rusty crusty 1999 revival

originally i started this process on vfrworld, so some of you may have already seen this. at any rate....

hey everyone. i'm bringing this barn-find '99 back to life and thought it would be cool to document the process.

bit of background: i started as a car guy many moons ago but the cost of parts just got to be too much to handle. i still wanted something fun with an engine that wouldn't make my bank account warm up for the safe word whenever i wanted to tinker with it, so a few years ago i picked up my first bike, a 2005 SV650. and it's been a revelation. not just a revelation that riding is so much more fun than driving, but that working on bikes is about a million times more enjoyable than cars.

anyway, now that i've had the suzuki for a bit, i decided it was time to look for an upgrade. it's a fantastic bike for around town, but my biggest gripe is that it's just not great for long trips. i've tried doing a handful, and every time i would find myself having to hop off and take a break every 45 minutes just because of how buzzy it is, especially at highway speed. a VFR seemed like the natural choice--bigger, comfier, awesome engine, nice but not insane bump in power, honda build quality, and not a complete dad bike, plus it's always sort of been on my bucket list ever since i saw that sixth gen in my youth. so when a friend of mine passed along a craigslist ad for a very neglected but very straight and low-mileage fifth gen (with a clean title) for peanuts, i immediately hit the guy up. he told me he picked it up from someone he thought he trusted who told him it just needed tires and a chain, but it turned out the motor was seized up solid from water leaking through the flapper valve. the tank was also full of water from the keyless cap not being installed properly. understandably, he just wanted it gone. undaunted and even somewhat excited by the prospect of a little project, and also feeling kinda bad for him, i left there 900 bucks poorer with this guy in tow.

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then the teardown began...hoo boy.[image: IMG_20250226_120656.thumb.png.4ff56eb81fd96b1ef098e5663094db85.png]

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undaunted, i kept going.

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once the motor was out, i moved everything into my...er..."shop", and finished the teardown. on the bench is a junkyard fresh '01 motor; the original is quite likely unsalvageable as you will see shortly. also was able to source a tank and seat (buried behind the pile of fairings).

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anyone know what these parts do?

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uh, yeah, that's really bad....

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anyway. first order of business was just some minor painting.

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grabbed the clutch cover from the old engine since the new one has a hole in it:

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next was to check the new engine over. did valves, replaced the thermostat and choke wax motor, added pair delete plates, and degreased. thought about swapping over the manual choke from the old engine, but decided it was probably too far gone to be used and didn't feel like changing over all the little coolant necks as well.

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all buttoned up, ready for its new home.

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more to come soon, going to take a break for now so as to avoid blowing up the forums.

2 hours ago, Burger

anyway. first order of business was just some minor painting.

🤣 Boy if that isnt wishful thinking I dont know what is lmaoo

[image: Practicing Candor: Don't Pretend Everything is Fine]

 ooh I can make this part a lil nicer.... think happy thoughts... think happy thoughts....  

22 minutes ago, Ughandi

🤣 Boy if that isnt wishful thinking I dont know what is lmaoo

[image: Practicing Candor: Don't Pretend Everything is Fine]

 ooh I can make this part a lil nicer.... think happy thoughts... think happy thoughts....  

the journey of a thousand steps begins with a single mile, or something

I think it's going to be more than a thousand. The color of the clutch cover is like a little tease and now I'm hooked on watching to see where this goes. Look forward to following along.

went to clean and paint the exhaust and was met with an unfortunate surprise.

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in the interest of keeping things low-buck...butchery ensued.

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looks good from my house!

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in all seriousness, i plan to get the stainless delkevic headers when budget allows. but today is not that day.

engine's in!

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found that with some creative application of jackstands and a milkcrate (and an unspecified quantity of alcohol) i could seesaw the frame up high enough to just roll the engine under and get a bolt in. then i could seesaw it forward and install the rest. after that the swingarm went on along with whatever else i could bolt back up.

threw the front fairing back on just to testfit the new mirrors.

