Topic: Calling all 466cc owners

[Scott S]

 We're in attempt #3 of getting our 400F straightened out. We have a 466cc kit but the first time we tried to use it the cylinder liners cracked during machining.
 I think this was a combination of 1) heat damaged liners, and 2) a machine shop that's not set up for the tiny bores.

 I believe we have located a shop that's capable of doing the boring now. We're trying to decide if we should go with a 1st overbore (an additional $300 for parts), or attempt to use the 466 kit we already have.

 I'd really love to hear from 466 owners. What's your opinion of the bike with this kit installed? What exhaust/intake are you running? Did you re-jet? How many miles do you have on them? Etc., etc.

 Also, I know the stock cast pistons call for a pretty tight clearance. Where did you set up the 466 pistons?

[Bodi]

I put in a Yoshimura 466 kit a lot of years back. Also an Yoshimura stage 1 cam, Kerker exhaust system, and went to pods. So yes, plenty of jetting changes. Today I would stick with the original airbox. It makes jetting changes a lot harder but also should require a lot fewer. I have the jet sizes recorded somewhere, I know the main is a few sizes larger and the pilot is one available size (two or three numbers I think) smaller than stock. The needles have been extensively reprofiled.
No problem with the rebore, I used a Toronto performance bike machine shop with a good reputation and they used the clearance recommended by Yoshimura. The bike seemed a lot stronger than stock when finally dialed in. I have never done a dyno test to say what it's really doing.

[Scott S]

 Are you getting plenty of miles out of the engine? Since the 466 is essentially the max overbore...

 Surely there are a few more people here running the 466 that can chime in. Please?

[Tim2005]

The 466 is the Cruzinimage kit presumably? I haven't tried one of them, but have tried a Yoshi 458 kit and a Kawa-based 475 conversion too. Both of these run pretty high compression, to say the least, and I'm not sure what the 466 kits's compression is, but hopefully this is some useful info anyway. I've tried various other mods too- big carbs, several pipes, cams, flowed heads etc - all depends on how much you want to spend on it, bear in mind that 400s seem to cost a lot more to tune than 750s, but with all that lot done it is really great fun to ride, top end of 115+ is enough for the 400 chassis, and if you did none of those mods other than a 466 kit & jetting to suit you'd still notice a definite improvement in performance (imagine riding in strong tail wind all the time) . One thing to consider, what's the climate there? 400s run hot as stock, when tuned they get very hot and an oil cooler is a good thing to have fitted too.

[rudi]

Hy Tim2005,
you write about a 475 ccm Kawa based conversion.
Question : Which Kawasaki piston will doo this job ?

[Tim2005]

Hi Rudi, it's Z500/4 pistons and liners, and con-rods bored for larger pins. Very high compression, very fast, not hugely reliable though!