No downside issues seen so far ....

Wait, that's not true -- when you are going to wick you some really high rpms you will need to spend special attention to sealing your right side cover upper oil gallery gasket area or it can ooze out some oil at the thin gasket section at the top of the gallery because of the extraordinary oil pressure you will be running at those higher rpms.  

Remember, our bike has no overpressure bypass valve at all, you get whatever the pump puts out at both low and high rpms.

I had to go back in and reapply sealant to that area, let it cure some at the "just pulled together" stage until it had good mechanical strength then the next day go to 100 inch pounds followed by re torquing once a week to 100 inch pounds as it settled in over the heat up cool down cycles.

Anyway, apart from that high rpm oil ooze (and that ooze could still be a function of the 50 cent homemade paper gasket I am using rather than the $17 stock Suzuki gasket) I have had no downsides so far.


Standard Speedo reported mph in each gear

First gear     --    30-35 mph
Second gear --    50-55 mph
Third gear    --     65-70 mph
Fourth gear   --    95-??? mph
Fifth gear      --    now used as cruising overdrive only


What has changed?  I've gotten more used to hearing the engine sounds at high rpms and I am more willing to go higher up in engine speed range.   Mind you, the bike will still run fine if used at the old chugger rpm levels, it just has a different character if spun up to speed in each gear.  It is wicked fast.

Now, as far as you Dragon guys go.  We won't have any straight road up there to play with, but riddle me this ....

Assume we run up our gears at about the same rate ( I may be a little quicker going through each gear, but we will see about that) how far ahead of you would I be when we each wound up through third gear?

Lastly, I have a big fat tire on my bike that causes me to under-report on the stock speedo's reading by about 5 miles per hour.  Lancer will likely be bringing his Veypor unit with him at Dragon time so I can see if I really can break the ton in fourth gear using a stock drive belt set up.

I like the Savage a whole lot more now -- so much so I am actually considering selling the XV535 come spring time.  It has similar power to what the Savage has now but is longer, heavier and not as nimble.

Depends if I am in a hurry.   There is no need to do that every time, most times there are cagers or speed limits in the way out there somewhere.

I am tending to bust every speed limit everywhere without even intending to do ... it is very easy to do that when you hit the city speed limit in first gear and by the time you finish shifting into second good you are approaching the national "general" speed limit.

And it gets bad when you catch yourself well up in third gear inside a residential street type area just because it feels sooooooo good ....


=========


I'll not play with oil system or anything until after I come back from the Dragon, I want the guys to see the bike as it was put back together and run for six months.  I'll be letting folks ride it, as I did on the first Dragon run back when folks didn't really understand big tires (they learned, didn't they?  They rode my bike and it didn't kill them outright, then MMRanch put his on and so on and so on).  

Right now they got no frame of reference about the Stage 2 cam performance shift other than "words on paper".

They ain't heard it snarl yet ....

I'll switch back to full synthetic soon for that very reason.   I will have finished my required cam break-in miles by then, so back to the heat proof blue jug stuff I go.


(plus two ounces of this stuff of course, gotta have my shot glass full of ZDDP booster sauce ....)

would you use that stuff after a replacement of the cam chain

Buy you some Klotz, that way if you burn some you know it isn't going to hurt you since it was developed and tested as a two stroke oil.  

Plus it's magic .....


hmmmmm ....


Hey, if you do that, try out all the magic oils and all the normal oils, you will be the only one of us entitled to have an opinion on the subject -- the only one that has "really done it".   You could become the undisputed oil authority on the list.

Go 'slagen Go 'slagen Go 'slagen Go 'slagen Go 'slagen Go !!!

ZDDP is only good to 1850 rpm?

This is an addendum to the last cam report, stuck on at the end of everything because it wasn't realized fully until later on.



I thought I had some issues with the stock petcock "running me out of gas" unnecessarily when blowing down the interstate.

This prompted a Raptor petcock switch out which did fix that particular symptom.   However the root cause might have been fuel flow related rather than a bad stock petcock as I use more gas now quicker when I whap that throttle wide open.

I mentioned very early on that gas mileage was affected
(that extra energy had to come from somewhere).

I get 38 to 40 mpg when doing my normal whack it wide open around town type action.

I can get 50 mpg on country road 55 mph cruising in no particular hurry.

Interstate mpg at 75-80 is back down to 38 mpg (high air friction and all)


=============


Good gas mileage is NOT the reason people buy these cams.   But it needed to be clearly stated for the record so folks would know what they were getting into.

I now carry a 27 oz metal water bottle filled with gasoline in my saddle bag at all times now as I cannot get 100 miles out of a tank any more, 80-90 miles is more like reality for me now.   This is only 10 additional miles of additional reserve but it has proven right handy to have on two occasions now.

The stock Suzuki Gasket didn't help either on mine. I had the same oozing around the bolt by the front cylinder base nut. I went through 4 OEM gaskets in a year, and could not solve the problem, until i used some high temp red gasket sealant for up to 600 degrees and I put it AROUND the bolt holes on the case AND the cover all the way to the next bolt towards the back of the cylinder and towards the oil filler cap, and I put it on WET as soon as I was done applying. I know that is not how it's supposed to be done, but it worked for me. Apparently while it's still wet, it goes better in the finest uneven spots, that not even your eye can see. Now towards the back of the cylinder is where the oil gallery starts, and I REALLY tried to apply as little as possible, not to get anything into the oil passage later on. I did let the bike sit overnight to let it cure. Like I said, I did everything as thin as possible, I only had very minimal squeezing out as I bolted everything down. I did a criss cross pattern starting by the problem bolt with just the socket in my hand, just a tad. Then next sequence with still just the socket in hand to as hard as my thumb and index finger could do. Third sequence to about 6 Nm, and fourth sequence to 12 Nm. That was the last time I touched it, I never retorqued, as I thought after several test runs being still dry, I'll leave it alone. So far the darn thing is finally bone dry! I was about to give up on it. I still don't know the cause, why I went through so many gaskets in a year, and it never worked. Although I observed that it oozed primarily around that bolt by the front cylinder base nut between the gasket and the case, not the gasket and the cover. The reason for that is, that the OEM gasket has some gray sealant stuff in that area, but on the case side the stuff around the bolt hole doesn't make a full circle. But it does on the cover side. So that's where i applied some more goo, to make a full circle, and also put goo on the bolt threads. I did put the rubberized washer under the bolt head, which still doesn't make any sense why it is on it anyways. At least not to me. However since 500 miles I am ooze-free for the first time.