ability to legally filter (I am still getting used to not being paranoid about police watching even though I can legally do it).
Test was pretty straight forward and I am glad I did not study or over think the test because it appears to be passable with common sense.



I think the most satisfying part is pulling off the red P plate.

Recently I have been very active with maintenance and mods for my bike and most notably the front handling.

After putting in the .70kg/mm springs in my front forks I had finally had enough of the never ending "my bike pulls left without hands and then I banged a tree" problem.
I identified that the fork tubes are bent and SOME how managed to get my hands on NOS 51410-KAZ-003 at a good price so I went for it, didn't want to take any risks of the replacements being even slightly bent.

So being that the front forks needed to come off I figured I would wisely sneak in some other mods and maintenance whilst the front end was off.



Not sure if I was just in the zone but completely dissembling, cleaning and rebuilding the forks was completely hassle free using very basic tools like the ones laying on the floor in the above photo lol.


used the following seals, and used a plastic bag to make sure the seal didnt catch on the clip holder cavity to avoid seal damage.



With the forks being done I decided to throw in my ceramic hybrid wheel bearings into my front tyre, I used the same size socket that opens the stem nut as a driver as its a perfect fit for the 6004 outer race.



The job was perfect and very pleased I wont have to do that again for a long time being that knocking out bearings is a pain in the back side. I usually go about this by using certain size sockets and adapters as a driver.

For piece of mind I figured hey, why not do the steering stem bearings while I am here (all balls kit was brand used).
Now this job is EXTREMELY taxing and NOT FUN, I dare say it is my new most hated maintenance task.



The below photo of bottom roller bearing on the lower triple clamp is a NIGHTMARE to get off, what was worse is after banging it with a screwdriver and hammer for 20mins with no result at 3am in the morning in my friends garage I am now told "no more banging" this made the task near impossible to do but I will explain how I did it over a period of... 2 hours...



using assorted sized flat head screw drivers and prying towards the bearing instead of away from it seemed to SLOWLY work, after it got too far to pry with screw drivers I started using different sized spanners to pry it the rest of the way using quick jerking motions.

After finally getting it off I was like YES finally the pain is over but NO! getting the new one on and finding the correct driver to slam it on was almost just as evil!
How I overcame this issue was by using one of the bent fork tube stanchions and the inner race of the removed bearing upside down placed over the top of the new bearing to install to ensure no damage was the only solution I could come to.
It works well apart from damaging the fork further and the requirement of getting the old race off AGAIN after it finishes seating the new bearing.
The result!


The nightmare over!

I reassembled everything and to align the forks for as little stiction as I could I made the bike stand upright and placed about 50kgs of weights onto the top triple clamp as I lined and tightened everything to spec.

End result? Wow is all I can say, my front and rear suspension/handling is nothing short of perfect and I have pretty much no intention of looking into further mods in relation the suspension/handling.

The only differences my forks have compared to service manual specifications are:
-Teknik 0.70kg/mm 29mm O.D. 377mm length straight rate springs.
-When filling with fork oil I just full compress the un oiled fork with only the spacer removed to the brim and stop.
-The spacers I user is 1 stock spacer cut in half with the ends filed down to be perfectly flat.
-compressed forks when aligning and tightening triple clamps, pinch bolts, axle etc

Stay tuned for in depth electrical and ignition upgrades.

 

Oki doke so ignition as promised and more.

But first going back on previous here are the rear wheel hybrid ceramic bearings


Easiest way to install this set is to use the inner race of the upper and lower stem bearings as a driver, see below








Now I actually got quite sick because of this, the wise words of @GreyImport played through my head "If the wheel is off why not clean it!?"
So.... I did.
2 cans of degreaser later


I did the front too


However ventilation was poor and the fumes poisoned me, very nasty chemical sick feeling, learn from my mistake and do it outside.

Continued-

 

Okay so regarding ignition which is still an ongoing process, basically the goal here is 35000 volts shot from the electrode at about 22o BTDC is my guess.
Now my trails, tests and research has lead me to believe that the stock plugs with the 9 heat range and stock 0.9mm gap will give the best overall performance, the only time you would make the gap closer is if you increased HP by more than about 15% and the heat range shouldn't go to 8 regardless of if you are racing or not because with my setup I believe the timing gets slightly retarded in certain areas keeping the internal cylinder heat down.

So firstly with all service manuals saying mc14e engines spark appear to perform best with a coil resistance of 3ohm, being that my coils where out of spec I decided to replace them with the top shelf stuff

3ohm dynatek coils.

Now it has been a long running mystery as to how to upgrade or replace the tci, I have spent a good year researching this my self.
Being that all we really want is restrictions and safety features turned off and the spark to fire at the time of optimal performance with as strong a spark as possible let me assure you that this TCI is in fact the answer.


That's right, a 100$ Chinese TCI from lixianda.

When I first installed it, I thought I had made a mistake. My bike lacked power...
However this is because my 110 main jets where too rich and my 1&3/4 turns out on mixture screws where too lean.
It would appear honda are clever and to restrict you by advancing the timing down low and retarding it too much up high was a plot twist I didn't see coming. But after changing to 108 main jets and 2 full turns out good results are achieved. But I wanted more!
I have re wired the bike and placed the Tci next to the new coils, the trick to bypass all safety features I worked out using my helpful coloured diagram indicated to me that by jumping lime green to dark green then only wiring up pick positive and negative (yellow and cream), main power and ground (black+white and green), coils1&2 (yellow+blue and blue+yellow). 6 wires in total leaving the rest unconnected apart from the jump from lime green to dark green. Rpm taco optional but it's quite out/wrong, if using stock tci jump orange+blue to black+white with 3.3k ohm resistor remembering to disconnect pigtail behind speedo or it will conflict with the circuit.
Lithium battery makes a big difference, wiring can be a TOUGH task do not attempt this without expecting to make a mistake you can't find, be logical and systematic in your approach.





Once spark is good and strong with lixianda you can now tune carbs by ear for power, note: I believe this does not work with stock tci as it's advanced timing down low will force you to lean out your mixture to get power.

Video in following post of idle
Contied-

 

I did it on my mc22 and got 100% but I had to practice. The instructors said I was the first person to ever successfully do the U-Turn on a cbr250rr with some people threatening to take them to court due to it being impossible, however I used a bit of ingenuity and found it possible if you don't grip the right handle bar with your thumb as you do it making it possible, but don't let them catch you!