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also painted the cluster for a laugh.

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Nice kitchen. The first thing that came to my mind was a VFR rolling through while saying "weeeeeee!"

6 minutes ago, bmart

Nice kitchen. The first thing that came to my mind was a VFR rolling through while saying "weeeeeee!"

Haha...the first thing that came to my mind is that he will be spending time at the drive-up window for...well, you can guess the food item.

2 hours ago, bmart

Nice kitchen. The first thing that came to my mind was ...

My first thought was, you MUST be single.  Anybody have a wife that would allow bike repairs in the kitchen?

now time for forks

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stubborn bastard didn't wanna come apart....

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i used duplicolor wheel paint+wheel clear for the sliders, rustoleum trim&bumper on the protectors, and 0000 steel wool and mother's mag polish for the pipes (plus some jb steelstik sanded to 1500grit to fill in some pits, but don't tell anyone)

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back on its weight for the first time in a while (ignore the backwards wheel, it's gotta come off again for paint and tires anyway)

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reinstalled exhaust, throttles, and airbox (what a pain that was)

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and my "shop" is now empty again

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and now brakes

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(changed all the seals too, just forgot to take any pictures)

some of you may be wondering why i ripped out the entire system, others have probably figured it out. yep, it's time for the dirty word. the "d" word.

delinking.

i assure you all that i have thought long and hard about it and that this decision was not made lightly, but here are my reasons. for one, given the condition of the rest of the bike, and the condition of the brake fluid that i drained, i have absolutely no faith in the integrity or functionality of any of the small linking components, and am thoroughly disinclined to rebuild them or hunt down new ones. and for two, steel braided line kits are significantly cheaper for delinking versus stock style. i know this is not the optimal way to do it and that there're better ways to go about it it, like VTR fork lowers and calipers, but keeping the stock calipers and brackets would be the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to move the project along and get it that much closer to munching miles again. i do plan on upgrading the MCs though, at least.

at any rate...fuel system is up next. after that, she should make some noise.

Wauw, great rebuild! Not easy!

WORD TO THE WISE

WHEN APPLYING AIR PRESSURE TO FREE A STUCK CLUTCH SLAVE CYLINDER

MAKE SURE THE STUPID THING ISN'T POINTED AT YOUR STUPID FACE

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thanks for coming to my ted talk.

anyway, more freshly painted parts + rebuilt clutch slave

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while i'm waiting for funds to free up, i decided to entertain myself with some experimentation.

in butchery.

see, these fairings look really bad.

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it would be great if i could repaint them, which i do plan to do at some point, but i have no garage and no air compressor. i know 2-component aerosol cans exist, but if i were to do it the way i want to, it would cost north of 500 dollars. so what might be an inexpensive and reversible solution to get this thing looking presentable until i'm able to go back and do things the right way?

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yes.

and the final results....

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shockingly good. astoundingly good. and it even ended up being a decent match to the factory paint.

UV /sunlight takes its toll on the red color and is the main cause of degeneration of plastic parts. Many people use sun protection of different kinds, but what do bikes use ?

fuel system sorted

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couldn't find a new fuel feed hose for a reasonable price so i made a new one out of braided -6 AN line. overkill? probably.

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and sourced a fresh tank.

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also shoutout to vortex, i emailed and asked if i could get a rebuild kit or a servicing for this old cap and they offered me 40% off a new one instead. good stuff.

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decided to reinstall some of the bodywork now that the tank's on, just to see how far it's come....

(and to free up shelf space)

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not tea bag. still amazed how well the plastidip turned out. (also worked great on the grab handles)

anyway the fuel system was the last of the rusty bits, so i suppose that's a milestone. if i really wanted to, i could fire it up, but before that i'd like to address the charging system. ('01 stator doesn't plug into '99 r/r, and if i'm messing with it i'd rather just install a shindengen.) other than that, i've pretty much finished the labor intensive part of the project, so now it's onto the financially intensive part of the project.

small update:

new reg/rec from roadstercycle

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and a horn

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tried firing it but didn't quite manage before the battery died, going to let it charge and try again a few more times and then start troubleshooting if it still doesn't work.

