(Updated: more RS cooling details with associated toddler tantrums)
I'm sure many folks have will have been shaking their head at the preceding shenannigans, but this is about the point where things really went off the rails.
(Tangent alert, no offence taken if you fast-scroll this bit...)
I mentioned way back there somewhere my father back in New Zealand had had a stroke, some 3 years ago now. Obviously a big stress for all concerned, particularly Mum, so an aged care home seemed the best option to get some targeted support. It wasn't a bad arrangement but was fraught with the dangers inherent in such a move, namely the "Aged Care Rort". What do I mean by that? These places make their real money not by selling property or services within the villages, but by only selling the "right to occupy" a property in the village.
The trouble comes if you ever have to move, for say increased care or such like. The operator pockets the capital gain, the amount the property has appreciated by over time, so the occupier is not just out a large sum for the care costs, they have also fallen behind the property market. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a huge issue, but thanks to a Covid stimulus package and NZ's lax property invesment taxation laws NZ property was rocketing along at +20% per annum. It has a very high potential for being a one way trip as it is financially difficult to get back into the property market or buy into another facility.
But Dad was now on the verge of being legally blind while his mental faculties were slowly, inexorably, eroded and the promised care really wasn't up to scratch. So, in the middle of the pandemic, Mum (and Dad) made the decision to make one last attempt at finding more appropriate care at another village. We were obviously doing the best we could to help out and research options from afar (borders were slammed shut), but it was a stressful time for all knowing Dad really wasn't getting the care he deserved, Mum was shouldering a far heavier load than any loving 77 year old woman should ever have to, and finances were under pressure.
All the while, thanks to the pandemic and my gas platform being in international waters we were treated as international travellers and were forced to spend extended time away from home: a "new and improved!" 6 weeks on/6 weeks off roster, with 3 of the "on" weeks spent in a quarantine facility every rotation (1 week prior to heading offshore, 2 weeks on re-entry). Just brutal.
Worse, my employer, despite being a global energy operator, had completely failed to develop any sort of understanding/rapport with our State government. This meant once we'd completed the 2 weeks Federal quarantine on entry to the Northern Territory from international waters, we faced the threat of even further isolation requirements being imposed as interstate travellers returning to Western Australia, despite us being some of the most tested/health monitored/quarantined people in the country. You can't fight it so all you can do is try and roll with it as best you can.
On the up side, Mum and Dad eventually found a great affordable village and relocated, a bright spot in a relentlessly grey Covid world. Only for Dad, being the gentleman he always has been, and after allowing time for Mum to settle into their new surroundings, to call time before becoming too heavy a load and passed away late last year. Borders were still well and truly shut, so there was no possibility of attending the service or supporting Mum.
This was followed by the world seemingly tilting on it's axis and, like the deck chairs on the Titanic, all the screwy shit started sliding in my direction. Just a couple of examples amongst many: anxious to start the New Year on a fresh note I thought I'd slash the long grass in our 5ac paddock on New Year's Eve, with a well earned beer to ring in 2022 (as though I need an excuse...). For this "glorious" task we have a self-powered "Tow 'N Mow" slasher we tow behind an ATV. It's 4' wide, powered by a 23hp Honda engine (V-twin of course!) with 3 x 2' overlapping blades, and you can zip around faster than any equivalent tractor and PTO slasher arrangement. All good......except the slasher died 3/4 of the way through the job, bugger! But the beer had been earned, so I parked it up to check out the following day. (insert sound of deck chairs scraping along the deck here)
The next day I head up to the shed and push the start button on the slasher as it sits in the shed......completely unaware our friendly King Skink, "Lenny the Lizard" who had been living in/around our shed for 4/5 years, had settled in underneath it.
My joy at the slasher starting turned to horror when Lenny was flung out. The poor lil' guy was hurled into a dark corner of the shed so I whipped out my phone to use the torch and inspect his injuries, which were pretty extensive. The humane thing to do was to end his suffering, never a nice job, let alone to a lil' guy you said "G'day mate!" too on a regular basis.
But it was an ugly job done, so I hooked the slasher up to the ATV (yes, another V-twin) and headed out to knock off the last of the paddock. "CLATTER! CHOMP!"
