KarterPhil's 02 rebuild

Righty ho, First Year of uni is done with, now time to get my mind back on the blaster. A friend of mine has managed to give me the motivation to get it done as I sort of lost it when he stopped racing his yfz as the plan was to race as a team but hey ho. I am making a list of the bits I need to finish her and will update here very soon!
 
Hey all!
I know it has been a pretty ridiculous amount of time since I participated on the forum let alone posted anything of my own, but I've always kept an eye on how things are going here.

In the time I've been "away" I've graduated from university in July 2018 achieving a 2:1 Degree in Automotive Engineering. Shortly after completing my course (May 2018) I fell ill to a severe liver disease induced by prescribed antibiotics (1 in 100,000 reaction case) and had to attend my graduation in a rather yellow shade with jaundice. Luckily I have fully recovered from the illness which is a blessing as it lasted the best part of 6 months with weekly hospital visits for blood tests and the odd CT scan and liver biopsy, a pretty rough time!

I am currently in the Swiss alps in Verbier a few weeks after the end of a 10 week BASI level 1 & 2 Ski Instructor course which has always been a dream of mine, after the illness I thought you only get one life so live it!

On and off throughout my illness and in my time off I have restarted the blaster project which was hidden away in storage whilst real life mundainity took over that bit too much, however as you can imagine I needed to take my mind off things at that point in time.

I shall be returning back home next friday and I fully intend on finishing the Blaster in the coming weeks/months ready for this summer! In the mean time, here's some photos of her as she sits right now, enjoy and peace out!
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Hey all!
I know it has been a pretty ridiculous amount of time since I participated on the forum let alone posted anything of my own, but I've always kept an eye on how things are going here.

In the time I've been "away" I've graduated from university in July 2018 achieving a 2:1 Degree in Automotive Engineering. Shortly after completing my course (May 2018) I fell ill to a severe liver disease induced by prescribed antibiotics (1 in 100,000 reaction case) and had to attend my graduation in a rather yellow shade with jaundice. Luckily I have fully recovered from the illness which is a blessing as it lasted the best part of 6 months with weekly hospital visits for blood tests and the odd CT scan and liver biopsy, a pretty rough time!

I am currently in the Swiss alps in Verbier a few weeks after the end of a 10 week BASI level 1 & 2 Ski Instructor course which has always been a dream of mine, after the illness I thought you only get one life so live it!

On and off throughout my illness and in my time off I have restarted the blaster project which was hidden away in storage whilst real life mundainity took over that bit too much, however as you can imagine I needed to take my mind off things at that point in time.

I shall be returning back home next friday and I fully intend on finishing the Blaster in the coming weeks/months ready for this summer! In the mean time, here's some photos of her as she sits right now, enjoy and peace out!View attachment 34380 View attachment 34379 View attachment 34378 View attachment 34377 View attachment 34377 View attachment 34378 View attachment 34379 View attachment 34380
Wow that is one clean blaster.
 
Glad you are doing better!!
Your color combo is what I’ve been thinking of. What did you use on the frame? Name of color? Not that I’m a Michigan University fan, but was thinking Maize and Blue. Only color I thought would go good with Yamaha Blue.
Thanks
 
Glad you are doing better!!
Your color combo is what I’ve been thinking of. What did you use on the frame? Name of color? Not that I’m a Michigan University fan, but was thinking Maize and Blue. Only color I thought would go good with Yamaha Blue.
Thanks

Thanks man, has been a tough and rough few years that's for sure!

Really racking my memory now as it was pc'd over 7 years ago now :(. Pretty sure its Signal Yellow RAL 1003. The blue is a pearl version of the Yamaha deep purplish blue used on the R1, not sure of the code.
 
Does it still look this good?

Won’t do PC, maybe spray gun, probably just rattle can
Cat yellow? Seen some Rustoleum colors that look good. I need to take hood or tank cover to store and see what looks good to me.
 
Does it still look this good?

Won’t do PC, maybe spray gun, probably just rattle can
Cat yellow? Seen some Rustoleum colors that look good. I need to take hood or tank cover to store and see what looks good to me.

Indeed haha, she has been in storage for most of the time I've been away.
CAT yellow is close just not quite the same depth as RAL1003.
But best thing is as you said to go and compare.

In the mean time, I have an update to the build. We have a new rear fender coming from glorious ebay. It's for a yfz450 but I know that they are easy to fit from trying a friends, it was the original plan to use one over the stock fender.
 

