Prep & Mods (12/96

Prep & Mods
12/96 - 02/97

While I may not yet be able to ride the F2 at its limits, there are times when more horses would lower my lap times and / or get me past the bike ahead. It's frustrating as hell to pull up behind a more powerful bike, only to lose the ground I've gained when we hit the straights. I called Curt Jordan at Jordan Engineering after the November races and we laid out a plan to get a few more horses out of my bike.

Curt started the project by putting the bike on the dyno and recorded 82hp @ 12k with torque of 39ft-lbs @ 10.5k. To put this in perspective, my bone stock street F2 put out 72hp when I had it dynoed a couple of years ago. If you've followed the mods done to date, I've removed all the smog gear, added a K&N filter and a Yosh Zyclone street pipe & header. At least now I know why I was able to hang with the 'faster' bikes.

Here's a list of the mods performed:

	Mod	Comments
	Dynojet Stage I kit	#124 main jets
	Honda 49 state cams	stock timing
	Honda 49 state black box	good for 2hp
	Yosh Race-Only pipe & header	stainless header - beautiful!
	NGK CI9FUX spark plugs

Curt spent four hours on the dyno tuning the new equipment and pulled out 93hp @ 12k with torque of 43ft-lbs @ 10.5k!

Curt also suggested that I switch to Red Line 10w40 synthetic oil, and start using Maxima 80w90 oil for the drive chain. He swapped out the Daytona water temp gauge for a Yosh unit - the Daytona is battery powered and maxes out at 100c, while the Yosh is wired into the bike's electrical and runs to 999c. A tune & service, new oil filter, replacement of the o-ring on the Factory case cover (leaked a bit) and a checkout of the overall bike finished up the project.

Obviously, I have to delay my recommendation of Curt's services until I get the bike out on the track, but if his quality of work and on-time delivery are any indication, I'm sure it'll be fantastic!

The needle on the Auto Meter tach snapped in half during November's event, so I sent it back for repair. It was still under warranty, so they replaced the needle & shipped it right back. With Christmas, New Years, and all the other fun stuff that the end / first of year brings to us 'lucky' self-employed types, I didn't have much time to work on the bike until the weekend before February's event.

I installed the tach, turned the key and blew the instrument cluster fuse ...... OK ....... replaced the fuse, and everything seemed fine. When I fired up the bike, though, the tach didn't register any RPM. It lit up fine, but the needle didn't move. DAMN! I pulled the tach off and sniffed the access hole on the back - burned wiring. DAMN, DAMN! I shipped the tach off to Auto Meter on Monday, knowing that it wouldn't be back in time.

I didn't want to run the coming weekend without a tach, especially since I hadn't tried out Curt's engine mods yet. I still had the stock instrument cluster laying around so I pulled the tach out and started searching the house for something to mount it in. The temp gauge, speedo, and tach in a stock F2 cluster aren't self-enclosed units. They mount into depressions molded into an ABS back plane. Tupperware to the rescue! I drilled a couple of mounting holes into the bottom of a Tupperware container, one more for the wiring, and it fit perfectly.

(side note - Auto Meter replaced the tach with a brand-new unit and it showed up Friday, but we were already on our way to Willow).

Bob