Using this device I put the nail at the center of the wheel hub and drew a circle around the openings. This would be my guide for opening them up. Next I took out the sawsall and cut the fenders staying just away from the markings.

Put some more tape around the fenders and taped up some paper to keep any mess off of the body. I took off the wheels and glassed up the area that I cut using three layers of glass cloth tape. Once it set I used a razor blade and cut off any excess and did a quick sanding job around the edges.

That might not sound like a great accomplishment, however my commute is 60 miles in each direction making it a 120 mile trip - the longest one so far! I use ridge top roads that end with about 12 miles of highway on my way to work.

With the current gearing that I have (15T/18T - 26T/70T) my top cruising speed is about 60mph, at that speed I am turning slightly over 5,000 rpm! While the redline on the engine is 11,500 rpm I don't like to keep sustained revs at that speed for long.

Lots of strange behavior, people sticking their heads out of car windows taking pictures with their cell phone camera. A number of them were rubber-necking so badly that they crossed over the middle line in the road as well!

I have found that the suspension is a little stiff while still fairly comfortable. The vehicle loves to carve around curves and twisty roads and when cornering does so flatly, very little body roll due to the sway bar! Handling is positive and quick requiring only slight turns of the steering wheel. When cruising I felt no pulling/vibration/pulsing from the suspension and quickly developed confidence in how the vehicle performs.

I am glad that I did not use the air cooled 600cc engine that I originally had, for one on warm days you really need water cooled, and the 600cc just would not be enough horsepower. I would recommend at a minimum a good 750cc and above. I can brake the rear tire loose from a stop but not in any of the other gears, and when going up hills (there are a lot in WV!) you can feel the engine laboring. An extra 20+ horse power from a 800cc, 900cc or maybe a 1000cc could be used in my area. For my comfort level the 750cc keeps me in check from trying to push the vehicle too hard, but I can still imagine what a 1000cc would do...

I decided that I would try to replace the 15T front sprocket with the original 16T sprocket. This should lower my gear ratio slightly from 3.23:1 to 3.03:1 and lower my cruising rpm's about 300-400 rpm. The key is to still be able to start out from a dead stop fairly easily! The great thing about the Vortex configuration is that it is so easy to experiment.

In addition I have to attribute a large portion of the ease of launching the vehicle to implementing a good torque strap. Initially this does not seem to make much sense, but after thinking about it it does. When starting to move the vehicle from a dead stop in first gear, there is a tremendous torque requirement on the engine/drive train. This was causing the movement of the engine. Once I fixed this issue it was *far* easier to launch the vehicle, and this was after I changed to the 26T front pulley.

When I dug out the original sprocket and cleaned it off I was surprised to see that it appeared to have a rubber damper built into it! That should help a little bit to cut down on vibration and noise. With the engine subframe and engine mounts void of any rubber or damping material all the vibrations and harmonics go through the entire chassis.

Then I did a search on the internet to find out more about the Honda VFR series bikes and found one review that stated that a 2002 VFR-800 turned 5,000 rpm's when traveling at 75mph. So maybe my thoughts of 5,000 rpm at 60mph was not too far off the mark?

While I had to loosen up all the engine mount bolts I decided to add some rubber padding between the engine mounts and the engine subframe. I had a sheet of 1/8" EPDM rubber sheet that I made all the pads from.

On the underside of the engine subframe where the mounting bolts extend through I made up some 1/8" thick backing plates as well for the rubber pads. On the top side I just put the rubber pads between the engine mounts and the subframe, this way the bolts are padded on each end.

Once done I took the vehicle out for a test drive and it worked GREAT! About the same amount of difficulty in getting started from dead stop as the 15T sprocket. It still seemed peppy at the higher speeds and now I would guess that my speedometer is about 7mph off what it reads.

The new sprocket dropped my cruising rpm's by at least 300 rpm, and the padding made a GREAT improvement in engine noise and vibration! I highly recommend it when you build your vehicle!

The reason appears to be that the interconnect that I used for the three wires was not up to the amperage that the generator put out.

Here are a couple of pictures of the finished (and painted) rough prototype:

I decided to get industrial sized chain rather than go with motorcycle chain as there are a lot more industrial sized chain sprockets available than motorcycle ones. There are some differences and it's best not to try to interchange them.

In additon the motorcycle sprockets are designed to be mounted on a splined shaft while the industrial versions typically are mounted on round shafts and use a keyway, so installation is easier.

Tonight I looked at how I was going to mount the reverse unit and connect to the jack-shaft and decided that I was going to modify the jack-shaft. Currently it uses three pillow blocks to retain the shaft, and I will be cutting the jack-shaft and using only two pillow blocks.

The design that I have does not work in this same manner, and hence can not be utilized the same way. As no power is transmitted through the unit until the band is engaged. Additional design work would be needed if the desire was to put the reverse directly in the path of power from the engine full time, but then again the Quaife unit already does this...

I know that it's silly but here are a couple of pictures:

I finished up the mounting bracket for the reverse unit and have it installed in the vehicle.

In order to install the jack-shaft you have to slide the outside two pillow blocks inward, put the assembly into place and then slide the outside pillow blocks back out again and bolt them in. The area is just too tight! Once in then you can tighten down the set-screws on the pillow blocks to lock them to the shaft. Removal is the opposite procedure.

