11-26-02: Wrench Report
Mutt-Hawk
What happens if you breed these four Honda's together? Let's find out...
After fabricating a custom hack-job exhaust (scroll down) for my Hawk I told myself that would be the last thing I'd do to it, well, at least for a long time. I lied.
Good ol' Rick Blunden, a Hawkgt.com email lister, graciously informed the list about a project Hawk for sale in the Bay Area. This particular project Hawk had the VFR rear wheel conversion and F4 front end already on a Hawk frame. This also included the rest of the parts to build a Hawk (about 90% there). I thought about it and figured I could use the parts I wanted for my hawk, then sell off the rest, including my stock Hawk front end.
So, I made sure I was able to borrow my girlfriends' pick-up (it's so great having a little work truck in the "family"), and made an appointment with the seller. We met up Sat. morning and I was the first to come look at it. I looked it over, but not as thoroughly as I should have. Now, as I looked over it I decided I wasn't going to pay his asking price, so I talked him down to a price we could both live with. Now, if only I had known what I was getting myself into...
I hauled my load to my friends shop for temporary storage until I could install the mods and sell the rest.
I got to work on Mon.. I was hoping to get it all done by the following Sat. so I could ride my newly modded Hawk to the North Bay BBQ at Rick Holtzman's. The first thing I tackled was the front end. It would have been relatively easy if all the cables weren't intertwined with the bars, tripples, etc.
Oh, what a pathetic sight
After I finally finessed the front end into place I had a starter/throttle side control box that wouldn't close properly and a sticky throttle. I took her out for a test ride and, Holy Tamoly, I have a new bike! The steering and handling is completely different from my Hawk front end. Of course, there were some issues I never sorted out with my Hawk front end that effected steering. And breaking...fuh-git-about-it. Two finger hard stops here I come!
A couple of days later I went back to the shop to "swap" the VFR rear wheel onto my bike. Well, naive little me thought I'd be able to just pop one wheel off and put the other on. "No, Kenzo, there's a really important thing you've overlooked, like how the VFR wheel bolts to a modded Hawk spindle." Ohhhhh, okay, I get it. Don't ask me how I overlooked this detail. I never read any of the VFR rear wheel threads on the list because I never thought I'd be doing the mod (too expensive).
So I bravely charged forward into uncharted territory (for me, anyway), and swapped the spindles. By the way, here's a little tip if anyone removes their rear sprocket/hub/bearing assembly. Before you remove the sprocket you're going to want to loosen the chain, right? Well, make sure the break is still in place, otherwise you might be scratching your head later. You see, if you remove the caliper then spin the eccentric bearing carrier (chain adjuster), then this bolt and the supporting arm it attaches to the break assembly will no longer match up:
I did it all backwards, so I had to figure out that I had to spin the eccentric bearing carrier back to it's original position (tighten the chain), to get the holes to match up again. Anyway, just a note in hopes that someone will avoid my mistake.
Hey, she's taking shape!
So, how wide is a VFR wheel compared to the stocker?
You'll find out if you still have the stock chain guard on there.
After the rear wheel was on the major stuff was done. Well, okay not really:
Doh! Where are the gages?!
So that's what the Hawklist archives meant by losing your speedo? More like you lose your entire cluster! Unlike the Hawk triple, the F4 doesn't have mounting points for a cluster or gages. I have them temporarily rigged on there with zip ties and rope, but I'll fabricate a custom bracket/gage panel and weld some mounting tabs onto the F4 triple. (scroll down for my solution to the cluster mounting issue.
Thoughts and reactions:
To be honest, I really like the look of the stock wheels, but the dual disk front of the F4 and massive rubber of the VFR rear are nothing to complain about. Handling, well, let's just say I'm going to need to get used to it. It's just so different. Breaking? Like I said: two finger breaking! Overall appearance/thoughts? I like it. Would I do it again? Yes, for the same price. But now I have to deal with the gages headache.
UPDATE (5-5-03)
After toying with the idea of fabricating my own gage bracket I believe a posted a message to the list about this issue and recieved a response from a local lister (thanks Chad R). He said he had also done the F4 front end swap and had gotten a hand-me-down custom bracket gage bracket from Jay Nemec of www.cyclezoo.com, and apparently Jay got this bracket off of the Green Gremlin bike he purchased from Robb Z! Instead of using this bracket Chad got one from Motomorphic, so he didn't need this one anymore and offered to me, free! I gladly took it from him and got to work customizing it for my needs. After drilling new holes, welding, painting, re-drilling and re-painting I finally had a bracket I could use. The good thing about this bracket is that it has a spot to mount a bicycle speedo. Here's my work in progress gage bracket:
Like I said, it's a work in progress. I'd like to find some way of covering the tack and I need to figure out a way to keep the tack from lifting/bouncing out of its seat. I also still have not been able to make my Sigma bicycle speedo work, so, there are still many little details to work out.