Somehow I've missed this thread. Good job so far. That blocky looking thing in the main harness just in front of your new R/R is a ground junction block. You should unwrap it, and make sure there's no corrosion going on in there.

another small update: got it to bark with starting fluid, but then it peed oil out the clutch pushrod hole since i still haven't gotten around to chain & sprockets and it wouldn't make much sense to bolt the sprocket cover back together until that's been handled. unfortunately i didn't have any clean cat litter around so i had to scoop some straight out the box. it was getting spark and there was gas on the plugs, but they were all rather brown, so once chain & sprockets are on and the sprocket cover is reassembled i'll toss some fresh plugs at it and try again. at least it briefly started and ran and made oil pressure.

anyway, first actual shiny new thing: woodcraft bars!

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the old switchblocks are pretty roached so i thought it'd be a good opportunity to do something cool, which will be revealed in due time. as part of that, i needed a new throttle with custom cables:

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thanks to venhill for supplying an awesome cable kit. next up will be chain & sprockets so i can do the stuff i talked about at the beginning.

just gotta keep chipping away at it....

I had a turn signal switch fail a few years ago ( simply cleaning it no longer did the trick), and it was NLA then. Ended up getting a used one from Duc2V4.

12 hours ago, MBrane

I had a turn signal switch fail a few years ago ( simply cleaning it no longer did the trick), and it was NLA then. Ended up getting a used one from Duc2V4.

yeah... run switch is intermittent, starter button needs much extra encouragement, horn button makes a bad connection so the horn sounds goofy, and the highbeam switch just won't budge for whatever reason. also they just look like crap from sitting in the sun for however many years. i found a company that makes a body control module kit with new switches that'll take care of all of that and add some modern conveniences.

well the BCM thing didn't quite work out, but i got some very nice domino units instead. they were a bit cheaper than the other thing and still give me all the features i wanted, so it's all good.

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new MCs as well:

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new bars all set up: (was quite the relief to hook the switch blocks up and not blow any fuses or let any magic smoke out, all the buttons even work to boot including the ones that weren't there before)

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this digital flasher i've had laying around for like 8 years finally came in handy.

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chain and sprockets also on, swingarm's all back together:

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now some bad news. with the clutch SC back on, i decided it was finally time to start it. threw some fresh plugs at it, mashed the go button, it cranked, and...nothing. it did bark with some starter fluid, at which point it made oil pressure and showed no signs of leaks, but it wouldn't stay running. when i looked down the throttles, nothing was coming out the injectors. then i pulled off the return line and cycled the key to check fuel flow, which checked out just fine (which it damn well should, since i changed out almost the entire fuel system). so the injectors got gummed up. which means i gotta pull off the throttle bodies.

son of a bitch.

i think what i'm gonna do is pull the injectors out of the old motor and see if they'll come back to life, so i can just get the actual swap job all done in an afternoon, rather than having to leave the TBs on the bench for however long and worry about parts getting lost or junk finding its way into the good engine.

the perks of having a parts motor!

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You are doing the Lord's work.....😁

I've cleaned injectors by cycling them with a 9V battery while giving them a spray of brakeclean. If you do this don't hold them open very long. Certain types of injectors don't like that. There are also injector cleaning/balancing services.

Imbesi's Law of the "Conservation of Filth:"
In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.

Freeman's Extension:
… but you can get everything dirty without getting anything clean.

3 hours ago, MBrane

I've cleaned injectors by cycling them with a 9V battery while giving them a spray of brakeclean. If you do this don't hold them open very long. Certain types of injectors don't like that. There are also injector cleaning/balancing services.

yeah, the plan is to get the injectors from the parts motor professionally cleaned; i want to be as sure as i can that i won't have to take the throttles off again for a long, long time.