wrong! The Cyclone, like the Swarup before it, were designed to induce swirl (or turbulence)in the mixture, the X-Wing is designed to reduce it.

Why is it everyone feels a need to lump every past gadget into the same category? I am not saying this works, but at the very least try to understand the principles on which it`s based and judge it on its own merits. What`s next, a Mood Ring comparison?

 

Not sure if any of those posts were meant for me to read, but just in case anyone missed it, I am making my version of the Superhawk's X-Wing, because I want to straighten out the airflow, post filter inside my airbox (because of the F.I.L. mod). Less turbulence=better performance from your carbs.

Will it straighten out the airflow?
Will there be added fuel economy?
Will I get added horse power?

Airflow? Most likely. The rest? Not sure, but like I mentioned in another post, I have tools to find out if these work or not on my bike. I can test a stock setup and a modified setup and see what happens.

We will see as soon as the weather warms up! Still have another 40-60 days of cold, crap weather.

 

Keep us posted

 

Dormant? So ah, whatchya doin'?

Oh yeah, you bet! I'm antsy and want to play with all this stuff NOW. I can't wait to know what happens.

 

Oh! Swirly vs straight airflow!

I am for interested in if/how this works. My big question is; if it works, did the billions of dollars in r&d spent across the ages on car/bike engines and intakes all just fail to see the benefit?

Mercedes, BMW, Honda, Chevy & Ford all missed it? Thats a lot of smart guys working for generations. Seems unlikely, but if it works then it does.

 

It may not work, only time will tell. However, for years, high performance engines went with bigger and bigger ports, as this was the accepted way to do things. Now, some are trending towards using smaller ports to keep intake velocity up for better cylinder filling (BMW`s S1000RR WSBK effort comes to mind). As this example shows, the paradigm does shift from time to time. I am not saying this is one of those times, but what is the harm in trying?

 

I had a few minutes last night to finish the design on the template. Here's what they'll look like.

They will be made in the same thickness material as the real X-Wing, .030".





There will obviously be another tab on the otherside. I just didn't feel like making it on the template. Since it's symetrical, you just flip the template over and scribe the outline.





I will hopefully have some time this Saturday or possibly Sunday to make these. When I do, I'll post up the final pictures and then we wait patiently untill testing can begin!

 

Can't wait, kudos to you for trying something outside the box!

To all the naysayers.


If this works to a degree will you try it?


Darn sure I will.


Watching with much interest, and decided a few posts ago to have an open mind about this.


As they say here in OZ, "Just my two bobs worth"

 

Thanks man, I can't wait either! I'm keeping an open mind with this project. I do know that this could possibly do absolutely nothing or even make the engines performance worse. Testing will tell.

In case anybody was curious (I can take a picture of this later), one of the X-Wing blades is directly over the throttle plate at full throttle (but seperated ~1", because of the carb slide) Meaning, at full throttle, without the X-Wing, you already have a chunk of metal inside the carb obstructing airflow. So, there is only one of the X-Wing blades that is effecting the volume of air that is going through the carb. If I remember right, with .030" material, the amount of obstruction you get from installing the X-Wing is less than 10%.

After lots of interweb searching to see what others have found after installing this X-Wing, almost every engine became lean. That's very promising to hear.

 

This is shaping up to be a very interesting project. I always admire the "hey I can make that" mentality. Its a huge part of being a biker. I for one hope it works.

 

Does that mean bigger pilots?

I have some 50s waiting somewhere!

 

TESTING BEGINS 4/9/14

I wrote out a rather large post explaining how everything will be tested, but for some freakin' stupid reason, my iPad decided to F'n refresh and I lost everything I typed. I'm livid right now, so I'll type everything again tomorrow.

 

I have to admit, I am glad to hear that that happens to someone other than me.

Looking forward to next edition.

 

Sorry to hear, but such is the life of a pioneer

Keep up the good work and looking forward to hearing about your results...

 

This test will be done using my Veypor gauge. Should the gauge show ANY kind of improvement with the X-Wing, then I will go ahead and see about getting the bike dyno'd.

Things to note:
-My airbox lid has no snorkel (although I do have one that's unmodified) and that long piece of plastic removed (that thing held on by 2 screws).
-The airbox itself is now stock with all hoses in place.

Here is the setups I will be testing:

BMC Street Filter
#1 Stock velocity stacks (for baseline numbers)
#2 Stock velocity stacks with X-Wing

K&N filter #33-2072
#3 Stock velocity stacks
#4 Stock velocity stacks with X-Wing

K&N filter #33-2072
#5 Dr. Honda velocity stacks
#6 Dr. Honda velocity stacks with X-Wing

I tried something and it worked quite well. An easy way to get the exact profile of the velocity stacks (Dr. Honda ones in this case) is to use drywall mud. Put a few coats of wax on the velocity stacks. Tape the velocity stack down to a table or chunk of wood. Then mix up some drywall mud (I just used some 90 minute I had layin' around) and pour it into the velocity stack. When dry, hit it with some compressed air and it pops right out. Then using a band saw, cut it in half and voila! You got your template for the Dr. Honda X-Wing.


Once all the above us tested, I want to test the X-Wing with the F.I.L mod (Filter In Lid). We'll see how everything goes first.

Any thoughts before I start testing on Wednesday the 9th?

 

Here`s one: Good luck

Nice to see I`m not alone if liking to try stuff.... doesn`t always work, but man is it nice when it does

 

No stock paper filter? As if you needed more work, haha!