FUCK! I instantly recalled leaving my phone on the back of the ATV while I dealt with Lenny: I'd just mowed/slashed my phone! 23hp driving 2' steel blades spinning at 2000rpm will beat Tim Cook's best every time:
Completely rooting an expensive device is bad enough, but realising you've lost 12 months worth of information/photo's and memories is far worse.
To top it off, I still didn't complete the slashing as the ATV blew a radiator hose just a few rows from the end....AAAAARGH!
2 days later I was doing something I'd done dozens of times before, manouveuring the 851 around the shed. With no side stand to park it on, I just lift the rear of the wheeled paddock stand and push/pull it around as necessary so I can park it anywhere without having to prop it against something. Just going through the main sliding door, I crossed the concrete expansion/casting joint where the shed proper meets the outside apron, the bike rocked slightly and....CRUNCH! The ol' girl has flopped on her side like a landed fish: the (weak arse) tang on one of the bobbin hooks had bent, allowing the swingarm bobbin to slip free:
SHIIIIIT! The fairings were off the bike so I had every single finger and toe instinctively crossed that not too much damage was done....which at first glance seemed the case as I frantically lifted and inspected/fussed over it....only to be gutted like that landed fish when I realised the bike had actually fallen against the steel door jamb, impacting the rare carbon Corsa tank and splitting it along the join. There was barely a mark on the upper side of the tank but it had obviously been severely flexed in the impact:
Yes, I felt physically sick.
But after 2 years of Covid, 18 months of the 6/6 roster and associated quarantine bullshit, Dad's passing, crap like the above, it was an innocuous lil' straw that broke the camel's back. I was due to go back to work in early Jan, and received my itinerary....but WTF?! It's normally a 3.5 hour direct flight from Perth to Darwin but my itinerary had a 10 hour trek, initially heading half way across the country to Adelaide, before heading North to Darwin!
It's funny with hindsight, it was like I was standing alongside myself watching on as I completely lost my shit. I knew my reaction was over the top but couldn't do a damn thing to stop it....and I knew I wasn't in a good place.
Bottom line: a chat with my doc resulted in a much needed break from the work/quarantine/mad rush to catch up from then prepare for 6 weeks away treadmill, time to use some of my 18 years of accumulated sick leave.
My apologies, I can't even offer cheese to go with my whine. This is an incredibly long winded way of explaining the lack of recent updates and why the next lil' bit may be somewhat disjointed.
I'll be going into the repair of the Corsa tank soon enough, it's nearly complete but it took me a few weeks to even take a serious look at it, I just couldn't deal with it. In the meantime I distracted myself with the junkyard dog RS project....and beer....lots and lots of beer.
Unfortunately, amongst the data loss was some good stuff on the cooling system I'd sorted. But salvaging what I had stashed on other platforms/devices this is the state of the bike as it progressed from previous posts:
The high volume radiator and oil cooler are made by CDR Racing:
They look to be replica's of the MB Motorsport/Febur Corse setups used in WSBK etc, but without either of those names and the fact it was a bit tatty it didn't carry anything like their price tag. These are what Larry Pegram used building his AMA Formula Xtreme 749/848RS bikes (749R with 100mm bore = 848):
Mine aren't perfect but have tidied up reasonably well (gawd, I hate straightening radiator fins!):
Plumbed in with silicon hoses and the upper RS alloy cooling pipe (the lower is just an alloy straight section with swaged ends):
It came with a couple of carbon radiator shrouds/panels fitted to the small radiator brackets you see, but no point fitting them yet and they are only simple flat plates, a G-string version of the complex full-bum shrouds you see on the F0/RS bikes.
For comparison, this is the almost complete cooling system you'd see installed on genuine F0/RS bikes:
The missing component not shown is the Corse "water tank":
These actually originated on the 998F02/RS. Road going 916 - 998 models have the coolant expansion tank behind the head-stock, taking up valuable air-box space. So they moved it to the side, nicely integrating it along the frame and around the head-stock, allowing them to expand the airbox into the now vacant space and make slightly better power.
