ChippewaTSI94

Mikuni TM28's, flat slides. I was running 93 octane prior to putting on the Cool Head, but will be running race gas now that my compression is higher. Also, I am using a set of reed spacers as well.

Exactly what the title says, here are my mods and such: Stock cylinders 19cc Cool Head +4.5 timing 28mm Mikuni carbs VForce III reeds Pod filters FMF Fatty Gold pipes and Turbine Core silencers I run on the dunes, mostly sea level in Michigan. Mid 70's to upper 80's temperature wise. Right now I have a 340 main jet and it seems rich, does that sound too big to you guys? Thanks!

If you wouldn't pay that kind of money for a toy, then why even mention a Tripple in the first place? Just because your a cheap ass doesn't mean it's a bad idea. "Butchered" and "cobbled up" describes the state of 95% of the Banshees on this board. However, this butchered, cobbled up Banshee would blow the proverbial doors off your prissy, pristine and slow antique of a quad. Butchering and cobbling up new ideas is how the 450 quad was created, in case you forgot, which was a huge innovation to this arena. It's also how comapanies got the idea for the Rhino, RZR, and other performance side-by-sides. It's pretty much the foundation for all types of motorized racing, period; someone wasn't happy with their stock vehicle and "cobbled up" something new. I can understand how someone with no talent for fabrication or design would consider a motor swap to be butchering, but for those of us with some skill on the welder it's basically a work of art. The foot peg will be pretty much in the same place as before... why would that change? The bike will be slightly wider, but there's plenty of room for a foot peg. A triple cylinder motor and clutch out of a snowmobile is hardly any wider than a CBR1000 or GSX1300R motor, which plenty of people swap in Banshee frames. It might be easier to do with a frame that comes wider stock, like a Raptor or something, but it's not hard to do. Nothing a weekend with a Miller Econotig and some imagination can't fix.

Well maybe that should be your next project! You certainly seem to have no shortage of extreme drag bikes based on your sig. Get yourself another Banshee drag frame and buy a used sled with a good motor. You can get SXR/SRX sleds for a decent price and part out the rest of it.

Ehh, okay, I was exaggerating a little bit for the sake of making the point. I've done quite a bit of drag racing, rally racing and everything in between so I have a healthy respect for drag racers. Takes a nearly clairvoyant reaction time and balls of steel to strap yourself to what's basically a cruise missile and launch headfirst down the strip. However, it's definitely not as skill-dependent as MX or rally cross and I think you agree on that, and that's really the point I was making. My point is that drag racing has mostly evolved into who has more dollars to pour into their setup. Yes, rally and MX can be the same way, but you see much more disparity and variance in setups. It really doesn't take skill to shift or drive in a drag race once you've gotten the launch and the first 60 feet out of the way. It's a matter of standing on the pedal and shifting at predetermined RPM points which are shown to you by the tachometer and shift light, most of the time. The whole idea was that it's silly to bash a CVT just because you deem it harder to shift a manual, like it's some sort of sacred art or whatever. With a CVT you still have to modulate the throttle input to prevent excessive wheelspin and bogging, just like you do by modulating the clutch with a manual gearbox. And who in their right mind would argue against going faster in the first place?

Who cares that a clutch disc that can take 7,000 horsepower? Your Banshee doesn't make 7,000 horsepower, it makes AT MOST 120-150 which easily handled by a CVT. Not to mention that Top Fuel dragsters have all kinds of rules about the technology they can use. Automatics and CVTs are against the rules in most racing circuits because it gives an unfair advantage to the driver. Same reason you can't use a delay box; would the car be faster with one? Absolutely. I'm also not convinced that the loss in wheel horsepower you claim a CVT to have over a manual gearbox is that much a difference over a tradeoff for better gear ratios. At least not in the terms we're talking about. Again, if we were working with 1,000 horsepower, you might be right. But we're not. They can't make belts that stand up to 7,000 horsepower for the same reason that ten years ago, they couldn't make a computer with more than 1 GhZ in processor speed. The manual clutch transmission has about eighty years of research and testing over the CVT. Give it time, and you'll see what progress gives to a technology. Not to mention all of this top fuel and pro stock reference is again MEANINGLESS to a Banshee racer and the technology we use. We don't have 1,000 HP. We don't even have 500 HP. Scale down to the terms we're talking about, the 100-250 HP range, and a CVT dominates. End of story. As a final end point, my 145 HP SX-R motor cost me exactly $1,000 from a used sled, including the primary and secondary clutches and chaincase. What would it cost you to build a Tripple cylinder Banshee? You couldn't even buy the CRANKSHAFT for $1,000, let alone the whole motor. You can't even get a set of drag ported Cubs for that price. So, while you're having fun emptying your bank account for an unreliable, overrated custom motor, I'll be making more power reliably with a factory-tested engine and more gear ratios!

Haha, here comes the old "bad driver" commentary. Watch any high performance drag racing and you tell me how many of them use manual transmissions. None. It's all automatics and Powerglides. Hands down, a human being cannot shift faster than a properly built and set up automatic transmission. If you want to go the fastest, you use an automatic or a CVT. The only reason you don't see CVTs in pro drag racing as of now is that they can't build belts strong enough to withstand the torque values those engines produce. What's funny is that you're saying you'd prefer a six speed manual gearbox over a gearbox with an infinite amount of speeds. If that was the case, why not use a three speed or a four speed? Simple. A six speed gives you the ability to keep the engine in the peak of the powerband for a longer duration of time. That's why you shift; you shift so that your engine stays close to the peak RPM value. It's also why you see more gears in high performance applications as well as long haul trucks. In a race car they want to keep peak power to the driver at all times; in a semi truck, they want to keep it in the peak torque range to conserve momentum and power. In both cases, having more gears and gear ratios is superior. With a CVT, it's doing the exact same thing but it's doing it way, way better than you or any other human will ever be able to do. Its like a 1,000,000 speed override manual transmission that shifts instantaneously. In a straight up drag race there isn't any "driver skill" besides the launch, and then keeping it straight down the track. If you want to see driver skill, go do MX or watch a rally cross event. In those instances, a manual is superior because you're doing things like trail braking and rev matching and you have to be in the right gear as you exit corners, and you don't want the transmission thinking for you. I've built/driven eight second drag cars as well as a Mitsubishi Galant AWD turbo rally car racing through the woods at 75 mph at night, so if you want to talk race car engineering I'm more than willing!

