FZ-07 AARRRrrrrrr Winter projects

I’m back in town tomorrow night, come on over, for only $50 of good money I will brand you.

 

Interesting project with the ram air, will be neat to see the results.

 

I don’t know how much I will actually quantify the results, only because I have no idea how much airflow a dyno fan can simulate. If I can do a test at a track with a long straight (Like Palm Beach, only an hour away) I can do back to back runs and using the AIM GPS data, I should be able to compare exit speed and terminal velocity. Also I can go pro the tach and see if I’m pulling more RPM at the end of the straight.

Like I said, it’s a fun project, but at the end of the day there’s far more to be gained by improving my riding. But hey, HP is HP baby!

 

Would you not do a pre and post modification dyno run to determine effect?

 

If you have autotune of some sort, you can see how much fuel it wants to give with and without the ducting and approximate the fuel percentage increase as a measure of power gain. If it wants 2% more fuel, it probably had 2% more air and so on.... I wonder if it's better to autotune a fuel curve in real life anyways and then move the curve up or down on the dyno to maximize power. Anyways, you're way ahead of me. I'm not even sure if I'll get my stuff together for VIR at this point since the bike has been preserved and untouched since NJ! lol....

 

Ram air works, I know it made a difference on my ZXR400sp. Never made more the 74hp on a dyno but I'd pull most of the the built vfr's and FZR 460's on the straights and I was usually 30-50lbs heavier than most of the guys I was racing.

 

I realized that it wasn't just a gimmick in the mid-90s while re-jetting (look it up, Broome) my ZX-7R (the racing homologation kind). The bike ran perfectly through the RPM range in the garage, and when I went on the road to test it, the engine would practically stall every time I hit 60 mph, when the pressure started building up in the air box. It took a few tries to get it right.

 

I had the same issue on my 749RS. We retuned it on the dyno when I got it from Pegram, because whatever fuel they were using in AMA FX wasn't readily available anymore.

It ran great on the dyno, but it started dying on me around 4th gear. The airbox was getting totally cleaned out. Added alot more fuel up top and saw big power gains. That's true ram air with sealed airbox.

I don't have auto tune, just a Bazzaz and flash tune. Right now the tune that's in there is a little rich to account for the ram air. It costs a little bit- there was a midrange bump of 3 HP or so with a standard tune. So by adding a little fuel there was more power across the board with the dyno fan, but the curve is flatter- i.e. no midrange bump.

I know the tubing will cause some turbulence and I don't think I'll be able to get a perfect seal without doing some more fabrication, but for starters we'll see how she runs. Road A has a pretty long straight so even this "1st Generation" ram air will be a good start.

 

This is the bodywork I'm using. MotoForza ICP Caretta Moto2. The previous owner closed up part of the duct, partially because the number plate needs to be full size, partially because the fairing stay is right there blocking half the opening.

This is the ram air duct that is available for the upper- now, if I was all Ghetto Custom-y, I would fabricate a proper ram air duct (smooth on the inside) that ran around the side of the fairing.

 

If you want it to be really fast turn that square into round it better yet oval.
Everyone knows oval is better for airflow vs drag.

What's Mmo of that thing anyway?

Did you put a barber pole on the tach?

 

Autotune. Kids these days. I had screwdrivers and pliers.

But yeah, the solution was to have it run a little rich at road-legal speeds. Other than my VMax, that was the worse gas mileage I ever experienced on a bike. Those flat-sides were sucking gas like Steeltoe trying to suck a fart out of Jessica Alba. I ran it on a dyno sometime later at the dealership that had an open house. That curve was perfect. For a minute there, I didn't look incompetent at all, for a change.

 

D'accord Boomer.

 

Gino, if you had an Aracer ECU you could record your AFR and look at it after each session to see if the ram air is leaning it out. Kae should be at every MA round and @SPATT knows the system also.

 

So, I had a test at PBIR with the new forks, wheels, rear brake setup, and airbox. As far as the intake setup, the idea was to get a good baseline of what the airbox does on it's own with no ducting or ram effect.

What I found (accidentally), is that the gearing has a far larger effect on acceleration and top speed. (Duh). I started out with relatively short gearing of 15/44 and this gave a top speed (GPS) of 136.4. I felt like the motor was really revving out, (although it wasn't on the limiter) so I decided to go 1 tooth taller on the rear. This dropped the top speed to 134, even though the bike was still revving out pretty good. So I went to 16/44 and lost another 2 MPH, to 133.

I compared these top speeds to Road America where I was just running the pods (135 MPH) even though the pods produced 3-4 HP less on the Dyno.

For grins, the SV did 132 at Road Atlanta.

You can see on the AIM graph that even though I was 2 MPH slower exiting the final corner at PBIR, the shorter gearing provided better acceleration and top speed than the taller gearing, even with the exit speed disadvantage.

Green line is the shorter gearing.

 

After getting home, I got to work on the ram air ducts. I was hoping the inlets I purchased would magically come close to fitting, but of course they did not. So I did some cutting and got close, but not close enough.

I did get close enough to mock up the hose run and get it to fit inside the bodywork with the existing fairing bracket.

 

So the next step is to use the trimmed down adapter, fill it with spray foam, and trim that down to a plug for a fiberglass mold. There's no point in making the inlet unless it's sealed, so getting a good fit is important. This bike has alot of trick stuff on it, so I want to do it right, and hopefully learn something in the process. Don't know when the next update will be, as Daytona is right around the corner and the time for low yield but somewhat cool projects is running short.

I'm guessing even with a full composite shop and expert design team, I would only get maybe 3 HP. Which isn't going to move me up many positions in the race- whereas improving my riding will yield much more in the way of results. But it sure would be trick to have some nice carbon ducts and maybe even a carbon airbox with ram air going in both sides!

 

The funnel you have at the air inlet is not what you want. You want to slow the air in order to increase the pressure. The large funnel opening makes the tubing like a venturi, speeding it up slightly, which lowers the pressure. The setup in your pictures is more like a fresh air intake, rather than a ram air intake.