Come the mid-winter blues, the little SV was all alone in the big dark garage. Rather than spending quality time with my Xbox saving the galaxy from the dark side of the force, I opted to get the SV ready for the next summer of riding. With the first track event taking place in mid March, I came to the realization that I would not have all that much time.
I started by dropping the SV forks and throwing on a set of ZX6R 636 forks complete with radial brakes. However, I wanted the bigger petal rotors so I hunted down a set of brakes straight from a ZX-10 (Details on this process are in the 636 forks page of this site).
While waiting on parts and bolts, I started prepping the bodywork for some paint. I have always wanted to do a fighter jet inspired sport bike, but thought the silver paint would look an awful lot like primer unless I went to the trouble of darkening the edges of all the panels and stuff – too much work, particularly since I kept telling myself this is just a track bike.
This didn’t keep me from looking at aviation books. I noticed that all the airplanes in World War II were an Olive Drab green – Green doesn’t look like primer! The plan was born. I served six years for my rich Uncle (Sam) including a year in the Former Yugoslavia in 1995-1996. I am also a huge history geek with a predilection for World War II military history. I have a huge soft spot for anyone who has served in the armed forces – so there I was with an idea to turn my track bike into a sort of an homage to the armed forces. Besides, I thought it would look cool to have a motorcycle that looked kind of like a Willy’s jeep.
Using the omnipotent power of "the Google" I was able to find the World War II paint code; #34087 Lusterless Olive Drab – single stage. I ordered up the amounts I would need, then started sanding and prepping my bodywork. I even built a make-shift paint booth in my garage to handle priming duties in the middle of the harshest winter Salt Lake City had seen in 15 years. While the wind was howling, and the outside temps were hovering at Zero, I was getting high on propane heat fumes and primer.
As soon as the weather started to turn I carried the grey bodywork to a buddy’s house who volunteered to spray the bike in trade for a really nice bottle of wine. Dana did a brilliant job on the work and had my bodywork back to me two days later, where it resided in heated my home office for a several more weeks while the paint cured.
Winning a free dyno-run from Accolade Motorsports gave me an idea as to how the bike was running at 4300 feet of elevation; very, very, very rich. The stock jetting was significantly too rich, even with the de-snorkeled air-filter and free-breathing Yoshumura exhaust system. Combing through forum archives I decided to change from the stock 137 main jets down to 132 in the front and a 130 in the rear, with the needle set to one notch below the middle notch. A second dyno-run showed that I ended up spot-on! Only having to pull the carbs apart one time was enough to make me a believer in dyno runs. The time saved more than makes up for the price of dyno-time.
Time for the artwork; Spending hours on cold weekend afternoons in the Barnes and Noble, I scoured military history books for photographs for the markings used on World War II vehicles. A few more Google searches and I found schematics with the actual dimensions of the star that emblazoned the hoods of jeeps and two-ton troop haulers. Installing a suitable stencil font for the race-numbers and a few “NO STEPS”, the original plan was to hand-cut my own stencils using overhead projector sheets, but I quickly learned that it would be almost impossible to get a decent end product onto the multi curved fairings of the SV – so I did the next best thing and ordered up some vinyl cut decals.
I originally ordered my decals though military-graphics.com, a guy who had just about every military emblem you could imagine. But that turned out be a very bad thing. After waiting five weeks I called him to be berated like I was in basic training by a former Navy line officer who claimed to have never received my money, I had to resort to filing a dispute with pay-pal before he would refund my cash. I then turned to another close friend, Amy, who happens to work for Ferrari Color, a award winning printing house that specializes in smaller jobs. I had the stickers in my hands in less than 20 hours and for a price that was less than half of what I’d dolled out to military-graphics.
I still have a few ideas for a couple more decals, but I want to be careful not to overdue it, but the bike needs some American flags and possibly an ejection seat warning sticker. So I may be adding a few more touches to the bike.
Most of the reactions on SVRider.Com (where the bike was nominated for SV of the month before it was even completed) have been extremely positive with the occasional "An American paint scheme on a Japanese motorcycle is offensive" statements as well as one or two Pearl Harbor and Atomic Bomb comments. To that I can only say this; In my humble opinion, one of the things that makes this great nation of ours great is our ability to not hold grudges with former enemy states. Yes, we were at war with Japan, but it is to our great credit that our nations are now on very good terms despite the many historic reasons that could be used otherwise (Japanese American Internment Camps, American POW’s treatment during the Bataan Death March and many more).
So many other nations have been ravaged by war for centuries because of the inability to resolve differences. I spent a year in the Bosnia where there was still a great deal of tension stretching all the way back to the Ottoman Empire. Yeah, yeah, this is really deep for a motorcycle/fun site and to avoid falling into a historical/political discussion, as CanyonChaser Tim pointed out, the Yoshimura badge on the pipe has Japanese Katakana symbols just above an American Flag.
There are lots more photo's of this process in the Daves Track SV Gallery. Keep checking back as we continue to update this page as progress continues.
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