Never Happen Sorry

[Dan Hodges]

Can a 40,000 mile eleven with a big bore kit beat a stock F.J. 1100, of course not. Can a like new X.S. with a bunch of work spank one, yes indeed. When I say work, I am not talking about just a big bore kit, jetted carburetors, a 25 year old set of headers and a shiny paint job. It can be done, it just depends on how much money he is willing to spend to do it. Remember what the English professor said, in most situations, never say never.

[pgg]

Don't FJ1100's pull 150 mph? 4 valves versus 2. And a slick fairing. Poor old XS would get whipped. It'd need about 120 h.p. on the back wheel and higher gears to keep up.

[Geezer]

Originally posted by pgg
Don't FJ1100's pull 150 mph? 4 valves versus 2. And a slick fairing. Poor old XS would get whipped. It'd need about 120 h.p. on the back wheel and higher gears to keep up.

Many years ago I had a FJ1100 up to 140 at the top of 4th gear. I chickened out, shifted it into 5th and backed off the throttle.

Geezer

[Wildkat]

When I first started out on my FJ... John made the mistake of "challenging" me to a race... I pulled out of a parking lot, he pulled out and passed me... as I passed him shortly after I was doing 140 and still had quite a bit of throttle... If the taillights in front of me hadn't been getting so close so fast... we might have seen a bit more out of the FJ that night.
No doubt it has some speed to it

[Dan Hodges]

X.S. & F.J.

Wildkat, PGG & Gezzer talked about how bad an F.J. would beat a big bore X.S. , let me say it again, yes yes I know it will. I said initially and I will say it again, if you want to spend the money on the after market parts it will. If you doubt the potential of a two valve motor, check out the pro/stock Suzuki's cause that's what they run. Some body also said an F.J. 1100 had 120 H.P. at the rear wheel which is way off. The May 85 issue of Cycle magazine did a dyno comparison of the fastest bikes at that time and the F.J. made 98. It ran 11 flat in the quarter mile. One of the super tuners @xs11.com named Jeremy Sells,posted his dyno results on this forum and he made 90H.P. at the rear wheel with a stock bore and stock heads. I have never ridden an 1100 F.J. but I owned a 1200 F.J. which I traded in on my present V-Max. I've seen several test on the 1200 F.J.'s and the best I ever saw stock was 105 at the rear wheel.The certificate of origin on a 1200 F.J. listed the H.P. as 116 S.A.E. (at the crank), a copy of which I still have. Somebody also said the the 80-81 cams were better than the early ones for the street. Look at the dyno test on the 78-79 models in the magazines of that period and you will find that the 78&79 made more power everywhere in the R.P.M. range. There is a company called Ian Smith Information po box 9440, Denver Co. (303)777-2385. They have most every article published on motorcycle test and you can buy it. I have my copy, you need to get yours. Have you been to a Wednesday night bracket race lately and watched the old 2 valve Kawasaki's run 11.00's, I have and a stock F.J. with with one of you guys on it won't go 11.00's.I need to stop debating and start working on my X-Max for my dyno test.

[pgg]

Dan, the 78's made more power because of their carb setup. The 80's are de-tuned. Put 80 cams in a 78E and things are different. Tricked up XS11's would give an FJ1100 a good go up to 120mph I reckon. Don't forget the FJ's fairing makes up for a lot of horsepower. An FJ is probably lighter too.

[pgg]

Also, dynos and numbers on paper don't always show the real story. Check out any bike mag comparison test, the actual 'real world' riding is the real test, not just torque and h.p. figures on a sheet. Dyno results and the actual power delivery felt while riding can be contradictory.

[Shuriken]

How does that vmax pull? C'mon, find some good adjectives...

Ben

[Dan Hodges]

78-80 cams

Originally posted by pgg
Dan, the 78's made more power because of their carb setup. The 80's are de-tuned. Put 80 cams in a 78E and things are different. Tricked up XS11's would give an FJ1100 a good go up to 120mph I reckon. Don't forget the FJ's fairing makes up for a lot of horsepower. An FJ is probably lighter too.

