VJ23info

2014-12-29T07:03:00.002-08:00

A picture says a thousand works so here's some pictures of the final restoration of the NSR250SE MC28 imported from Japan in February.

It looks lovely and has had many new parts fitted. I'll list them as I write.

New Tyres, new sprocket set, new rubber chain guide

New SE stickers either side of nose fairing. Resprayed nose fairing to correct colour and crack repaired

All new titanium bolt kit for the fairing as well as many titanium bolts fitted around the bike.

New titanium axle nut, titanium disc bolts and titanium caliper bolts.

Titanium bleed nipples and banjo bolts.

New brake fluid and pads,Rechromed forks and polished stanchions.

New air filter and oil change. Degreased engine and scrubbed several times.

Conversion to MPH and the top speed limiter restricting the bike to 112mph has been removed.

This is a beautiful bike. I know it'll do 105mph but I won't elaborate. It feels nicer to ride and faster than my beloved RGV250.

The price if you're interested in buying this bike is £5800

If you've been following this blog then you'll have seen the rebuild and know what you're getting.

I hope you've enjoyed reading about this gorgeous bike.

NSR250 Pro arm bought on the Japanese auctions

2013-11-29T13:43:00.001-08:00

After several weeks of trying and failing to buy a bike on the Japanese bike auctions I've finally done it.
I got outbid several times and it's quite difficult when it's the middle of the night in Britain and the auction is underway in Japan.
On a near perfect example I bid on last week I was out bid by £2000! I bid £3000 thinking that would be a good price and considering the 27% VAT and Duty to pay as well as shipping, but I got outbid and that was that.
So below is the bike I bought.

It was a bit of a gamble with this bike as there are only a few photos with it and my exporter chap said there was an issue with the meter. That could be an electrical problem and it won't start. A blown fuse would be nice, or something more drastic who knows. I'm going to guess that the key (weird credit card thing) is missing as it's not in the photos. Which would be fine as I was intending on buying the HRC card to convert it to full power anyway.

From looking at these pictures it's probably best to take the fairings off and check the pistons in the barrels. Change the piston rings, oil, water and brake fluid. Maybe have some parts if they're rusty, stripped and powder coated.

The windscreen looks like it's yellowed from the sun. Maybe it can be polished out but a new windscreen could be in order.

I think there are some chips in the stickers and I'm not sure how to tackle this. There's a paint shop nearby specialising in fibreglass, carbon fibre and bike plastics so I'll take the bike to them to see what can be done to make it as beautiful as possible.

The rear picture below got me worried because to my eyes, the the rear wheel didn't look in line with the fairing. I thought maybe the rear subframe was bent or even the rear wheel, but it'll be inspected before shipping from Japan and if its more bent than a 9 bob note I'll reject the bike and just pay the penalty dictated by the auction.

Below is the auction paperwork describing the condition of the bike. I can't read Japanese so if anyone can understand it please email me.

As the plan stands.

It goes in a crate, covered in futon pads.

Loaded onto a boat bound for Southampton UK and will take maybe a month at sea. Hopefully the ship doesn't sink or get stuck in a political problem in the Suez.

I pick the bike up in a van and pay 27% VAT and Duty to the Customs man in Southampton.

Get the bike through an MOT. Not sure how to get the digital speedo in Km/h to Mph but that's all part of the challenge.

An MOT allows me to buy road tax.

I have to have bike insurance to get road tax, which I guess it ok as I need to ride the bike after I de restrict it and sort out the jetting, although I'm intending on selling this bike on Ebay for a profit and not intending on riding it as my bike.

Thats the challenge, and I hope to restore a beautiful 1990s pocket rocket to it's former glory.

http://vj23.com/index.html

Importing 2 strokes from Japan to Britain

2013-11-16T12:37:00.001-08:00

I've been asked a few times over the years about if I can get hold of a VJ23 and how rare they are in Europe. Well, they're pretty rare in Japan too.

So I thought I'd import bikes direct from Japan in the Auctions.

There's an element of risk. The bike could've been raced for years and the standard fairings put back on the bike when it comes to sell it.
I noticed a pristine faired NSR with only 4000km on the clock that had marks on the wheels from tyre changes and quite worn discs. I'll steer well clear of this type bike.
The example below is a good honest bike though. It has 15000km on the clock and all the normal surface corrosion on aluminium. It's just a matter of stripping the bike and scrubbing off the fluffy aluminium oxide with scotchbrite. Maybe get some black painted parts powder coated. Clean the carbs, check for scoring in the barrels and change the piston rings.