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Hey all, managed to get some time to mount the YFZ450 rear fender on the blaster the other day, needs fettling to get it right and well supported but easily done. I reckon i'm gonna 3d print some sort of buck to fill the void behind the seat.
I lined up some of the yfz450 graphics on the fender too just to get an idea of what I can get to fit.
In the mean time I've decided to re-model part of my garage setup and re-do all my wiring and lighting over the workbench before I continue with the Blaster just to give me the best work environment possible, it has been on the to do list for quite a while!

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Hey all, here's an update, this week has seen lots of progress with the blaster due to the UK being in full lockdown from the coronavirus, I've not got much else to do other than housework and garden patio construction so.... Blaster it is!

First thing that was done was a reconditioning of the Paul Turner expansion pipe and Duncan Racing Fatboy 2 end pipe. The PT pipe was fully stripped back to bare metal and painted in 800c ceramic exhaust coating with lacquer and the DR end pipe was sanded and sheened up with scotchbrite. (I know, the decal says FatBoy 4, the only one I had!)
I slightly modified the tail pipe with a stainless bend I had laying around just to point the tip more towards the floor. A chance to get my eye back into TIG again after a good year without picking up the torch.

Whilst the paint was drying on the PT pipe I stripped, ultrasonically cleaned and rebuilt the rear brake master cylinder with new seals etc.

The next thing to be completed was the air and battery box. As i've fitted a YFZ450 rear fender i figured it would be less of a pain in the ass to just make an aluminium air & batt box than bodge the old blaster one to fit with the new fender, I hoped it would look better too!

Anyways, pics below, hope y'all like them!



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Hey guys, thought i'd post an update for y'all with the blaster build. A LOT of stuff has been done to her in the past months and she has been running and broken in, I shall enclose pics and vids.

I do believe she is running pretty rich overall as after pulling the pipe and plug, the piston is sooty (port flow lines visible though!) and both the plug and exhaust port is pretty oily and wet. Obviously there will be some plug chops to confirm main jet and some experimentation with the needle height.

I'm running a PJ34 carb on stock reeds so really want to upgrade those to VF4's and ideally swap over to a pro design intake rather than the stock boot all hogged out to fit, there is a lack of uuumph in the low to mid range upon full throttle opening which could i think be down to a couple things, rich jetting or the carb being a tad big for the stock bore and stroke with KOR Aggressive trail port and head mod. Mid to high is great although 3/4 to full throttle doesn't make a noticeable difference, which I reckon could be due to the stock reeds restricting flow or again, the carb being a tad too big!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yfe12Az8McMASq7MuLLKp5PF8X9VOBKk/view?usp=sharing


Obviously a work in progress guys so feel free to chime in if i'm going off the rails with my assumptions here :).

Other things I need/needed to work on. The ASR A-Arms that i fitted are 8 years old now and this being their first use (I know, scary long time!) had the "old style" heim joints that were prone to stiffening up. This became noticeable after around an hour of riding! I e-mailed Travis over at ASR and he was very helpful at sending me out some new joints (at a discount which was very good of them since it had been so long since i purchased the arms), with the bottom joints now being sealed ball joints as I ride a lot of wet mud normally.

Also had an issue with the rear brake caliper seizing on which I think is down to the bad quality handbrake mechanism i purchased after misplacing the old one! (My quad is to be road legal over here in the UK and we need a handbrake fitted, else i'd bin it! ;)).

I'll put some pics up in the next post off my phone of the cylinder and piston post running in and riding for a while. (I did check the plug after the running in process to confirm i wasn't mega lean before i rode it for a tank of fuel and it was pretty damp then)

Peace out, Phil

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This blaster is bad ass man great job on it. hope your enjoying riding it as much as all of us on here are enjoying watching your build
 
Hey guys, long time no see, or speak!

Thought I'd add a small update to this build page as the most recent images really didn't include enough dirt!

The blaster has been running great for the past 30 hrs or so, she has a minimalist light kit fitted for UK registration to include indicators etc (modified banshee kit from QuadTech UK). We ventured up to Drumclog Off-Road in Scotland a couple weeks back for a long weekend and got nice and muddy (was also the mrs first time on a dirt bike! In at the deep end on a yz250f). The blaster ran flawlessly all weekend, more than can be said for my 2018 KTM 150sx which decided to run like sh*t! (Mikuni TMX 38 Jet block gasket failure).
Anyway, pics below.

Peace out!
Phil


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