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| Although our JDM Yoshimura exhaust is meticulously crafted from carbon fiber and stainless, we picked it for its large diameter head tube which we figure will work better with our planned internal mods at a later date. |
With the cool looks of our Ruck assured, we turned our focus to the performance end of our project. We first installed a JDM Yoshimura exhaust from Bowls LA. We chose the JDM part over the Yoshimura USA part because of its freer flowing, larger diameter head tube. We figured that this would be more desirable once we built our motor internally in the future. The Yosh exhaust is exquisite in its construction quality, made of polished stainless steel and carbon fiber. It is reasonably quiet as well.
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| The Bowls PC20 big carb kit is very complete coming with an intake manifold, heat isolator, throttle cable, carb, air filter and a box of extra jets for tuning. |
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| We upgraded the standard filter with this bigger shielded K&N part for greater airflow potential. |
Next we installed a Bowls PC20 carburetor kit. The Bowls kit is very complete. It uses a KN Kikaku intake manifold with a Kitaco rubber carburetor heat insulator. The carburetor is a Sheng Way PC20, with 20mm venturi up from the stock 16mm carb for better flow. The kit comes with a K&N air filter and a braided steel throttle cable so we can rock all braided control cables, looks cool! We wanted a bigger filter so we got a larger shielded K&N air filter from Bowls. Proper tuning is essential for performance. We ended up setting the carburetor with a 78 main jet, drilling the pilot jet to 50 (since the biggest pilot for the Sheng Way is a 35) and putting the metering needle on the lowest richest notch.
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| The NCY oil cooler is very effective. Interestingly enough, the cooler worked better in this laid down position versus the vertical position intuitively in the air stream like we had it set originally. |
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| The NCY cooler has a CNC machined billet oil filter adapter and a billet external filter and anti drainback valve. The fins probably help it cool more as well. |
We also installed a NCY oil cooler kit from Rucksters Customs. The cooler is a nice bar and plate part with Aeroquip high pressure lines. The kit comes with an oil filter adaptor that sends oil to the cooler with a finned billet oil filter/check valve. The cooler gives a half quart more capacity which helps us run the oil level slightly below half on the dip stick. The Honda GET engine is very sensitive to oil level and anything higher than this causes excessive windage and a sizeable loss of power and top speed. The oil cooler gives us a reserve to run the oil level lower and to also run a thin (thinner than the recommended 10w40) 5w30 Motul 300V 100% synthetic racing oil for the least amount of viscous friction possible. Motul's superior lubrication still provides protection even with thinner oil.
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| Our Project Ruckus looks a lot different from its stock days! |
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| With our Ruck looking gangster, in true MotoIQ fashion we will be turning our efforts in the future towards making it faster. Stay tuned! |
These mods gave us an immediately feelable gain in power and raised our top speed to close to 45 mph, a big improvement. Stay tuned in the next edition of Project Ruckus we will maximize the bolt on power potential of our Ruckus to aim for a goal of 50 mph with no internal mods.
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