Aprilia RSVR Nuts & Bolts

[Smithers]

No one really talks about nuts and bolts. Well it's such an important topic I thought I would go ahead and address this issue with a thread. It's about time too. So get yourself some threadlock and get ready. What caused me to finally break down and start talking about nuts and bolts? I lost a bolt which holds one of my heim joints on the shift linkage on Sunday. So leaning into a turn at about 90 I went for a downshift and nothing was there! No shifter lever even... all because a stupid bolt had backed itself out finally. Well the guys behind me had some spares and I could have robbed one from the rear brake which literally is of no use on my bike.

So I visited a friend of mine who has tons of Titanium all over the place in his garage. He instantly pointed out a couple improvements I could make to my shifter and dug up a proper bolt from his parts bin. He had so much Ti laying around my jaw dropped. I guess working on the worlds top race bikes for years affords you some spare Ti hardware! Check out my new fender hardware and also one of the new bolts for my Sato shifter linkage: Sato Rearsets Installed



Notice the proper amount of shoulder so that the heim will be contacting a solid bolt shoulder instead of the threads. Also the bolt is long enough to put a locknut on the other side to hold it in place instead of relying on locktite. This is quite a difference from what came packaged with the Sato set. Here is the info I have on my Sato's and some nice pictures:

More to come...

[Smithers]

Ok today was just overwhelming. I got more little Ti bits all over then I ever would have imagined. I can really appreciate these nuts and bolts as I have a hard enough time finding correct STEEL bolts for different motorcycles I work on. Well here is the rundown of bolts I was able to source out of a few boxes of hardware. There are a couple more but I forgot about them at the time I took these pics.

The fender washers. Check out the flanges on these. All drilled and tapped to accommodate the larger diameter thread.


The Akropovic carbon fiber exhaust hanger bolts. These are awesome.


Fuel tank mount titanium bolts which I prefer to the quick release pins.


Check out the Sato rearset mounting bolts. I'm pretty lucky to have found a matching set of all of these ones.


Also some Ti bolts on the shift rod down there.


I have a couple more pictures to take. I'll post em up soon. I also got a couple of bolts that I need to shorten to make fit where I want them. It's not so simple as to just lop them off with a hacksaw. h34r: All in good time. Today was some good progress.

[Smithers]

Now if I could just get my front end to look like this: