Hiya Folks,

Your friendly neighborhood Banshee owner here... I hear alot of talk about reed spacers, aftermarket carbs, and FMF Ram valves. When I was first learning about aftermarket mods I too bought the Ram valves AND the reed spacers.

Reed Spacers: The only time you use reed spacers are when you have an engine that has port timing specifically set up to be a torque motor. In general, reed spacers lower the crankcase pressure and effectively reduce the pumping efficiency. In other words, They will cause your banshee to lose horsepower across the spread.

FMF Ram Valves: FMF makes a pretty healthy claim, but the bottom line is that the Ram valves show no performance increase on the dyno. In fact they generally hurt peak horsepower by 2-3 points. The new V-Force Delta reed cages, however, are an excellent buy and do produce 2-3 additional horsepower across the spread. You can't go wrong with them.

Aftermarket Carbs: Aftermarket carbs will do absolutely nothing to increase your horsepower. In most cases you'll end up losing low end throttle response. The only time you want to go with aftermarket carbs on a banshee is when you're radically increasing your displacement. For almost all mods (including serious porting) the best option is to smooth bore your stock carbs to a size no greater than 28mm.

And before I forget... Wiseco Pistons... Wiseco's piston for the banshee are of course forged. Forged pistons have a greater density and therefore retain more heat. As a result of the heat retention they swell more decreasing the cylinder wall clearance which makes more heat which causes them to swell more. You see where I'm going with this? There is nothing wrong with a Wiseco piston, but for most applications a stock piston is lighter and because it is cast less prone to sticking. The extra strength from a forged piston is generally overkill unless you get into serious modifications and increases in compression.

So here is my recipe for a 65+ rear wheel horsepower banshee with excellent reliabilty.

Aftermarket pipes. Your choice of Toomey, FMF, Pro Circuit, or CT. I personally recommend Toomey.

Air filter: I personally recommend you remove the stock airbox in exchange for the Toomey 2 into 1 airfilter kit. However the Pro Design airbox plate and high quality foam is just as good. Do not use K&N in dusty conditions.

Head mods and porting: Have a quality grinder like the folks at Port Magic dial you in a port job. I recommend raising the exhaust ports .050-.060 thousandths while reangling the transfers for cross directional flow and elongating the intakes. I recommend Pro Design Cool Heads with 18-19cc domes

Race Gas: You must run race gas with the above mods. I recommend VP C12 108 octane.

Ignition Mods: Go with an aftermarket stator. Everyone's situation is different, but my general guideline is +5 degrees timing.

V-Force Delta Reed cages -- See above

Stock Carbs -- Smooth boring optional. See above

Bore -- I recommend a .040 over bore with a stock piston. It still leaves you plenty of oversizes.

If you aren't abusive to the above engine it'll last you a long time. I recommend re-ringing every 6-8 months of riding assuming you ride every weekend.

I've been in the business of hopping up Banshees for years. With similar mods my machine tops out at 91mph with ""stock"" gearing and 20 inch radial tires (actual size 19.6). It will easily pull higher gearing, but for my purposes I rarely see 75.

Speaking of speeds. Go to WWW.Branfordbike.com Look up the Topeak Panoram speedometer. It mounts onto the banshee handlebars and will read your speed accurately to + - .1 mph. Its easy to install and only costs $50.00.

Good Luck,

The Slick

 

Slickster:

Great info! Thanks alot!

I went to the Branfordbike site and looked at that speedometer. I am interested in obtaining one, but I have some questions.

Is yours the wired or remote model? How do you connect it to the wheel? How does it install? How does it look mounted? Where does it get its power? Would any brand of Bike Computer work?

Anything you could tell me about it would be greatly appreciated!

 

Hey man, where did you learn all this?
I would love to know what I buy for my bike.
By the way...talking about the **** adds contain. If anyone looked at the DMC Pipes add (the 2 into 1) they take actual sentences from the article about the test the previous month, with a nice dyno chart...but the thing they don't mention is that the test was done with DMC Pipes and silencer (of course), but also with pro flow K&N, Cool Head, Big radiator...I feel the heads make a lot of difference, rather than just the pipes (though they do make some)...

However, I would really like to know what is the real deal about afternarket parts. How did you do that?

 

;-)

In all honesty, the information I've gathered has been from the pros. Stuart Toomey, Allen Knowles, my local shop with a Dynojet dynometer, and of course my own trial and error and alot of reading and years of experience.

The DMC pipes look nice and aren't a bad buy. However, the most power over the widest RPM range is from Toomey. FMF and Pro Circuit are just variations. CT makes the pipes with the most peak horsepower, but their power spread is a little meager.


Slick

 

Slick, I have a 99 Banshee that has no engine mods (to my knowledge), T5's, Hush kit, and bored carbs. I've got the Toomey 2:1 filter coming. If I go with the V force reed cage will I still need race fuel? I have a hard time finding quality premium pump around here. Is aviation fuel like race fuel? Which oil exactly do you use for your premix and what do you run in the engine? And finally how can I get some "putting around thru the woods" power for the Banshee? I wouldn't mind losing a little on top.

Thanks

 

Holyman,

Absolutely not. The V-Vorce cages will work fine on pump gas. The usual time you would require an increase in octane and/or a decrease in the potential for detonation or preignition is in the instance where you are increasing your compression ratio. There are other more complicated reasons I'd rather not ramble on about... Anyway!


What the V-Force reeds actually do is increase the surface area of your reed cage. By increasing the surface area it creates more opportunity for your mixture to reach the combustion chamber.

More interestingly though, The V-Force reed cages do not have to open as far to deliver the mixture. I'm going to make up some numbers to illustrate the point on why it works.

Let's assume the stock cages open and close 500 times a minute. Each time the reed opens and closes let's assume it moves 10 millimeters.

Now with the V-Force reed cages they still open 500 times a minute. However, The reeds are only moving 5 millimeters total. What this means is that it takes half the time for the reeds to open and close. When you're fluttering as rapidly as they do it translates into more power and increased throttle response.

They do work, and you won't be disappointed with them. However, Don't expect them to work a miracle. You'll feel a crispier throttle and some additional low end punch. They do increase peak horsepower, but you have to be really sensitive to actually notice a 5-7% gain.

Slick

 

Since you have the downlow, maybe you can help me out. My v-force cages will be here tomm. If I understood Shawn at K&K atv right he suggested running the reeds in the stiff position. He runs pretty much the same setup on his national mx banshees as myself. As you can see I have a fairly modified motor. How do you think the cages will respond to my set-up? THANX

 

CTBanshee,

Reed petal tension is really a hot topic for debate. The stiffer the petal tension the more quickly the petal will snap closed. The way I am to understand it, it should help with your throttle response. Softer tension will allow the reed petals to open more completely and theoretically can create more horsepower.

That's the way it was explained to me. Logically it makes some sense. As far as dyno numbers go, I don't think you'll see too big a difference either way.

Slick