I ended up having to cut the jack-shaft with my plasma tourch to even get it out of the vehicle, for some reason after loosening the set-screws I could not move the outside two pillow blocks to get the assembly out. Perfectly honest there is really no reason to have the jack-shaft extend across three pillow blocks, using three of the just seems to complicate things as it is far more difficult to align three pillow blocks than just two, not to mention simply getting the assembly in and out of the vehicle!

When I built the vehicle, right up front I was careful and instead of using plain steel for the jack-shaft I had Arrowhead Machine shop make one up using stainless steel. If you used steel it could easily get surface rust and it would not only be an eye sore but maybe impossible to remove.

I installed a 30T sprocket onto the jack-shaft, this will ultimately be used for connecting the reverse unit, I also have a 24T sprocket in case later I want to change the gear ratio from the jack-shaft to the reverse unit.

Next I made up a mounting bracket for the DC motor out of 3/16" steel. Drilled holes for the shaft as well as the three mounting bolts and put in some 3/8" wide slots about 1-1/4" long to attach the bracket to the engine subframe mount. The slots will be used to take up slack in the drive chain.

Here is a picture of the bracket in place:

Finally I connected the DC motor onto the bracket, this is a 12 volt high torque gear motor with the final output of about 60rpm, it's a bit slower than I initially wanted but will be good enough for now. I had to make up a small spacer for the shaft, as the shaft size is 11mm and the sprocket has 1/2" ID. Next I made up a length of #40 chain and spliced it with a master link to connect the DC motor to the input shaft of the reverse unit. Then I took up the slack and tightened the mounting bolts.

Here are a bunch of pictures of the unit from various angles:

I connected the DC motor up to a battery charger and did some initial testing. It worked quite well and pretty much as expected with the only snafu being the speed of the DC motor being about 1/3 of what it should ideally be. Ideally with the reverse box that I have a DC motor with about 150rpm would be just about perfect.

After this initial testing I don't think that I would want to use any smaller DC motor because even with the 3.5:1 gear reduction in the reverse unit and then an additional 2.5:1 from the output shaft to the jack-shaft the motor worked hard to pull the vehicle over a 2x4 on the ground, while on level ground it moved the vehicle pretty effortlessly. I'm not quite sure how much gradient it will work with but it should be a pretty good start.

To date I have about 500 miles driven on the vehicle, it has been performing quite well and I now need to go around and check that no bolts have came loose and re-torque them all. Also I have to bleed the brake lines (again) as there *still* appears to be some air in the system.

The first part of the morning was spent on making up some drawings of the completed reverse housing. Up till now I have been working with the single unit, tweaking it till it worked properly, and now that I have an operational unit I figured that it was time to put what I had down on paper. I am also trying to get some quotes for having some aluminum castings made up and they required the drawing anyway. If the quote it too high for them to make up aluminum castings then I will make up a bunch of them in steel, casting would save me a whole lot of time with the housing but have to see if there is a market before I put serious money out for this type of manufacture. If you have an interest then please contact me so that I could see if there is the need for such a unit.

Earlier this week I did some research on the Honda VFR engines, and I had found out that I was using the wrong oil in it. Initially I had put in some 10w-30 weight oil but found out that Honda recommends 20w-50. So I went out to the local Walmart found a 5 quart container from Castrol and got a replacement filter as well. Once home I change the oil and filter. It appears that the VFR (and other Honda Vee engines) typically run *hot* and that is the reason for the heavier oil, it is normal for this engine series. The engine actually calls for 4 quarts but I put in an extra quart because of the large oil cooler and longer lines that I am using.

The rear fender previously had started developing a crack which I welded and it came back again. Turns out that there was not enough support for the rear portion of the 12 gauge fender, as basically in my setup only the front 1/2 of the fender has support. I did not want to put in some additional external supports and I had a portion of the original fender that I purchased so I sliced it up. My intention was to weld it in the underside of the fender so that it would not show. I made sure that it extended far enough forward so that it was held by two of the retaining bolts on the swing arm.

Here is a picture of the spliced sections in the underside of the fender, kinda ugly but at least it is on the inside of the fender and once installed you will not see it:

You can see that it extends out almost to the rear of the fender and should help 'beefing up' this section and keep it from vibrating and eventially cracking along the edge again. This addition definately stiffened up the fender and I hope that it will eliminate the cracking problem that I had from vibration. I threw on a couple of coats of spray paint and reinstalled it back onto the vehicle.

While working on the fender the UPS man delivered the anxiously awaiting muffler - the FMF Megamax! At long last I think that I finally have the exhaust noise solution. The muffler comes with an internal baffle as well as some external discs/cover plate. You can run the muffler open, with the internal baffle, with the external discs or any combination of them (I used ALL of them). In looking at the muffler they really do a nice job and it is great quality. One of the external discs even has a shield to direct the hot gasses away from a fender/tire so I used that to keep any tire spray from the rear tire from getting into the inside of the muffler or blocking the discs.

I was able to shorten up the connecting exhaust pipe by almost 3" to help bring the new muffler farther towards the engine so that it would protrude out the back as little as possible. The new muffler is about 13" long and fits real nicely, I was able to make up an additional aluminum connecting bracket to connect it to the original bracket near the swing arm and tuck it in to give me enough ground clearance and to clear the swing arm and the rear fender.

Here are a couple of pictures showing the new muffler installed:

I angled it slightly to compromise on ground clearance and swing arm clearance, here is another shot looking from the rear forward showing how tight the fit is,. you also have to watch out that it does not hit the rear fender: