2005 Yamaha BWS: Update. Finished

Finally, my 2005 Yamaha BWS is running insured, and on the road!

I would have loved to document more of the engine overhaul, however this website wasn't co-operating during the rebuild, and I didn't document anything. 

Cosmetically you can see the difference from a stock 2005 BWS (Blue), to my mine. The rear fender has been hacked, front fender removed, wheels pasti-dipped, and all the fairings painted and polished to match original color, and the addition of front LED side markers.

Engine upgrades included a 70cc big block kit (Airsal), 17mm Arreche carburetor (upjetted), Doppler intake, Malossi reeds & cage, aftermarket air filter. Everything went together rather smoothly, with the exception of the Doppler intake which seemed to push the carburetor out of position. With the Doppler intake I could no longer use the stock air box as it would not line up properly. I had no choice but to replace the stock air box with an aftermarket air filter.

On the exhaust side the Doppler pipe I ordered, specifically for this build, didn't fit. I had to substitute a Leo Vince.

In the transmission I replaced the rollers with the Doppler ones that were packaged with the aftermarket pipe. I installed a Malossi delta clutch and Malossi torque spring.

While it's not my fastest build, it easily keeps up to city traffic, and is much smoother.

My take away from doing this build, is DO NOT BUY DOPPLER PARTS!!!!

Stick with brands like Stage6, Malossi, and Athena when possible.

2011 Nissan Versa: Trunk Light

This is the follow up to my last blog article, with some added information and pictures. As you can see from the picture above, I drilled a small hole in the stock battery terminal cover, so as to have added protection for my wiring. You can also noticed the previously mentioned soldered on ring terminal and heat shrink covering which connects to the car's battery.

I wanted to keep the stock terminal protector, and by drilling a small hole large enough for my wire, I was able to maintain a rather stock look. I left a bit of slack on the new power wire in the event the battery needed to be serviced, so as not to be a burden in the future.

The power wire makes it's way from the battery to the circuit breaker, where it then makes its way down the fender (behind the fender liner), and through the firewall. From the firewall the power wire makes its way along the door jams(under the carpet).

The power wire terminates at a 4 way junction block located behind the rear, drivers side, seat. I already had this junction block in my spare parts drawer so it cost me nothing. You can find similar ones on EBay for about $6 (CAD).

I ordered two 50cm long 5630SMD waterproof rigid strip light bars from EBay once again, for a cost of about $10 (CAD). 

I ended up using only one of the two light bars, as one proved to provide sufficient lighting

I mounted the light bar to the roof of the trunk, then ran a wire from the distribution block to the positive wire on the light bar (all visible in the photo above).

This is where things got a little tricky, as I wanted the light bar to turn on only when the trunk was opened. However I was unable to determine which factory wire reported an open trunk to the alarm. Originally I was going to install a standard aftermarket alarm trigger switch, which I could have done, but I didn't want to drill holes through trunk. Instead, on my brothers suggestion, I ordered a mercury tilt switch from Ebay at a cost of about $8 (CAD).

A mercury tilt switch is a pretty simple device that sends a signal when its tilted. If I install it properly, it will turn the light bar on when the trunk is opened and turn off the light bar when the trunk is closed.

I installed the mercury switch to the arm of the trunk (there was an existing hole there), ran the wire into the stock wiring loom, so as to keep it looking neat and tidy. The mercury switch attached to the a common ground at one end and the light bar negative wire on the other end.

Everything worked as expected, and now the versa'a trunk is very well lit.

As a side note to those following along, I usually plan through the build ahead of time, then source out my supplies (usually from EBay). I do the actual builds after all my parts have arrived.

Have a comment? Let me know below.

2011 Nissan Versa: Power In The Trunk

Since selling my beloved Nissan Xterra, back in October of 2016, I've been driving Nadia's 2011 Nissan Versa sedan. While the Versa is a great economical car, with lots of room, it's a base model and really doesn't have much in the way of creature comforts. This statement couldn't be more true, when searching for the non existent trunk light. Yes, that's right, this vehicle does not come factory equipped with a trunk light! So I ask, what's the point of having such a large trunk, if you just can't find anything in it?

As you all know this just isn't acceptable, so my first Versa related project would be to add a trunk light. While I had every intent on making this the first project, I quickly discovered that not only was there no trunk light, there didn't seem to be any usable sources of power in the trunk.

I figured I would probably be upgrading the stereo, and adding an amplifier in the future, so I might as well run power from the battery to the trunk, hopefully killing two birds with one stone. Since the Versa would never be getting a high end stereo system, and all we needed was power, I opted to buy an amplifier wiring kit from EBay. The kit cost me about $11 (CAD) which is about 1/3 the cost of similar kits sourced locally.

Even though the amplifier kit came with a inline fuse, I opted to buy a 20 amp inline circuit breaker, also from EBay for about $9 (CAD). If there is ever any trunk related power issues, this $9 investment would pay off, as you never need to search for costly replacement fuses. Also by pressing a button you could disable all power to the trunk, a great safety feature in my eyes.

Since I was shopping on EBay, I also purchased some 8 gauge firewall grommets for about $8 (CAD). While I'm glad I purchased the grommets, I didn't end up using them because there was already a factory hole and grommet in the Versa's firewall, which I ended up using.

I've really become infuriated with how long it takes to get parts from EBay lately, and the fact that most parts don't even show up anymore is ridiculous. With this Versa project however it didn't have that much of an impact, due to all the rain we've been getting I couldn't do anything anyway.

Searching the www revealed that behind the drivers side kick panel, located under the dashboard, was an existing hole in the firewall with a grommet. 

With this knowledge the rest of the project was pretty smooth sailing. I would be running the power wire through the hole found directly behind the wires shown in the photo above. Cutting a small hole in the grommet allowed me to easily push the power wire through both the grommet and the hole. This resulted in a tight seal, so as to not to have any problems with water entering the car in the future.

In order to feed the wire from the grommet to the battery, i needed to remove the drivers side front wheel, and fender liner. This was a bit time consuming, and a little confusing as I couldn't see all the retaining clips initially.

I believe industry standards for car audio require any power wires leading off the battery to have a fuse mounted within 1 foot of the battery. With this in mind I found what I believe to be a suitable location to mount the inline circuit breaker.

I connected the power wire to the battery terminal (I soldered the included ring terminals to the power wire, and protected it using the provided heat shrink tubing), and then secured it to the circuit breaker before pulling the slack back out the drivers side kick panel (the circuit breaker was off). I ran the power wire along the side of the car, under the carpets along with all the factory wiring. I put everything back together, and finished with the first part of this project. I will have more picture in the follow up post.

Have questions or comments, let me know

2005 Yamaha BWS: Taillight & Turn Signals

Following up on the documenting of my front fairing mods, this entry brings you my modifications to the rear taillight and turn signal indicators. I was hoping to replicate something similar to the photo below, which sell at scootertuning.ca for $79.99 (CAD).

After removing the plastic license plate light housing, and the plastic mud flap I was left with something that was starting to look more like my end goal.

The North American YW50 (BWS 50/Zuma 50) does not come with integrated turn signals in the taillight, like it's siblings sold in Europe and Japan. Dismantling the taillight assembly revealed that while it was possible to recreate the European/Japanese integrated turning signals, there was no factory installed wiring. 

As you can clearly see in the above image, the previous owner of my scooter had already integrated lights into the taillight assembly, however they were merely white LED that worked in unison with the brake light.

Seeing as I had unused amber .75" LED turn signal indicators left over from my fairing build, I decided to use them here in replacing the existing white LED lights. This was a simple process of drilling out a .75" hole and pushing the LED through its grommet, which held it in place.

I ordered third party amber turn signal lens from EBay, that would replace the stock red lenses. 

The stock taillight assembly came with a reflector located just below the taillight, which I replaced with a red LED reflector which was also sourced from EBay. The LED reflector was wired into the existing harness to provide a constant low intensity light when riding (for visibility), and a high intensity light when the brakes were applied.

Before I assembled everything, I gave all the exposed lens a good cleaning and sprayed them all with VHT nightshade, to give them all a smoked look. Here is what my finished taillight assembly looks like.

I also added a LED license plate light, which I don't really like, but it will have to do until I find something I like better. You can see how much shorter the newly modified taillight assembly is as the gas drain hose ran the whole distance of the stock taillight assembly.

Hope you enjoyed this update, if you have any questions make comments or send me an email.

2005 Yamaha BWS: Front Fairing

It's been over a year since I've posted an update about my 2005 Yamaha BWS rebuild. 

(image stolen from www, might have been my scooter)

My build is nothing like reality TV, where customized rebuilds are completed in weeks. There are many factors that have resulted in my build posts to taking so long, the most serious issue has been my inability to post to BLOGGER (which has been documented before). Other factors, like the cold weather, a cold workshop, postal shipping delays, and the whole trial and error process have added to this lengthy build. Finally there are all the problems I've been plagued with during this build. It's also a bit surprising that, parts for this model of scooter are harder to find, considering that it's a newer model.

Now on to the actual build...

(not my fairing, image stolen from Ebay)

One of the ugliest things about the North American YW50, is the hideous reflector on the front fairing. My goal from day one was to remove this reflector and add either LED  side markers or LED turn signals (haven't decided yet). In my opinion, while reflectors do an average job of making the scooter visible to other drivers, lights are better, and LED lights are even better than that, plus they're really inexpensive, and draw less electrical load. 

Problem #1: My original goal was to remove the reflector and merely substitute in .75" LED penny lights. However, removing the reflector revealed multiple mounting holes in the fairing. To avoid seeing these holes in the fairing, they would need to be filled prior to securing the LED lights. I used a technique called plastic welding, where the surrounding area of the fairing is melted, with a solder iron, and new plastic is melted in and added to fill the holes. Seeing as I was already committed to this process, I also decided to fill some fairing cracks graciously provided, free of charge, from the previous owner. After building up the area with plastic, it was sanded down to its original shape. ** When possible use tape on the finish side to achieve a smoother surface, with rough work on the other side of the fairing (hope that makes sense).

Problem#2: Some of the original plastic parts on my YW50 had a textured surface, the fairing being one of them. After the plastic welding process, and the subsequent sanding, the original textured surface had been lost. Sanding down the whole fairing just wasn't an option, so I attempted to recreate the textured surface using RUST-OLEUM's Hammered textured spray paint.

(Here is a picture of the fairing after it had been plastic welded, sanded, and finally painted.)

Problem #3: While the RUST-OLEUM Hammed texture paint did a great job of recreating the texture surface on the fairing, it wasn't the right color.

As you can clearly see from the above photo, the paint can color indicator lid is black, yet my painted fairing is grey/charcoal. As you can image I was pretty upset, which was only made worse by RUST-OLEUM's refusal to admit fault. Instead, after ongoing correspondence they eventually awarded me a refund. Fortunately for me, I was able to correct this, by painting over the fairing with a standard black rattle can paint. ** Note: In the past I've experience issues trying to use different paints on top of each other, with sanding being the only final option, something the refund wouldn't cover. I really liked that I could paint over the hammered textured paint, I might use this process in the future. **

Oh RUST-OLEUM, its a complicated relationships between us.

Problem #4: After waiting weeks for my .75" LED amber lights to arrive, I painted them using VHT nightshade paint to give them a smoked look. I drilled new holes in my fairing and inserted the LED lights, only to realize that the curvature of the fairing caused the LED lights to not sit properly. While I could probably get away with using some silicone to fill the uneven gaps, I just know I would never be satisfied with this look. My solution was to order 1.25" LED amber lights, and hope that they will fit the fairings curvature better.

After several more weeks the new LED lights arrived, and once again I used VHT nightshade to give the lights a smoked look. I used a Dremel tool to widen the .75" hole until it snuggley fit the 1.25" lights. 

While I really liked the size and shape of the .75" lights, the 1.25" lights fit so much better. Overall I'm pleased how the front fairing turned out, and I'm leaning on making these lights side markers that are only on at night.

New Media Center

It's been a few years that I've had to do without my beloved Yamaha surround sound home theater system. When Nadia and I moved in together I learned something new to me, that cats and speaker wire don't cohabitate well together. As a result of this new found knowledge, when we started renovating, I decided that not only are we going to run network wires throughout, but also surround sound speaker wires. This advanced renovation planning brought me one step closer to finally getting my home theater system back.

Besides stereo speakers being a great interactive knock down toy for cats, they are also really good at collecting dust. My solution to both these problems was to find a media center that would hide stereo speakers, and their wires. Now I looked at finding a media center at various home furnishing store, and high fidelity stereo stores, but I just couldn't justify paying the prices they were asking (yup, I'm a bit cheap).

Craigslist became my beacon of hope, as I decided it might be easier up cycling and old dresser into a more modern functional media center. I started my search looking for something made out of real wood, something strong, so as to support a large TV (my last dresser was made using some particle board material, and bowed under the TV's weight). I knew I wanted the top row to consist of three shallow drawers, as they would house my left, center, and right speakers. I also wanted a wide middle drawer to place my receiver and the whole dresser had to be less than 67.5 inches wide.

After months of searching on Craigslist, and many failed attempts to finalize a sale, I finally became the new owner of this.

The PRO's of this dresser is that it's 66 inches wide, it was made of some hardwood (I think it's cherry wood), and would house all my home theater components excellently and it only cost me $80. The only drawbacks is that it had some noticeable water damage to the finish (the wood was still in good shape) and it cost me $80. In hindsight, I should have brought Nadia with me to negotiate the price, she is so much better at haggling than I am.

My original plan, after getting this dresser home, was to sand it down and re-stain it. All the snow we got this year changed those plans. I was also going to simply remove the drawers and insert my stereo components, but I was growing rather fond of the beveled drawer faces, and I refocused my attention to keeping them. My solution was to order 2 inch speaker grills to allow for sound to come out while still maintaining the overall structure of the dresser. Once the grills arrived I cut 1 3/4 inch holes with a hole saw bit, and fastened the grills in place.

 I also used a dowel to fill in the drawer handle holes, lightly sanded the surfaces, and painted the dresser using a satin dark walnut paint.

Wood strips were used to braces the speakers in place. I also removed the middle drawer face and reattached it with t-hinges so as to be able to control the receiver when needed and hide it away when not. A hard drive magnet holds the middle drawer face closed when not being used.

 I think it turned out awesome, and above all its functional, with plenty of room to add game consoles and controllers. I still want to properly strip and re-finish this unit, but we'll have to wait for sunny weather.

Media Server Makeover

An unsought inspiration came to me as I was walking the aisle's of my local RONA hardware store. I was in the paint isle, and came across RUST-OLEUM's Satin Oasis Blue. I was thinking about how cool my server would look in this color. I've been rocking the black and green (bl-een) color since 2010, maybe it was time for a change.

For some time now I've been wanting to rebuild my media server. There is/was absolutely nothing wrong with it, in fact it's been running pretty well, since it was update to WHS2011, back in August of 2013. In all honesty, I've lost a few hard drives in recent years, more than I probably should, but I think that speaks to the quality of Hard drives today and not my server environment (which runs 24 hours a day). Despite the loss of Hard drives, I don't believe I'll lost any data.

So why mess with something, when you don't need to. Quite simply because I can, also life would be so boring if we didn't change things up a little. Plus my server looks awesome.

The first, and hardest step was taking the server off-line. Then I began the process of disassembling everything.

All pieces not being painted were removed and set aside, as seen in the pictures above. Before I could paint anything I needed to dismantle the window on the case cover panel. With the Cooler Master Haf series of computer cases, this is a delicate step. 

The process involves removing plastics clips that are similar to those found in automobiles door panels. By removing the center pin the clip becomes disengaged. As shown below, I punched out the center pin, then from the underside I pull the pin out.

 I masked off the Cooler Master Haf case, in the areas that I wanted to remain black. I placed all items being painted on cardboard and proceeded to convert green to blue.

I waited 30 minutes before applying a second coat, and then waited 24 hours before handling any of the pieces. Then came the process of rebuilding my server. I used adhesive foam, that you can find at a crafting store (sometimes I find it at the local dollarstore) and covered the wire pathway holes. The trick to making this work is that you use bigger pieces on the back, and cut proper shaped holes on the front. You will never usually see behind the motherboard tray, but will always be able to see the motherboard tray. Makes sure to adhere both sticky sides to each other, this makes it look much neater.

Cut slits in the foam material as needed to allow wire to pass-though.

 

To paint the metal mesh inserts for my drive bays, I had bend the tabs straight so as to remove them from the plastic bezel. This is also a delicate task because the metal mesh tabs tend to break if forced or bent too much. If you do break off any of the tabs, its not that big a deal, you can add a drop of hot glue to secure the metal mesh when reassembling. I didn't bother using hot glue on this build, but I have for other cases.

I won't go through the rest of the rebuild, as its quite boring, but here is the finished product.

I really wanted to add blue led lights to the front, similar to the neon green lights I had on the server. I ordered blue leds off Ebay, but after a month and a half of waiting, it was obvious they weren't showing up. I ordered another set, and maybe that will be a future article, until then I have my server up and running currently without its cover panels.