This decision could readily be derived from my most recent track day experience, and feeling burnt out from it. It was simply too time consuming and difficult to make the pilgrimage to the middle-of-nowhere and ride at triple digit speeds. Don’t get me wrong, riding at the track was amazing fun. When I first dragged my knee, I was instilled with the most captivating sense of badassery ever.

But therein lies the catch: ONLY riding on the track is fun for me. Even though I went through all the work of converting my bike back to street mode, I found no enjoyment cruising around on the road. If you’ve ridden on the track before, then you will probably understand my perspective and I will not need to explain. If you have not… the reasoning is simple – you can’t really RIDE on the street. At least I can’t, because I’m not willing to risk ending up as a hood ornament on someone’s car.

Along with my recent ear troubles, I was forced to pull the plug on my riding and take it easy. My fresh Dainese gear was sold and eventually my bike followed suit. A buyer came up all the way from San Diego to pick it up:

I might have shed a tear seeing the CBR loaded up and leaving me. A lot of work and money was invested into that bike, but there really was no point in keeping it. I wasn’t going to ride it on the street, and I don’t have the time or energy to track it anymore. Better to let someone else reap the rewards of my work than let the bike fade away by collecting dust.

Following through with all of this was quite hard for me. Not only because I had to sell all my stuff, but because I was really only getting started with my riding career. There was much to progress and improve. Oh well, I’ll swallow my pride on this one…

Farewell Motorcycles, it has been a short but thrilling ride.

I still need to play with the 3 different settings to see how smooth it potentially is. Hoping to really put it to use at the track next year.

First on the list – yank out the stock shock. The rear hugger needs to be removed to reveal an opening for the shock to slip through.

Since the swingarm will no longer be supported without a shock, I placed the bike onto a pair of jackstands at the pegs. (Oh yeah, I put the chain guard back on. I was tired of chain lube flying everywhere.)

The Ohlins TTX is a superbly crafted piece of hardware:

Dropped in and bolted on:

I’m not only doing the rear suspension, I also have a set of forks with freshly serviced and sprung Ohlins 30mm cartridges, which I plan to install next weekend. :-)

Another trait of the Annitori RL kit is it’s completely standalone and is plug-and-play. To begin, it comes with a wire harness that piggy-backs into the sparkplug connections. I took off the tank fairing to get ready for the tedious job of pulling off the airbox, which is one way of reaching the sparkplugs… But removing the bottom bolt of the radiator and swinging it out of the way is a far easier approach to access the plugs. Which is what I did.

Then routed the rest of the cables by the clutch-side frame, under the tank, and under the seat. There is a ground wire that comes off the harness, which I attached to the midfairing bracket. I made sure to grind off the paint on both sides of the bracket to ensure a good ground connection.

The red cylinder is the Intelligent Ignition Controller, the brain of the system. There are 3 levels of adjustment on it, I so far left it at Medium.

A wire then routes down towards the shifter to the business end where the sensor attaches to the shift rod.

Installing a quickshifter may be a small detail, but people say once you try it, you can never go back. I tested out the shifting on the rear stand, but am waiting to give it a whirl on the streets tomorrow. Upshifting with the clutch can be a chore, especially when barreling down a straight at high RPM’s. I never was a huge fan of preloading the shifter and blipping off the gas to let the gear slip in. Using a quickshifter to quickly cut the ignition allowing you freely (clutch and throttle be damned) to bang away gears is such a superior solution, and makes full use of the sequential transmissions of bikes.

On a separate note, I recently picked up a Rizoma oil filler cap. A trick looking part, it’s all about the details.

We’ll see how they perform and hold up, but aesthetically, these TechSpecs blend in nicely with my bike being black.

I threw on a new gasket and snugged down all the bolts.

Bonus picture: the headers are turning a nice, RICH blue… the level of quality in the titanium Akrapovic uses is readily apparent.

Which is what I ended up having to do anyway, just a little too late. I brought the bike over to the capable hands at Fastline Cycles in Fremont to have them fit the exhaust instead.

Loading the bike up on a rainy Monday evening:

A few days later, the exhaust was properly installed and dyno tuned. I figured since I was having him work on the exhaust, it was the right timing to have the bike tuned. I debated doing this back when I had the TiForce. Here is what my dyno chart looks like:

Every dyno is going to produce a different result, and unfortunately I don’t have a baseline to compare to. Max HP was 106.49 and Max Torque was 43.02. Not astronomical figures, but an improvement over the downloaded DynoJet map (Red curve, 103.40 HP and 42.18 Torque) I put in myself. The goal of the tune was not to squeeze out power, but to make everything smooth and responsive. I need to get an A/F chart of the dyno run to really see.

Just riding the bike home from the shop, I noticed a huge improvement in terms of power delivery and smoothness. Before with the TiForce (and on a downloaded map), the bike was noticeably more choppy – especially at lower speeds. For how much smoother the bike feels alone, this dyno tune was worth it in my book.

Alex, the owner of Fastline Cycles, did a couple more pulls while I was there to film it:

I finally gave in and decided to cash out for one new. When it comes to exhausts, there are simply no rivals (okay, maybe Termignoni and Arrow come close), the Slovenian manufacturer rules them all… and for good reason. Their carbon fiber is without peers and their titanium is unparalleled. Akrapovič even has its own in-house hydroforming machines and titanium foundry. What I received in the mail was not so much a motorcycle exhaust, but a work of art.

Ferraris and the owner of Shine Auto Project Aero parts swayed me over to the side of 1×1 plain weave carbon fiber. Twill weave carbon fiber are for kids!

Impeccable quality and craftsmanship. I find it captivating just looking at the ominously-grey titanium pipes… just waiting to be heated into a blue hue.

Function wise, the Woodcraft rearsets score high marks. However, sometimes you need to step up the Form half of the equation as well. Up-close, it’s easy to see the craftsmanship in Gilles parts.

On the bike:

In other news, I also mounted back the wheels with freshly wrapped Dunlop Q2’s. A step down from the D211 DOT Race tires I had on before, but I reasoned that the Q2s will be more than sufficient. I also went back to the stock sizing of 180/55 in the rear. I’m eager to see what the handling and flickability is like now versus the taller, heavier 190/55’s.

It was recommended to me that the outer edges of the rear tire were nearing their expiration, so I took the opportunity to get the bike ready for a pair of fresh rubber. This is in preparation for hopefully one more trackday before Winter is here.