The previous race experience informing the next year's road bike, the OEM 999 has the expansion tank moulded into/hanging under the RH intake runner, freeing up airbox space as standard. The Corse intake runners are much larger, nothing like the road model's, and given how the 998/999 frames are identical around the front end it was a no-brainer to just carry the race water tank over, as seen here on Hodgsons Factory 999F03:
Now I just happen to have one of these Corse water tanks. I was going to install it on the 749R but it doesn't play nice with the brake/clutch reservoirs mounted on the top triple clamp, or the throttle cables, and once I started this project I just quietly tucked it away....until now.
Should be a good fit for this project, right? With a Corse Pierobon front subframe it should just slip straight….slip straight…slip…WTF?! Why the hell aren’t you fitting?!
As you can see it’s jammed right down against the lower dash mount, and won’t even fit fully in against the frame:
And clashes badly with the clip-on (although the clip-ons can easily be changed):
GAAAAH! I honestly thought this would be a simple 5min job, instead the thing was nearly hurled into orbit.
So close…
Basically, I'd been kicked in the coins by the classic "to fit Corse part A, thou must fit the associated Corse parts B, C and D" mantra: my Pierobon fairing brace is designed for a lower spec 749R/999R "Superstock" race bike, where I was trying to fit a WSB spec coolant tank which is designed to work with the corresponsing WSB 999RS (or F03/4) front subframe. This subframe is a completely different beast (front mount Marelli ECU etc):
Again, the "to fit Corse part A, thou must fit the associated Corse parts B, C and D" mantra applies, 'cos to work with that subframe you need all of the above plus the rest of this lil' lot:
Even if you could find the parts, which you can't, they're media mogul money and far above my pay grade.
Back in the real world, did you notice the radiator cap on my CDR radiator? This is actually a lucky anomaly, you'll see the MB Motorsport/Febur unit back up there doesn't have one. The coolant tank is not an expansion tank, it is part of the pressurised cooling system and the black plastic cap atop it is the radiator cap.
This is why I only have a plain straight alloy pipe as the lower pipe, rather than the branched unit with a small tee and pipe/hose that would normally go off to this tank.
I did actually make that tee. Just as a trial I ordered some cheap aluminium pre-swaged main pipe sections online, picked up some 8mm(?) aluminium tube from my local hardware store, added a 90deg bend, and had a crack at aluminium brazing a Corse-replica tee.
"Aluminium what?!" I hear you ask:
The first attempt (left above) proved the concept but the proportions were bunky, however Mkll came out acceptably good (right above). Mkl is still au naturale covered in flux residue, Mkll looked much the same but buffed up to a satin finish (fully polished doesn't look right on a race/track bike):
The upper pipe is a bit more complex so my wallet suffered the indignity of buying genuine RS....bugger:
So the anomalous radiator cap fitted is actually a bullet dodged, things would have been much more awkward without it. I'd still like to fit the RS tank just as an expansion/overflow tank, it's so nicely integrated vs an oddball container randomly plonked somewhere. But I'll just leave that one with my subconcious to process for a bit and in the meantime the tank can be gently placed (do not throw it...do not throw it...do not throw it!) back on the shelf.
In comparison the oil cooler was pretty simple to plumb up thanks to previous experience pulling my hair out with the 749R. Just head straight to the Aeroflow catalogue for appropriate hose and fittings:
Remembering here the RS crankcases have O-ringed push fit oil cooler hose ports, as mentioned previously, unlike the OEM road 'cases which have more conventional threaded ports. So I machined some adapters to go between the hose fittings and 'cases, such that they have the male Aeroflow-type threaded fitting with tapered sealing face one end and the RS-style O-ringed push fitting the other :
I went a small step further this time, vs the 749R: the Aeroflow hose comes in a variety of external braids. I'd used stainless previously but opted for kevlar this time. It was an interesting weight comparison:
That longer 900mm length of kevlar braided hose above weighs less than the shorter 700mm length of stainless braided hose (approx 130gm vs 150gm). Admittedly it's not a lot but throw in the alloy hose fittings vs the OEM stainless steel units and it's nothing to be sneezed at. I mean, if you're making custom hoses anyway why make them heavier than you need to?
