| What do you do if you
think an R1 feels slow ?, fit a pipe and jet kit ?, hmm maybe, but what
I would do first is check that its not restricted. After purchasing my
R1 new in May 1999 I started to realize after running it in that all was
not well, it felt fine at low rpm pretty torquey but the top end felt
strangely strangled or gutless to put it bluntly. Having heard all the
stories of how scary the R1 was I was surprised at how tame it actually
was, still I put it out of my mind thinking it was me being an idiot and
that everything was fine, that was until the first time I used it in anger
and struggled to stay with a friends GSXR600, I was struggling to squeeze
155 mph out of it something had to be amiss. The problem turned out to
be it was restricted my R1 was a French model, you can recognize this
by the country code in the chassis number (RNO14 for France). |
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THE RESTRICTION
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| So what
was restricting it, well I had heard all the stories of different black
boxes for different countries, but it was much simpler than that, each
carb had an insert (see image) that restricted the lift of the throttle
slides (a bit like the carb tops they used to restrict ZZR1100/ZX11's
with), before removal my R1 was only producing 97 bhp at the rear wheel
hence the struggle staying with my friends 105 bhp GSXR600, after removal
it was producing a much healthier 133.9 bhp at the rear wheel. |
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So does the R1
scare my now ?, well no not really, it did for a while but now I am
used to its tank slapping ways if you accelerate hard over bumps, I
was going to fit a steering damper but I feel it may lose some of its
character if I do so for now its stays as it is, apart from that is,
yea you guessed it a pipe and jet kit - well it's started to feel slow.
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Dynograph showing
power while restricted and then after the restriction was removed as
you can see it jumped from 97 bhp to 133.9 bhp, Other countries could
also be subjected to this restriction as well as France, Germany and
Switzerland for instance. I would also like to thank Yamaha Motor UK
for their help in determining the origin of my R1 even though it was
a parallel import.
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