NSR250R-4SE

Maybe I'll win the bidding on this bike. Hopefully a VJ23 comes up soon so I can bid on one of those.
After winning the auction on a bike it needs to be shipped in a crate to Britain. 27% in VAT and Import duty needs to be paid (ouch!) and I'll collect the bike in person from Southampton.
Hopefully I can get the bike stripped, serviced and rebuilt for Spring 2014.
The paperwork may slow things up. The bike will need an MOT, and taxed in order to get a registration plate, which means I insure myself on this bike, even though I'll probably never ride it.

Anyway. If I get a bike over here. I'll do a photo rebuild, with torque settings part numbers and show the process of the rebuild.

TTFN

Ebay stole money from me

2013-10-31T13:42:00.000-07:00

It's not a nice subject but here is something to bear in mind when selling on Ebay.
My Ebay shop got hacked, I don't know how Tony Chubb got hold of my password for Ebay but he did.

Several months ago I noticed in my listings there was a £2000 camera listed on my shop. I thought it was very strange and assumed Ebay made a mistake so I ended the listing and thought little of it. Getting through to anyone at Ebay is a nightmare.
So, about a month ago I had sales of a Silver Khanda coin I sell but instead of the payment going to info@titanclassics.com the person paid was tonychubb78@yahoo.co.uk

screen shot in Ebay of tonychubb78@yahoo.co.uk email address in my listing as the payee

I reported it to Ebay and sent a cancellation email to the customer and the first customer accepted it and got his money back straight away. The second customer refused the cancellation of the sale, even though I told him of the fraud. He seemed to get angry. He got his refund a month later and was refunded by Ebay.

I spent hours on the phone to Ebay pointing out the fraud with screenshots etc. They leave in a queue waiting 20 minutes, then when someone answers they talk sympathetically and transfer you to someone who doesn't know any details. You tell them again and they transfer to someone else who also knows nothing.

I spent hours on the online chat to Ebay and got sympathy but nowhere.

Then I had a emails demanding the £42 or they'll close the lathe*dog ebay shop down. The shop that pays them £200 a month in fees. They also threatened bailiffs to recover the money. I asked to speak to a manager. Didn't happen, although the lady said a manager would phone me. They didnt!

I paid the £42!

The system of Ebay is, it is a ROBOT. There is no human at the helm, just minions at the end of the line saying soothing words. Fraud and counterfeit goods are actively encouraged.

Tony Chubb is a debt collector in the North of England. I reported him to Ebay, Paypal and even the Police. All of which never replied and didn't want to know. I emailed Tony myself and didn't get a reply.

It could be that somebody hacked his paypal and will empty it when it fills up.

Ebay is a criminal enterprise.

De restricted air box lid.

2013-02-19T13:24:00.000-08:00

I've always meant to get a de restricted airbox lid for the my VJ23.
On reading the excellent rgv250.co.uk forum it was mentioned the lid has two pipe nozzles. You have to take the pipe from the bottom of the float bowls of the carburetor and connect them to the pipes indicated in the photo. That way, at high speed the pressure from the ram air effect is equalised with the float bowl.
I'm not sure but I think in the past when driving very high speed, fuel was leaving the exhaust pipe unburnt.

VJ23 de- restricted airbox lid

You could probably put a couple of holes in the sides of the standard airbox lid and use some kind of pipe fitting to get the same result but a lot cheaper, but I'm glad I've got an original Suzuki de restricted lid. It just makes this modern classic that bit more complete.
Hopefully it'll give a bit more Ooomph over 110mph too.

http://www.fairingbolt.com/

Titanium bike and car bolts August 2012

2012-08-22T14:18:00.003-07:00

Hooray! The new batch of titanium fasteners have arrived!

Titanium metric and American thread bolts for Bikes/bicycle and car

Honda replica 90112- MAT-000 fairing bolt

The photo's aren't really doing justice to how good these fasteners look.
On the left here is a titanium fairing bolt for Honda sports bikes. It doesn't have the dimples in the large flat top surface like the original part but it's about 60% the weight of the Genuine steel item and won't corrode. There seems to be a bit of a following for these Honda bolts with Honda RC45 owners

These M8 titanium dome nuts shimmer in the light, and the first 10 are going on the heads of my Suzuki RGV250SP. Standard steel dome heads are 8.3gm each but these titanium ones are 4.6gm giving a weight saving of 37gm on my bike, meaning I can eat a bag of crisps and still be 10gm's lighter on the bike, although the second gear power wheelie is probably a thing of the past on account of my ahem, girth. :P

BICYCLE PARTS

The standard steel rear brake bolt on my racer was getting corroded even after only a few hundred miles so here's me fitting a new corrosion proof and lighter titanium version. Hopefully I'll get time to test it this weekend

I didn't realise the bolt holding the rear brake is shorter than that of the front brake, which will be a later order. This steel front brake bolt has suffered with the weather and it hasn't been exposed much to the weather.

Jockey wheel titanium bolts all also ready for sale. The original steels ones seemed to have fared well against the weather, probably due to being caked in oil and grease. :)

Here are the two sides of crank bolts. They fitted perfectly to my bike so they'll be tested this weekend, if I can sneak out the house for a while.

BRAKE BLEED BOLTS

I had two types of titanium brake bleed bolt made. The metric type will be used to replace the rusty originals on my bike and the Imperial (American thread UNF) 1/4" version will be tried out on a friends Classic Mini. My Mini has KAD front calipers and I think they're different. Although I'll fit them to the rear Mini brakes.

That's a few of what titanium parts are going on sale on the Ebay lathe*dog shop http://www.fairingbolt.com/ shop Amazon and http://titanclassics.com/ shop

Initial checks on all the parts are showing the manufacturers have done an outstanding job again. Every little fillet and chamfer from the CAD files is present.

That's all for now and I hope I haven't bored you too much on the fascinating subject of weight reduction and thread types.

There are a couple of new GENUINE RGV250SP curved radiators imported from Japan on the lathe*dog Ebay shop which are gorgeous! They're expensive because all Japanese goods are expensive now. About double the price they were 6 years ago.

AND FINALLY

I thought you'd like to see a pretty picture of a CAD model. Normally diagrams to the manufacturer look like blueprints and have a note indicating the thread type, but you can model the thread and bring the model into the renderer PhotoView or Autodesk Showcase and get beautiful realistic renders like below.

Double banjo bolt rendered in Showcase

http://www.fairingbolt.com/

RGV250 Radiators NEW! #17710-42E00

2012-08-11T02:53:00.000-07:00

Here you can see brand new Genuine Suzuki RGV250SP (VJ23) radiators imported to Britain from Japan.

RGV250SP radiator Part number #17710-42E00

The part number is #17710-42E00

RGV250SP radiator Part number #17710-42E00

VJ23 radiator number

As you can see it's curved. It's all aluminium and is feather light. If you need to replace yours you can find these radiators, fairings and titanium replica parts at http://www.fairingbolt.com/

Yes I know they expensive. It's all down to the price of the Yen. The Yen has doubled in value compared to about 6 years back, so anything coming out of Japan has suddenly become much more expensive.

http://www.fairingbolt.com/

www.fairingbolt.com

2012-04-30T14:34:00.001-07:00

The website needs a bit more refinement as it has only just been launched but FAIRINGBOLTS.COM is a site selling standard fasteners and parts replicated in everlasting, super strong and lightweight TITANIUM.

I know you can buy titanium fasteners elsewhere on the net but this is the place where you can that Honda fairing bolt with the shoulder that holds the fairings properly in place.

The weight of the standard part and the titanium part is given, so you can see how much weight you save on your bike.

These aren't the same as luminous purple aluminium bolts that you get sick of the sight of when your bike goes up in value as a classic.

Part numbers are listed with the parts for sale so you can cross reference the micro fiche of your bike on various websites. Not only that, pictures highlighting where the bolts go are often listed alongside the images of the bolts.

All parts use the exact critical dimensions as the standard part. Threads are rolled and not cut.
Grade 5 titanium 6Al/4V is used for ultimate strength.
They are a great deal stronger and lighter than steel or stainless steel fasteners.

You can also find these parts on Amazon.

Also selling are titanium fasteners in American thread UNF and UNC thread types.

http://www.fairingbolt.com/

New fairings direct from Japan

2012-04-24T12:58:00.000-07:00

Hello 2 stroke nutters!

Yesterday I took delivery of the hugely expensive fairings for my Suzuki RGV250 VJ23. The existing ones that came with the bike had been repaired and resprayed in the proper colours following whatever accident the bike had by the previous owner but the whiteness of the paint was starting to yellow and had the odd scratch.
As the VJ23 is now a classic bike I thought it best to get new fairing panels. (I may even change the garish purple engine bolt kit back to the original Suzuki bolts). At some point I'll fit new front discs as the ones I have fitted at present have a slight wave in them.