How much for the motor? I'd definitely be interested, although we'd probably want to sell our motor first so we don't have to lay out too much cash in the meantime. The pipes on the SX-R are basically a custom made setup that we created to make it fit into the golf cart. Yeah, that's right... it's a golf cart . It's a 1998 Yamaha G16 with a lift kit using Banshee front a-arms, spindles and brakes. The rear is a custom built swingarm and axle, but we broke it last time out, so we'll probably be using a Yamaha GMAX golf cart rear end and building a 3 link suspension setup. It's a beast! I'll send you all the pics we have for it! Unfortunately I don't have pictures for the Banshee which has the Arctic Cat motor in it, but I'll see what I can do. It's a pretty trick setup.

I wish we had the SR-X motor in our cart, but unfortunately we got stuck with the 1998 SX-R model. It's only 115 HP stock and no power valves. But it's been rebuilt and it's putting down about 140-145 HP so its not too bad. The power valves would definitely be sweet though! Plus it's got reeds, pipes, and some other bolt-ons. It's sick for sure; it'll do a wheelie on pavement at half throttle no problem! I'm in the Metro Detroit area and I ride over at Silver Lake mostly... where are you at?

Gonna have to disagree with you here, man. I've got a 700cc snowmobile motor and CVT in a golf cart which we were using to absolutely CRUSH 450R's and some modded Banshees this summer. There was also a guy with a bone stock 800cc Artic Cat motor in a Banshee frame which was handling some big bore Cheetah Cubs, no problem. He was even putting the power from the CVT into a chaincase and then through a chain to the rear end, and he didn't seem to be lacking power I can say that much. The loss of horsepower in the CVT is offset greatly by the fact that it's constantly in the powerband and you don't have to shift. Launches perfect and just sits in the sweet spot the whole way down. On a manual transmission, you are only in your motor's peak horsepower range for a few hundred RPM's at best.

The Ricky Stator plate is a cast piece. I've seen several with stripped out threads for the screws. Honestly, I'm not impressed with anything RS makes. Chariot Racing makes a billet aluminum plate for right around the same price. Excellent quality.

I don't even see how that turbo would ever spool. A GT-45R is the size of turbo you would use on a 4.6 liter V8 Mustang or a 2.0L motor that revs to 10,000 RPM and has an automatic transmission. Even with a massive shot of nitrous and a triple cylinder motor, it's going to take that thing till mid-track just to spool. Seems that was built more for show than anything else. To properly spool it you would need a trans brake on an automatic transmission so that you could build boost on the line. Otherwise that thing is never going to produce enough exhaust gas to spin up that monster turbine wheel. A properly sized GT28 or smaller would produce the same amount of power on a motor that small. If Trinity looks at a compressor map for a GT45R, they'd realize those things are meant for 700+HP motors, which I can most assuredly tell you that Banshee does not have. Cool in fantasy, horrible in reality. That's what we call a "credit card racer" on the strip. All cash and no engineering sense.

Yeah, but dude... those rims look bad as all hell.

How wide of a rim are you using? If you use a wider rim, the tire will "spread" out more naturally and create a larger contact patch. Use at least a 10 inch wide rim. With thinner rims, the tire has to balloon out more from the bead of the tire to the edge of the contact patch and it will create a more rounded effect, reducing the amount of rubber that's actually creating traction. A wider rim will cause the tire to be "flatter" due to the bead being closer to the outer edge of the tire. Fortunately, since ATVs have a fixed rear axle, the contact patch stays relatively parallel with the ground even with extreme weight transfer. On cars with independant rear suspensions, the tires will gain negative/positive camber and toe out on the launch which will cause the contact patch to be smaller. We don't have to worry about that part of the equation, thankfully, but it's a huge calculation on race cars to determine what the best balance is between weight transfer and proper contact patch alignment on the launch.

Please show me the study that proved synthetic oil doesn't allow a motor to break in properly. Good luck, because there isn't one. In fact there is no hard and fast study that's ever proved or disproved any of the conventional "engine break-in" procedures that people so religiously follow. First of all, it's a two stroke engine, not an F1 motor. The tolerances of the rings and pistons in the bore are incredibly loose in comparison to even a lawnmower engine, let alone a production vehicle engine. You can't apply the same principles broad-base to all engine designs. It's funny how crazy some people go with breaking in their motors and almost nobody does the same thing when they take a car home from the dealership. Granted, most OEM produced engines use plateau honing on the bores which causes almost instantaneous ring seating, but even without that, piston rings wear themselves into the bores in a surprisingly short amount of time. The best method for breaking in a motor is to use exactly the type of oil and amount that you plan on running for the life of the engine. To all those naysayers who want to claim otherwise, guess what comes in your Corvette, SKyline, Lancer Evo, BMW or Ferrari straight from the factory? Mobil 1 synthetic; since the auto manufacturers invest millions of dollars into engine development, I'd say that's a pretty good standard to follow.