9 years ago
Thursday, August 7, 2008
CAFE RACER - UPDATE
this post is for those who have been following the transformation of my motorcycle. last night i put on some new british style silencers (mufflers) on the bike. the stock muffler on the left side had developed a crack on the ride to jackson and eventually progressed until the whole megaphone broke into 2 pieces. i ordered the new ones from www.mikesxs.com for 65 dollars each and free shipping. they went on pretty easy. my good friend and motorcycle afficionado erik grim helped me. we cut the header pipes off of the old megaphones and then were able to clamp the new ones on without having to weld. the only thing that did require welding was the kickstand. erik fabbed up a new foot bar that cleared the new silencer. the end result is that my XS sounds big and mean now (even though it's only a 392 cc engine) and it looks good to boot. here are some pics. compare them to the photos in my other post.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
Looks good but how does it sound?
sounds big and mean
They look awesome! I bet they sound awesome too!
Did they disrupt your jetting? Do you have any new flat spots in the power, or more difficulty starting?
I've noticed problems when I've run my motorcycle without an airfilter (just around the block)...it seems like XS400s are tuned so agressively that any change to the intake or exhaust can mess stuff up without jetting changes.
Have you noticed any fuel economy changes? I've also heard that freeing up the exhaust sometimes dramatically improves a motorcycle's MPG.
Later,
-Andy
veloandy,
it was pretty late when we got them put on so i haven't had time to adjust my carbs yet. So, right now it is running a little rough. I get backfiring when i ease off the throttle. My friend thinks we should be able to get it tuned pretty well just using the mixture screws and without rejetting. I will let you know how it goes when I get to it.
I'm still unsure about MPG. But I will say that when I went on that ride to Jackson, WY I was getting around 56/mpg. I'm not sure if it'll be better or worse now.
In response to the new british style silencers i put on, i went for a ride up the canyon with a friend before the clutch cable broke on me. it seems that i'm definitely going to have to rejet the carbs. the power curve was drastically different.
it used to have a boost in the power band from about 5000 - 7500 RPM. now that is gone altogether. In fact it feels pretty even through the gamit with no spikes in power at any RPM (kind of makes me a little nervous). I've also ordered some pod filters so that will change things as well. I figured i should put on the pod filters before i rejet to avoid having to rejet twice. I'll keep you posted when i get the new parts.
so, the parts finally showed up and i'm back on the road. the clutch feels oh so nice now and i also replaced the front brake line with a stainless steel one.
I took the forks all apart to rebuild them but then noticed i ordered the wrong size fork seals. I put it all back together with the old ones but at least it gave me a chance to put on the new fork gaitors.
I rejetted the carb today to a 145 on the main (was 135) but i think maybe i went the wrong way. It seems to be backfiring more often. I checked the plugs and they're dry and sooty. Lesson learned. I thought it was lean but it may have been rich all along.
I got some 127.5 jets but haven't put them in yet. the good news is that I'm back on the bike and loving every second. also, I may have realized that a failing speedometer may have tricked me into thinking the new mufflers had a lower top speed. more on that in a post to come.
oh, and referring back to one of my previous posts I'm pretty sure that there isn't any real mixture screw to adjust on my carbs (I assumed there was). I did notice that there is an adjustment to tune the twin carbs to each other. But I guess if the jetting is wrong in the first place that won't do much.
I heard your motorcycle is so big you can hardly fit it between your legs.
haha. At least we know for a fact that it's not too big to fit between your legs though! haha, good times!
PROOF
Post a Comment