Latest News

Oct 17 2021

Still waiting on pistons and cams. Been quite a while. Puzzling on how I'm going to come up with enough fluidity to meet Niche Cycles's new dealer buy-in. It really isn't all that much considering how costly their premium products are; I just must wait for a few big sales to go all-in. The last time that I had some fluidity, I baought cylinders of various models, cam cores, valves, rockers, and some stock Yamaha parts.

I talked to the fellow that runs Schumann's Motor Works for quite a while some weeks ago. As far as head-work goes, he's the real deal. He makes his own valves, spring kits, and guides from scratch, and spoke of 7mm and 5/16" stem size kits. He works in several steel alloys as well as titanium. He extrudes valve blanks from rod stock, cuts the faces and keeper grooves, then heat treats them. He seems to have quite the shop at his disposal. Any how, when I run out of my inventory of valves (maybe sooner) I will simply post a link to his facebook site for all head-work on this site. Indeed, I think that when I'm ready to mount my personal bike's heads I will ship them to him for over-size, skinny stem titanium valves, beehive spring kits with titanimum retainers; and keepers and jam nuts out of the same material. He used all the right terms and seemed knowledgeable about how limited the biggest port size is on XVs, so I trust him to port to order. The real difference between our basic head work is I cut seats by hand; it takes about an hour to cut four seats with five angle cuts. He uses a one pass machine to give the seats a trombone-bell opening. He also has more tools (mostly tungsten carbide) available to him to port faster and cleaner. He'll get the rockers from me. This is all good as I really don't enjoy doing seats, and porting is very hard on my nerves.

It has been brought to my attention that I must start collecting sales tax for domestic orders, regardless of whether they are in-state or not -- except where the state delivered to has no sales tax. This does not apply to international sales. These collections go into an eschrow account that is periodically disbursed to the California Board of Equalization, thence paid to the appropriate state's equivalent bureau. The rate expected is the highest charged in that state, but should never exceed ten percent. Another blow: my costs have increased across the board. To avoid raising prices I must now charge for shipping on domestic orders. It will be added to all orders except in the case where we have agreed on some total price that includes it. I'll work up approximations and list them with the part descriptions.

Aug 20 2021

I got a parcel from Cometic. The 1000/1100 gaskets are fine. The 920 are too flat and are much wider than the groove that they are supposed to fit into. I argued with a org there to try to get them right and followed up with an email containing measurements. It is such a pain to return things. Oh well. I shall send them a stock gasket - which I did a year ago so that they would have the dimensions. I kept giving them metric values and they kept "inching" back at me. The follow up email had both types of measurement. They were never acknowledged. Two months after ordering, received some 920 gasket sets from Athena. Thousand sets are back-ordered. Two sets of C01 cams are gonna take another week, at least. And JE has me waiting on three sets of pistons, one going on three months. Trick pistons with surface coatings and ceramic crowns. Big bucks.

I spent a couple of hours porting some 1100 heads. I should have charged more. I have to wear glasses and a respirator to protect me from aluminum powder and shards. I have to keep reminding myself that this is supposed to be very light: no need to knife edge the guide areas. It looks half done, but it's already more than I promised.

Aug 05 2021

Cometic just billed me for gaskets; they must be ready to ship. Big bore 1000/1100 and snug-fitting copper alloy for 920s. Oil cooler bits are trickling in, I just need to figure how to mount the radiator. Vents are on hold, but are coming. The deluxe will be buit into the front cam cap. The cap will be made flat and will act as the base for an LED ignition trigger. There will be a bearing and seal in it and it will be self contained - probably with a mechanical advanance. Later versions will be magnetically tripped. I'll use a MicroSquirt under the tank and a lucite (or similar) trigger disk in (probably) a 72-2 configuration with neodymium magnets. As a bonus, the MicroSquirt can, at a later date, be used to control an EFI system. I am thinking of a kicker kit. I _think_ a mechanism off another model could be placed behind the clutch cover. So which model and exact placement is still in the air. I try to use genuine Yamaha where I can. Also, Ive got an idea for a compression release. When the engine start button is depressed, solenoids mounted to the exhaust rocker covers push down on the rockers enough to lift the exhaust valves off their seats, dropping compression briefly. The solenoids also could be triggered by a lever on the handlebars, in case you have a kicker installed. Should both these projects come to fruition, the kicker would probably engage the solenoids whenever the kick arm was not at rest. The hard part will be to have the solenoids drop back to their rest position when engine speed exceeds 1000RPM. You won't be able to use them to generate fireballs, but those you can make with the kill switch are spectacular enough.

Jun 15 2021

The recent plague has caused my CP-Carrillo distributor to close up shop. CP's direct-to-dealer price is more than most mfg's retail; thus I cannot currently offer their products. I haven't edited out the prices, because I have hopes of finding another source. They have also neglected to answer my emails and phone calls. It's been a week and a half; I sent them my payment info and product descriptions. My original sales rep still works there. I don't know what the problem is. I also have not been able to reach Athena USA. Email goes unanswered; phone calls get some spam mongers trying to sell memberships. I keep trying - they had excellent products. I just got back a reply from Athena. They told me that the gasket sets I wanted can't be promised by August. This is scary as they always had what I needed on the shelf. Same with Cometic.