Here's the wrapped Right side fairing.

Gorgeous fairing panel. Pristine and brand new. Look at the stunning orange gradient of the Gamma symbol.

Because the Yen is such high value to the Pound the price of goods from Japan has nearly doubled. If only I bought the fairings in 2006.

Brilliant white panel of the central seat unit. Padded, then in a plastic bag, then within a padded box.

I tried to buy the little hatch panel that fits this panel but you can't get hold of it, so I'll have to keep great care of that piece and get it resprayed to remove the faded paint.

This piece fits under the bike and holds the two side fairings. If you have Sugaya pipes this piece gets melted unless you cut a bit out. It also gets covered in 2 stroke oil and tends to break after a number of fairing removals, so I bought this as a spare.

There are a couple more fairing pieces to show but that's for another time.

If anyone is interested I'm able to supply direct from Japan parts. I've been importing and exporting around the world for years so if there's that special Japanese part you can't be without, you could do worse than drop me an email.

Summers nearly here in the Northern hemisphere. Happy riding!

http://vj23.com/

VJ23 Fairing bolts!

2011-06-20T17:23:00.000-07:00

Finally, at long last I have had 100 of each of the below fairing fasteners manufactured. I'm selling them on Ebay at present but I'll soon list them for sale on the VJ23.com website.

Suzuki part number 09139-06087

Suzuki part number 09139-05054

These fit the VJ23 plastic panels and are a replica of the original panel bolts. Yes, I took all the measurements from the original bolt, modelled the part in Solid Works (CAD program) and had them manufactured. They look the same as the original part, but they're much better!
Ebay link
Part number 09139-06087

Standard Steel bolt weight = 11.9grammes
Titanium bolt weight = 6.3grammes
weight saving = 5.6grammes
Price £6 each

Ebay link
Part number 09139-05054

Standard Steel bolt weight = 5.6grammes
Titanium bolt weight = 3.3grammes
weight saving = 2.3grammes
Price £5 each

These bolts also fit the GSXR, TLS and a load of other Suzuki bikes. Just type the part number in Google and see if they'll fit your Suzuki.
These bolts are made of Grade 5 titanium, which is utterly corrosion proof and a lot stronger than the standard part.
When I get time I'll look into doing a better price for a whole set of these bolts for the VJ23.
Hope you like and keep checking back to see what other titanium parts I get made for this beautiful bike.

Cheers,

Rich

http://vj23.com/

TITANIUM fairing bolts VJ23

2011-05-11T06:51:00.000-07:00

VJ23 TITANIUM fairing bolt

Hello people, sorry for the long delay in posting.

I get fasteners manufactured in TITANIUM (6AL/4V) mainly for classic cars with Imperial or American thread. UNC and UNF thread pattern.

For a while I been planning on making super strong, light weight and corrosion proof parts for the VJ23 (which hass metric threaded fasteners) and I've only just got around to sorting it out.

Especially after seeing my chrome plated fairing fasteners start to corrode. So the picture above is the model I made in the computer. It's a replica of the actual fasteners from my VJ23 so when you fit them to your bike it'll still look standard, except the bolts will be 40% lighter and corrosion proof. Pretty good eh?

I sell titanium M8 and M6 nuts already which I've got fitted on my bike. They work fine. They're especially good on the exhaust studs where nuts tend to rust and seize.

I'll also see about getting the rear wheel spacers manufactured in titanium. They'll be expensive but they save a fair bit of weight and it's unsprung weight as well so doubly good.

Summers nearly here in UK. Hopefully I'm not too busy with work to get out in the country lanes and deafen some sheep.

Cheers for now.

Rich

http://www.fairingbolt.com/

SUZUKI RGV250SP (VJ23)

2010-12-04T19:47:00.000-08:00

Hi,

I've been running the site VJ23.com for a few years.

Updating every now and then, but it's been quite a disorganised affair. I would slap pages together on Saturday mornings and I didn't know much about html back then.

I've had some great photos, emails and info over the years and hopefully I've helped a lot of owners out.

With this blog I'm hoping to dump raw information as I get it so people can see it without me editing pages and maybe forgetting something.

You can also add comments, so it'd be great to get a bit of discussion going on about this brilliant bike.

Cheers,

Rich