Hey everyone, I'm having a huge problem with my bike.
I told my mechanic I've lost power as well as 25 km from a full tank. So he cleans the carbs and he slaps it back together but he had to modify the airbox... and now the power is back but I am getting ONLY 150 km to a full tank instead of the 200 I always had before.
I should add that he opened the carbs ( the wierd screw hidden in the cone on the bottom of the carbs) the first time he looked at the bike before he did the carbs.
Is it possible that he left that screws too far open and tuned it up from that point and thus had to modify the airbox to help burn the super rich mixture he caused?
Also, now the bike jumps and skips before pulling hard when I give it a good shot of gas; instead of pulling hard from the first twist of the throttle.
Any ideas?
thanks

 

Suggestion one... Get new mechanic...

The reason... Don't effin screw up the airbox! Basically, whatever he did to your bike, undo it... There is no maintainance that requires you to modify the airbox, or anything else... No matter what...

 

sorry your reason for joining the forum is the result of negative experiences with your mechanic. Anyway, welcome aboard.

Don't you love it when these mechanic posers take your money and **** up your bike and then bear no responsibility to make it right?

You need to find out exactly what he did by asking, having someone else look at it, and/or taking it apart yourself and then do some reading on he forum to find out what works and what doesn't.

If you look at the signature of each post, many have their mods listed, so this is an easy way to get the general drift of mods that work.

 

I know people have had negative experiences with airbox mods, but I cut the flap off, cut the paper part out and inserted a homemade oiled foam filter bordered with filter grease and it works great. Plugs burning correct color, no misses, and pulls strong. Maybe I'm just lucky, I don't know.

 

Well, the stock airbox and filter is optimized way better than a stock engine needs... So messing with it, when not needed is just a bad idea...

The reason the K&N messes things up, is that it gives to much air... If the mods you did isn't increasing airflow, keeping it constant over the revs, it's all good... And apparently that's the result, so

 

yeah the K&N has a bad rep in terms of the SH, but I wonder if the Uni or other foam filters would be better.

 

Why did he have to modify the airbox to clean your carbs????

 

modifying an air filter is not as big of deal as changing the box... I guess you got to be careful who touches your bike. Hawks are easy to work on but don't suffer fools who think that they are like every other carb bike.

 

Sorry for not giving more feedback sooner to your replies. As it is with communicating with my mechanic, I live in switzerland and the superhawk here is the firestorm (of no relevance); so point is, I speak english (canuck) and french; my mechanic speaks swiss-german and broken french; PLUS this guy actually raced with much success on the SP1/SP2 so telling him he made a mistake is unlikely to play well. He already made this all my fault and then wanted to check out the electrical side of things. Which I said was not going to happen. I know this is a carb issue regardless of what he wants to bill me for -lol-
Long story short I ran across another guy with a Storm and turns out he's a mechanic as well, so this guy will be putting everything back to stock settings and going from there. As for the airbox, I've chosen not to touch a single screw as I want the next guy to see the bike JUST as it was left by the last guy.
This work will be done within a couple of days, at which point I will be returning here to start looking at what you guys have done with your bikes as far as mods go. I'm a big fan of torque and ok sure, speed too, but what I like most is a bike that wants to tear your arms in two comming out of a corner. The bike as it is now I can only assume is putting out roughly 100 hp, I plan on doing a dyno run over the summer to find out for sure. For now the bike is stock (the laws are TRI-I-I-ICKY over here), I run 15/41 sprockets, changing to 16/43 when I get around to giving it new shoes for the season. Currently on the pilot power 2ct, but will be dropping the 2ct aspect, I don't like them so much.

Otherwise stock out of the box

 

Tuners for a Superhawk are hard to find. I was lucky when I found mine but he's a bigwig at the Yamaha shop now and takes nothing on the side anymore.

All Good! My Superhawk is as built as it's going to get. He just gets to see it for normal maintenance procedures that I choose not to do - which isn't many.

The last build did include a K&N, the jet kit from FP but MOST importantly the stacks that Mikster and partners produced. It really let the bike breathe like never before. The bike was already fitted with Jardines but when we could really hammer the air into the intake it became a whole new motorcycle.

Second gear roll-ons to 115 mph. Hard roll on with power shift to third - wheelie at 90. Scarey **** for an old fart like me. The evenness of the power delivery is perfectly smooth.

Did he get it right the first time? no. But I told him exactly what the bike was doing and he had it back in my hands in a matter of hours. Then says, "Sorry I missed that one."

 

Now pardon me for being such a young blood to the street bike thing (I grew up on simple and fun dirt bikes/motocross) and this is my second year with this bike... but when you say stacks, do you mean the inlets to the carbs in the airbox? How can they be modified for better airflow? Also, it is worth the money to go for the K&N plus a jet kit? I mean does it provide a noticible power lift?
My bike as it stands can take the front wheel up in first gear as per usual with a 1000 but in second gear I cannot even raise the front if I use the clutch; well very little if anything. Is this normal without mods or is something screwy?