hey joe!

[buckmontana]

Every time I see one of your posts I cant help but wonder what the story is behind the FZR 580 in your bike listings.... a bored out fzr400? that sounds fierce... indulge us-

[Joe]

buck

Yeah it's a odd size because of making it conform to the AMACCS rule book for road racing.

When the FZR400 came out in 1988 it was the best handling chassis you could buy and register in USA but it was down on HP compared to the 650 Hawks that ran in the same class so I had to come up with a way of taking advantage of the maximum displacement allowed in the class.....LWSB(light weight super-bike)was allowed up to 585cc for 4 cyl liquid cooled motor well there's no way your going to bore out a 400 cc block that big..... Yamaha also had a similar sport model the FZR600 in a cost cutting steel frame with narrower rims but about 25hp stronger and a lot more torque out of the same basic motor as the 400 but they increased the stroke to get the additional 200cc (this motor had the fastest piston speed ever done on a street motor in it's day) manufactures don't like to do a lot of retooling so a lot of the motor parts were interchangeable or with a little machining could be made to fit one another............so the AMA rules state you have to keep the engine cases that came with that model's frame so I took the crank out of a 600cc motor and sent it to Falicon and had them shorten the throws and put it in the 400 case halfs..well one problem the 600 cases have oil jet nozzles to spray oil under the pistons for cooling. Lucky me the 400 cases had the passages casted in I just had to drill to connect them all the way .......bought some oil nozzles and had a 400 with oil spray piston cooling now. Next I used the pistons,rods, barrels, heads, cams all from the 600 motor but we had to shorten the cylinders so the pistons would come up to the proper deck height put on a set of Keihin FCR carbs and I got a motor that was around 580-585cc with 25-30 more horses and a lot more torque and did it with stock parts........imagine getting a 50% hp increase for less then the cost of a BMW exhaust system today.

With the latter model FZR600's they've come out with (I think 4 now) number of different bore and stroke combos so you can just bolt in different cranks and pistons and come up with everything between 540cc to 630-cc...... but someone had to do it first..... it's harder to find inexpensive ways of making power like that anymore.

Here's a old picture of me on it at Bridgehamton NY.....

Here it sits now between the other prodjects..........time to start working on it again ................I'd like to see how light I can make it( total loss electrics ...make my own electrical harness no lights cut all brakets ect. I bet I could get it around 275lbs with a 80rwhp motor...... sucker should fly

[buckmontana]

thats awesome--

I've got my first street bike '91 fzr600 sittin in the garage right now- looks like a mess but one day she'll fly again. Have to say one of the finest handling bikes I've ever ridden. I don't think I could have had a better bike to learn on- One of my instructors here used to race them straight through the eighties and early nineties- he knows about every last mod possible- kawi 750 pistons fit... but I'd like to find a turbo kit myself and really flip out--- That's a good story though- thanks-