This month Rob has enlisted the help of Sausage Fingers…

Project

It’s time for my monthly update on the Ninja Project and I have been making more steady progress. Firstly my oil cooler adaptors arrived which meant I could finally make up the oil lines and connect the cooler up – sounds nice and simple, doesn’t it? In reality that wasn’t the case – the braided hose is thicker than the standard oil lines which meant the lower frame rail didn’t allow enough clearance to fit the hose on one side. It was easy enough to fix; I just filed a bit of a groove in the frame rail.

Unfortunately, the frame rail needed to be removed to do this, which meant the exhaust pipes had to removed, which meant the radiator had to be drained and removed, as well as the oil cooler itself. So after virtually taking the bike entirely to bits again, getting itchy from the thermal wrap and covered in coolant, I managed to file a groove in the frame rail and get the clearance I needed.

Once that was all done it was just a case of cutting the braided hose to length and getting the fittings on. I found the best way to do this is to wrap a bit of insulation tape (about 30mm in length) round the pipe with the middle of it being where the cut is required then use an angle grinder to cut the hose. Once it was cut, I removed the insulation tape and put a new bit on tightly and a few mm over the end, this just helps stop the braids separating and allows the fitting to be pushed back over the new end of the hose relatively easily.