John Stecher’s Racing Blog

Spent all yesterday pretty much in the garage with Eric helping me in the morning with getting the cooling system to run and then dorking around by myself at night trying to get the oil system in working order.

The water system was a bear. Lets just say that I had more fricking air bubbles in the system than I could have ever imagined and they were harder than I ever could have imagined to get out. We started working on the cooling system about 8 and by 11 had things running and the little Davies Craig electric water pump spinning away. The main bear was just getting the coolant to pump up into the motor. The bikes have a intake to the water jackets at almost the bottom of the engine under the headers. Getting water to flow uphill as we all know is a royal pain in the ass! Then the radiator had a really goofy issue with the main inlets being about 3/4 the way up the radiator so as you can imagine this creates a lot of issues with getting all the air out of the system. I had to pull a plug on the top of the radiator to get her to push all the air out but it wasn’t easy. I still honestly am not comfortable that the setup is correct as it just does not seem that I am able to flow enough water through the system but then again the switch to Evan’s coolant and a little bit of advice from a Yamaha tech have me thinking it might not be too bad. Right now my plan is just heat cycle and try to bleed again later.

Hopefully today I can get her to fire for the first time.

Cars, DSR, Maintenance and Assembly, Stohr Assembly, DSR, Stohr

Well the eagle has landed! My baby is finally back in my garage and looking, well, remarkably like a car again considering how completely stripped down she was when it rolled out of the garage and up to Carriage House Customs. It took a hell of a lot of work and without the excellent craftsmanship from the folks at Carriage House it would never EVER have been possible. Overall the cost was something I could stomach and much better than a few other conversion kits (Infact carriage house still has all the jigs if others want the same conversion completed) that I had looked at.

The real cost that came into this whole upgrade was the dry sump conversion as that is where the majority of cash was spent with the cooler, hose, dry sump itself and other related expenses. Behind that was the cost of the rework of the engine cradle. I hope to have a full break down of costs and work that was done here in the near future when I get a shot after the car is running here and gets it annual tech finished on April 21st. I would love to have this become a guide to other looking to do the conversion as while it was tough I think the upgrade to the newer engine will be well worth while.

Tonight with the help of my buddies Rob and Eric we got the wiring harness, fuel cell and battery back in the car and working. All in all about 4 hours of time which isn’t bad at all considering the knowledge base of doing this on a DSR was zero. Main trick was just getting the wiring correct as there were some interesting bits dealing with the change from the 99-03 engines using a power interrupt based starter switch to the 04-06 motors using a grounded starter switch. Once we worked through that it was testing circuits and THANK GOD the fuel pump spun up AND the starter kicked on for a brief second (”hey rob try it now! BuZZZZZZ”). Thursday night hopefully will be dedicated to finishing up the wiring harness and plumbing in the fuel system as well as the new remote water pump.

I will snap pictures of the work as it progresses but here are some as she came straight back from the shop on Friday.

Cars, DSR, Maintenance and Assembly, Stohr Assembly, DSR, Stohr, Yamaha