Thanks to the Aussie dollar hovering around parity with the US dollar I finally succumbed to temptation and purchased a set of Keihin FCR39's for my bike. I've had them for a while but only got around to fitting them this week due to some health issues, the holiday season & life just generally getting in the way.
Fitting these carbs was fairly straight forward with the exception of some clearance issues between the air filters and the side covers but that was easily resolved. Mind you having to disassemble half of my bike just to change the airbox was not much fun, that was more work than the carbies themselves.
Once fitted I was surprised by how easily the bike started and how well it ran with these carbs fitted straight out of the box, Carlos certainly hit a home run there. With the bike warmed up and the idle speed adjusted I did a quick check for fuel leaks etc and donned my gear. Once out on the road I was impressed with how sweet the bike was running, probably as well as it did with the CVK's that I had spent weeks tuning.
Performance wise I'd say the improvement is very similar to that gained from fitting the Thunderbike cams and Wiseco 10.5 to 1 pistons, if my seat of the pants dyno is to be believed. Of course I couldn't resist giving it a WOT test as soon as I found a suitable location:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qinwaie9yCI
I didn't get off entirely scott free though as I seem to have a minor intake leak which refuses to identify itself. I've tried the old spray all of the joints trick while the bike is running but could not detect anything by that method. I guess I'll be working on that problem over the weekend instead of riding the bike. :chin:
I made a video of my whistling Bonnie and uploaded it here:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTjZRDmHhmU
The odd thing with this is that the bike does not display any symptoms of an intake leak other than the whistling noise which is a bit perplexing.