Good idea on the inner profile, though.

 

Ok to start off i havent read every post on this thread in depth due to being on my phone so dont bash me if this has been touched on...

It is to my understanding that the difference between airflow "design" in a FI engine and a carb'd engine is governed by their respective ability to atomize fuel. In an FI engine the injectors do a proper job of atomizing fuel where as a carb'd engine uses the help of air turbulence to atomize the fuel. Therefore when you see racing applications where head porting and polishing is done, the proper wayto port a carb'd intake is to not polish it and to go as far as to dimple the runners to increase airflow while maintaining an acceptable amount of air turbulence, where as an FI intake can be portedwithout added dimples due to the injectors ability to atomize fuel better...

I can see this helping direct airflow and increase air velocity but it might not help fuel atomization or may hinder it slightly in our carb'd engines...

That is what i know, correct me if im wrong and only proper testing will tell us if this will help our performance...

 

Dimples are used for FI engines too.... I am not a physicist, but recall it has to do with smooth surfaces creating a boundary layer which impairs overall air flow.

 

+1. It's a very complicated world, that fluid dynamics is. But I do think you're in the right area saying that it reduces air resistance. Same reason the front of a Chevy Volt has a grill with texture: being an electric car, it's radiator is small and in the lower section, so the large pieces aren't needed. It's supposedly used to break up the air to reduce air resistance, thus leading to better efficiency.

 

Polished air passages increase the boundary layer and slow the flow. Polishing ports is not good for torque most of the time. The rough surface breaks up the boundary layer and reduce flow restriction. So polishing the ports is not the best thing for FI engines either.

 

Thanks man. I didn't have a stock filter on hand, so that's why it wasn't included. If there is enough people wanting me to use a stock filter, then I might buy one. But, as far as I can see, those who are interested in this X-Wing have other modifications to thier engine/airbox and use something other than the stock paper filter. So, I'm kind of hoping I don't have to test the stock filter

I know you skimmed over all this, so here's the Cliff's Notes:

Over the winter months, mikstr and I have put filters into our airbox lids to gain more post filter volume.

After reading about how our CV carbs don't like turbulence, I was looking into finding something that helped the turbulence issue. On a completely different thread, mikstr found these X-Wings and they looked like they would fit the bill.

Curiousity got the best of me and instead of ordering a set of X-Wings and modifying them to make 'em fit, I just decided to make my own.

In case others wanted to know if this X-Wing did anything at all, I decided to test it with what I had available.

So, that's where we are at now. The X-Wing might not do anything at all. Heck, it might make the performance worse. The data will tell. The Veypor gauge allows me to be able to download and print off a graph for each run with each setup. Those graphs will then be posted here. If the Veypor gauge showed any improvement, then I would get the bike dyno'd.

 

I have a sh*t ton of mods (removed all crankcase and carb slide vents and welded holes, shimmed top, billet velocity stacks, slightly modded carbs, and maybe some other stuff I cant' remember) and am running an OEM filter.

Just sayin' it would be good for a baseline test







Don't go buy an expensive filter to satisfy my lazy butt. I'm perpetuating my hobby of reducing those who are selflessly improving the community to failing my unnecessarily high standards.

 

Instead of having fun testing stuff, I spent the evening chasing a random loss of RPM's issue. A wire got pulled out slightly from the Veypor's junction box, most likely when I was removing the plastic fairing. Yeah...oops.
Without solid RPM's, I couldn't even get the damn baseline numbers.

It's been resolved and the bike is back together and ready to do work tomorrow.

 

Go to sleeep

 

The proverbial fly in the ointment...... glad to see you got it resolved

 

I have an issue. My Veypor gauge, as much as I absolutely love this gauge, has had it's issues in the 18 months of owning it. This is the second Vepor gauge I've had (first one was sent in (to Canada) and fixed once before). Since I have had the loss of RPM's issue, the gauge worked for a little bit, but now today the RPM's are all over the place. 400-600-850-1250 then falls back to zero and stays there. I'm not sure what the heck is going on. Point is, without the RPM's I can't test anything!

I'm stuck at the moment. I sent off an email to Nathan of Non-Linear Engineering (maker of the Veypor Gauge), to see what he says. I'm sure he'll be happy to hear from me. They had a forum for Veypor guage users, but that website doesn't exist anymore. Not sure what's going on.

The X-Wing testing is stuck on hold untill I can get this resolved.

 

Bummer!

 

i got a reply back from Nathan at Non-Linear Engineering and he gave me a few ideas to fix the problem. However, even if I fix the erratic RPM issue, I still can't or actually won't ride the bike right now. We got some ice and snow roughly a day after it being ~70 degrees Ferenheit, so the roads are covered with a crap ton of salt. Looks like it will possibly rain next week and wash all the salt off the roads.

I'll keep you guys updated on when I can get back out there and test everything.

 

Interesting thread and as I was asked to chime in....well

Honestly, at this point, I'm on the fence.
I see both sides but have no idea which one will win out in the real world.

On the down side, you are putting something in the carb intake.
This, in effect, makes the intake smaller.
Which should give less power.

But then..... the tricky bit

First you have to understand that pressure rise is not linear to air speed changes. In fact the pressure change is the square of the speed increase.

What this mean in this application is that even though the intake is now smaller, if you can get enough of a speed increase, the extra pressure can make up the difference or even make gains.

So IMHO it's worth a try, though who knows if it will work.

Let me know if you need any jetting help while you are experimenting