R1 engines

[Rob Navin]

As a novice on bike engines whats the score with the R1

What sort of power does it have and how much can you get and keep it servicable ?

Is the precieved wisdom to leave them standard ?

Do they need to be dry sumped for hard track use ?

Are there any other bits that give issues gearboxes etc...

Don't worry, I have not lost all my senses and will NOT be getting rid of the X-flow, but its good to think a toy or two in advance

[Blatman]

Don't worry, I have not lost all my senses and will NOT be getting rid of the X-flow

Objection, Your Honour. This witness is clearly delusional, and may actually be clinically insane...

[Rob Navin]

Objction noted and accepted.  

But dosent being clinically insane make me one of the least mad people that use this site

[samcooke]

What sort of power does it have

98-00 are on carbs and make 150bhp. Latest injection models have 180bhp.

how much can you get and keep it servicable ? Is the precieved wisdom to leave them standard ?

Depends what you mean by servicable. NA wise there's some good info here.

Same company does a drive in drive out turbo conversion for BECs : here

Do they need to be dry sumped for hard track use ?

No. A windage plate (the All Bikes one seems to be the choice) is considered sensible.

Are there any other bits that give issues gearboxes etc...

Gearbox is condsidered the weak link. My mate's bike broke his in 7k miles from new.

Will live *much* longer if you use the clutch on the way up and match the revs neatly on the way down. Obvious I spose, but particularly pertinent with an R1 BEC.

The two sites I have referred to most during my build are :

http://www.fisherfury.com

http://www.striker1.plus.com

HTH

[Rob Navin]

Thanks for that Sam.

Is there a solution for the gearbox or do you just wait for it to fail and bolt a kew one on ?

Rob

[gee_fin]

My experience with the R1 has generally been a good one.

The two main beauties of the R1 are weight (20kg lighter than most other 'big' power bike engines) and cost - a second hand one is £600-£900 and you don't need to dry sump them.

I went for the carb'd as it is easier/cheaper to setup for more power (just a Dynoket kit and a rejet).  Zero internal mods but a trick exhaust made 175bhp at TTS. I've had a second engine modified by Mistral that we'll be running on the rollers next month, be interesting to see how it goes.

Sump baffles are from All Bikes but recently Jonathan Rarity has had some more professional ones made, see www.fluke-motorsport.co.uk/technical/howto/200412_r1sumpbaffle/index.html

The weakpoint I found was the clutch, since uprating to the Barnett spring conversion and Holeshot springs the thing feels proper now and zero slip even when running two-up in a ballasted car.

I've had two failures, one because the clutch cheesewire came loose and went through the oil system (not good), solution is simply to remove the damn wire (it's an anti-judder wire for the bikes on the road). Second from a badly built engine (rod let go during a flatshift solution was to buy from a reputable/known source in the future!

I had a good long look at the 2004- R1 engine recently, it's an absolutely lovely piece of kit and putting out 180bhp as standard (ie. Busa levels). The throttle bodies are simply stunning. However, although it's 10bhp more than the previous model, it's nearly all above 10,000rpm (thing can rev over 15,000rpm), below it torque and power suffer greatly.

If the regs allowed me and money was no option, it'd be a 1500cc Busa, however, those two constraints mean I'm sticking with the 98'-00' R1 for the forseeable future, slapping on some Keihins and I've found a nice chap to reflash the ECU giving it a safe 13,300rpm limit with tuneable traction control and away we go.

Graeme.