PGG - The 1st. design cams had more duration and tighter lobe centers than the 2nd. design. They had the same lift on the intake and .020 less on the exhaust. Have recently degreed both in a motor. I also found a bunch of information in a 1980 motorcycle magazine verifying my findings.The fact is neither of these cams,big bore kit and a cheap set of headers will beat a F.J. You can beat one but you will have to spend some money on some after market parts.

[pgg]

Dan, when the cam guys ported my cylinder head, they compared those cams on their gadget. Here's the lift and duration @0.50.


80' inlet & ex - lift - .344
- dur - .229

78' inlet - lift - .344
- dur - .241


78' ex - lift - .325
- dur - .241

No sweat to add some extra horses but the big stumbling block is the XS's fixed gearing.

[Dan Hodges]

Cam Timing

To PGG. I checked mine @.040 checking lift and got 235 degrees for both intake and exhaust duration, with .347 lift for intake and exhaust on the 80-81 cams. The 78-79's were checked by the same method and I got 246 degrees on both the intake and exhaust with .347 lift on the intake and .327 on the exhaust. If I had checked them at .050 lift I would have gotten two or three degrees less, or close to what those guys got. I installed mine advanced four degrees. I also found that the late cams installed at the stock marks have 109-110 degrees of lobe seperation and the early ones have 102 degrees.

[pgg]

Dan, you've installed slotted sprockets on your XS? Have you noticed any appreciable changes in characteristics with your dialled cams from stock settings? My cam guys wanted to dial in my cams after their port and flow job, but at $120 each for adjustable sprockets I told them not to bother! I'd prefer to learn how to do it myself. Sounds complicated though.

[Dan Hodges]

Slotted Cam Sprockets

Hello Patrick. It seems the Irish are everywhere and I thought they were all here in St. Louis. Back to slotted cam sprockets. I machined mine on a bridge port. Any competent machine shop should be able to do it. I think Web Cams charges $50. Slotting the sprockets is simple but coming up with a degree wheel that fits and is big enough to read is another matter. I used one that I got from Competition Cams. I had to fabricate a spacer and nut which I installed where the stock timing plate goes.The nut is used to turn the motor because you have to remove the timing plate to do the job. Advancing or retarding the intake cam centerline alters the point where the intake valve closes. Advancing the cam gives you more low and mid range power because the intake valve is closed earlier,(more pumping compression) and retarding it has the reverse effect. The early cams advanced four degrees will definitely perk a 80-81 model up. You can advance the late ones but the horsepower curve will be further skewed toward the midrange and they have more than enough mid range to begin with. One more thing, tighter lobe centers will generally enable a motor to run cooler than a similiar configeration with wider lobe centers, hence the reason new engines motorcyles and cars have cams with wide lobe centers. They tend to run hotter, make more vacume and produce fewer emissions (hydrocarbons) than motors from the disco era. This is a complicated subject, (lobe separation angle) because 500 C.I. pro stock motors use cams with as much as 116 degrees of lobe separation and in that case it's not to make the motor run cooler or cleaner. Good luck in your endeavors.

[pgg]

Yes Dan, I'm everyones worst aggravating nightmare - a ranting raving irish kiwi. Ha Ha. Thanks for your good knowledgable info. Very interesting. Well, my XS has been tweaked and prodded pretty much to the max and has oodles of grunt, so I don't really need to dial up the cams, but for sure it'd be a good trick to know. Cheers.

P.S. heres a pic of my mongrel. http://homepages.inspire.net.nz/~patrick/xs11.jpg

[Dan Hodges]

Killer Mongrels

Patrick. I got your picture,thanks for sharing it with me. Your bike looks totally bad to the bone. How many of these thing's is there left in your neighborhood? I have only seen one all summer and it was in Colorado in July. I was on a motorcycle trip out there with some people from work. I was riding my V-Max and had to really rock and roll to stay ahead of him, but we were in the mountains and I was running out of nerve. Glad you liked the info. I have went thru the engine on my XS from the cases up. I had a very diffilcult time coming up with some of the parts, the one M.M. oversize Yamaha pistons I got from England.The thing only had 34000 miles on it when I took it apart. I had to remove the head to repair a broken exhaust stud and once I got that far I couldn't stop. I ride it very little for fear of breaking it and not being able to get the parts to fix it. I have yet to figure out how to send a picture using this forum. When I figure it out I will send you one.