Questions from a newbie!
Discussion
Hi,
As a newbie to Westfield ownership (1 week), I have a no. of questions I'd appreciate some help with. My car is a 2004 Megablade, with a ZX9R engine. (and apologies for the amount of Q.'s)!
1. I live nr Guildford Surrey, are there any workshops relatively near who can give the car a once over for me, check the suspension set up, corner weighting etc as I don't know when it was last serviced / set up/ checked. Should I be going to Westfield for this?
2. The car can be stuttery under acceleration (normally at slightly lower revs, above 6000 it's fine), especially in second gear and very ocassionaly for no reason in other gears. I'm aware that it's not going to pull brilliantly at low revs due to limited torque, but this seems more than that, i.e. maybe a fuel delivery thing as it's quite promounced. Any ideas why? Do the carbs need cleaning?
3. The car runs fairly hot whether in town or on a run, a couple of bars below red, but seems to fluctuate considerably in temperature, is this normal?
4. In terms of the engine, can I take it to a bike garage / workshop to do any engine servicing / carb work etc?
5. I've been recommended to use semi synthetic bike oil, any views on this? Apparently fully synthetic will damage the gearbox on the ZX9R?
6. What's a good site to get bits? I'm looking for smallish carbon fibre look wing mirrors and carbon rear arch guards.
7. Is there anything I can do to a ZX9R engine to generally optimise it's performance? Race air filter etc?
Thanks for any advice on the above!
As a newbie to Westfield ownership (1 week), I have a no. of questions I'd appreciate some help with. My car is a 2004 Megablade, with a ZX9R engine. (and apologies for the amount of Q.'s)!
1. I live nr Guildford Surrey, are there any workshops relatively near who can give the car a once over for me, check the suspension set up, corner weighting etc as I don't know when it was last serviced / set up/ checked. Should I be going to Westfield for this?
2. The car can be stuttery under acceleration (normally at slightly lower revs, above 6000 it's fine), especially in second gear and very ocassionaly for no reason in other gears. I'm aware that it's not going to pull brilliantly at low revs due to limited torque, but this seems more than that, i.e. maybe a fuel delivery thing as it's quite promounced. Any ideas why? Do the carbs need cleaning?
3. The car runs fairly hot whether in town or on a run, a couple of bars below red, but seems to fluctuate considerably in temperature, is this normal?
4. In terms of the engine, can I take it to a bike garage / workshop to do any engine servicing / carb work etc?
5. I've been recommended to use semi synthetic bike oil, any views on this? Apparently fully synthetic will damage the gearbox on the ZX9R?
6. What's a good site to get bits? I'm looking for smallish carbon fibre look wing mirrors and carbon rear arch guards.
7. Is there anything I can do to a ZX9R engine to generally optimise it's performance? Race air filter etc?
Thanks for any advice on the above!
Get over to the Westfield owners club website and all you answers are with in there forums...
http://boardroom.wscc.co.uk/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?...
http://boardroom.wscc.co.uk/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?...
Hi James
To answer the questions...
1 - As mentioned in a previous thread, you could do a lot worse than speaking to Colin at Colin Denyer Motorsport which is based at Dunsfold, he'd be able to do all of that for you. There's no doubt there are others around that people can recommend, but either way there's certainly no need to be taking it to Westfield. In fact 90% of owners will do a lot of the servicing etc themselves, its not like a production car with a dealer service record etc, just keep receipts for oil etc to show a future potential owner what you've done to it. If you want a quick going over of things you can check yourself and what to do Id be happy to pop over one evening.
2 - This could be slightly poor jetting, it could even still have the carbs set up for the bike (with the bike airbox and exhaust) which will probably not be correctly jetted if your car now has a foam air filter and free-er flowing exhaust. It could also be a blocked fuel filter or may even be just a characteristic of the way its been set up.
3 - Without knowing the actual temperatures its hard to know. It will generally get hotter in traffic / town but should drop a bit at speed even if giving it some beans. The fluctuations you're seeing could be the fan kicking in, can you hear the fan blowing at any point?
4 - As above, no need as they are pretty simple and with a few tools you can service it yourself, and the only servicing you generally need to do with the engine (ie the bit the bike garage will recognise) which generally only needs oil changes.
5 - The semi / fully synthetic oil thing is a perennial talking point on BEC related threads and if you do a search on Locostbuilders etc you'll find lots of threads discussing it, but in my experience and that of quite a few friends with BECs who have all run BECs for ~5 years or so, if you use proper motorcycle fully synthetic oil everything will be fine. Its only when using non bike specific oil in a bike engine that it can damage the clutch plates (not the gearbox), because the friction modifiers in car engine oil cause the clutch (which sits in the oil unlike in a car) to start slipping. Having said that, a lot of bike manufacturers list semi synthetic oil as standard replacement so thats not going to harm it either but Id change it more often if using that.
6 - Ask on the WSCC as linked to above, there's a few aftermarket suppliers of carbon bits.
7 - Not really, I suspect its already got a foam filter on it rather than the bike airbox, the next thing to do would be to get it set up on a rolling road to make sure the carbs are set up correctly, which may cure the problem you have with hesitation.
As I said, Im only about 10 minutes from Haslemere so if you need any help give me a shout.
cheers
Chris
To answer the questions...
1 - As mentioned in a previous thread, you could do a lot worse than speaking to Colin at Colin Denyer Motorsport which is based at Dunsfold, he'd be able to do all of that for you. There's no doubt there are others around that people can recommend, but either way there's certainly no need to be taking it to Westfield. In fact 90% of owners will do a lot of the servicing etc themselves, its not like a production car with a dealer service record etc, just keep receipts for oil etc to show a future potential owner what you've done to it. If you want a quick going over of things you can check yourself and what to do Id be happy to pop over one evening.
2 - This could be slightly poor jetting, it could even still have the carbs set up for the bike (with the bike airbox and exhaust) which will probably not be correctly jetted if your car now has a foam air filter and free-er flowing exhaust. It could also be a blocked fuel filter or may even be just a characteristic of the way its been set up.
3 - Without knowing the actual temperatures its hard to know. It will generally get hotter in traffic / town but should drop a bit at speed even if giving it some beans. The fluctuations you're seeing could be the fan kicking in, can you hear the fan blowing at any point?
4 - As above, no need as they are pretty simple and with a few tools you can service it yourself, and the only servicing you generally need to do with the engine (ie the bit the bike garage will recognise) which generally only needs oil changes.
5 - The semi / fully synthetic oil thing is a perennial talking point on BEC related threads and if you do a search on Locostbuilders etc you'll find lots of threads discussing it, but in my experience and that of quite a few friends with BECs who have all run BECs for ~5 years or so, if you use proper motorcycle fully synthetic oil everything will be fine. Its only when using non bike specific oil in a bike engine that it can damage the clutch plates (not the gearbox), because the friction modifiers in car engine oil cause the clutch (which sits in the oil unlike in a car) to start slipping. Having said that, a lot of bike manufacturers list semi synthetic oil as standard replacement so thats not going to harm it either but Id change it more often if using that.
6 - Ask on the WSCC as linked to above, there's a few aftermarket suppliers of carbon bits.
7 - Not really, I suspect its already got a foam filter on it rather than the bike airbox, the next thing to do would be to get it set up on a rolling road to make sure the carbs are set up correctly, which may cure the problem you have with hesitation.
As I said, Im only about 10 minutes from Haslemere so if you need any help give me a shout.
cheers
Chris
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