It is very painful , even to read what you had gone through....Just a request, when you get the bike back,ride normally and do not take it up to higher RPMs or RIP the bike....Just be patient and you will reap the benefit .wait for the bike to complete the next 500 Kms and do not take the bike beyond 75 % of peak RPM , during this time.Keep checking the color and level of Engine oil,every 200 Kms.

Boon,

I feel your pain, mate!
(seriously, I could feel the shiver, while reading - when they called, and you went there with fear and tears (almost) -to hear - the engine had seized! )

We all need to take the lesson here from Boon - (Boon, thanks for sharing this piece - with emphasis - on what all can happen - as a chain of events ! )

Wish you a trouble free bike, once you get it now.
Don't worry - It will be just "right"!

Gather up, and keep revving.

Ace.

@Boon & Harish - Appreciate you guys coming out here in the open with your story. It takes guts. I believe this will help many other guys to make a informed decision before modding their bikes. Modding like any good thing in life has another side to it too.

There is a certain amount of risk associated with it. Many realize that when its too late.

As for me, my bike has done nearly 2000 kms and it has not given me any trouble till now while offering stellar performance.

Still, as the cause of the seizure is not exactly clear, I still do not have that much confidence as a factory bike yet. If it completes more than 10000 trouble free kilometers, I will be convinced.

Modified Engines

As a general rule of Thumb a 10% increase in power generally decreases the life of the engine by as much as 25%. Think before you do anything ... as warranty is a big issue these days. The Most Expensive Stock Superbike output is rougly 200bhp / lit. So you get only 20bhp / 100cc. Even the R15 have to use expensive Top end with Fancy bores and valves to have reliable power of 17 Bhp / 150 cc satisfying all the regulation norms ... when you can afford to swap 10 bore kits of a P220 for the price of one R15. The greatest asset for an R15 is it's handling.

Crazy after market Bore Kits from unkown manufactures, Plus mostly grounded Cams that lose their profile with bad quality of fuel are the main reasons leading to Engine Failures on long term use. For racing it's usually ain't a problem because of very short span of the engine use age. That's why a Drag vehicle produce's that kind of HP and get's away with it. Spend wisely ... it's your hard earned money. Sometimes you are better of upgrading to something better instead of beating the bush.

Cheers - TZ750.

Awesome

Sorry Guys for the delay but the good news is that (the BIKE IS AWESOME)^1000000

i will post the details once i come back from Kerala

in shot:
150KMPH with out crouching on a closed under construction road with all gears.......
no vibration no extra engine sound.....

Hats off to joel....

the problem was the bore got seized(as joel said to me) and it was changed

@Boon: bro i do feel sad for whatever has happened to your beloved bike... those a$$wipes never topped up the engine oil to the correct level leading to unfortunate and catastrophic engine seizure.

BTW i was wondering why did you do your run -in on semi synth oil?? isn't it so that mineral oil is better suited for the same? reading your post above i feel it is quite unlikely that the parts supplied from Joel's end were at fault.

I hope something works out for you soon. In a way it has proved to be a lesson for all of us not to leave our bike entrusted with these morons at the first place.. whenever possible try and get the bike serviced in front of you.


Cheers

Not sure I agree with you there, back in 1989, I had a 1978 model Opel Manta and modded the body to an opel manta 400 rally car and had the engine bored, camshaft upgraded, headwork, manifold changed, ffe, airfilter and twin 40mm carbs fitted to the engine, the car would reach 60 MPH in around 6 seconds, the stock was around 12 seconds, the engine was built by a reputable company who were established in the track scene (scholar engines in Suffolk, England) the car was as reliable if not more than stock, service intervals were a little more frequent, the only major issue was that the carbs needed adjustment every 3 month.

After market performance upgrades that have been track proven are as reliable as a stock motor, now the issues faced are installation and use, correct installation with attention to detail will pay dividends, warming the engine properly before 'thrashing' is priceless, patience is a virtue and in this aspect an extremely important one, by the way I had run the car for 3 years before selling and had given porche 911's/944 turbo's and Ford Sierra Cosworths a good run for their money.

The aftermarket tuners and racers have often given cue's to the manufacurers and have been solely responsible for some of the most powerful cars and bikes etc. with proven reliability and have subsequently had tie ups wit the vehicle manufactures.

The risk factors are basically correct installation and usage, no more no less.

You can do all of those & did them when there was lead present in the gas. Today it's alot more tricky to get the power up reliably for a very long duration when the performance of the stock motors that are already operating close to the limit. I do agree that you can get alot more from reliable Tuners but with crazy cost. I was lucky to have worked on a few of the LMP-2 / Nascars / SOCCA / Rally Cars.

I have done a few of what you have mentioned with a sensible money on my 1993 Ford Thunder Bird SC Manual. But now being a family guy, I have currently & quietly settled for the 2011 Manual CTS-V Sedan. GM doesn't allow to even swap to K&N stock filters due to long term warranty. On the other hand, I can forget about warranty and can simply upgrade to a 638 HP LS-9 / 700 HP FROM LOCAL TUNERS FOR AROUND 10,000 $ OR GO ALL THE WAY TO 1000 HP FROM HENNESSEY for 62,000$ (or) with complete suspension interior and body kit for 275,000$ with very limited warranty.

In my earlier post the issue was all about consistency & reliability of the product. Atleast all the products that you had mentioned are from next to none when it comes to reliability, performance & product quality and also you knew the origin. The Biggest worry in India is all about consistency & quality of the fuel available.

Cheers - TZ750

Cheers - TZ750

@Karthik_r - NOt you man, I was referring to another guy who had a busted stock cylinder.

@Boon - Please mention to all here that your bike had previously seized with the stock block itself and there were other niggling issues which were only sorted later after installing my second block.

@Harishk- Over and over I'm finding your post to be very contradicting. YOu mention that you used a yamaha Boat piston which gave a displacement of 170cc. And used ambition rings. Ambition has a piston ring dia of 58.5mm. If you need 170cc, then you are using a 61mm piston. So how is that even possible? Or is the cc again calculated all wrong like how you said my 60mm block was only 158cc? And if you are boring it to a 61mm piston, then why would you need to resleeve, its a straight oversize rebore. if you claim to have resleeved, then the piston with the ambition rings is only 58.5mm dia and your cc is only 158cc.
I sent you a spare block, but I have not recieved the old one back. Please look into it as well. Also,you are running a low compression piston now and if you have a smoother engine, well you need to understand tat your engine was running lean and now it seems stoich. Richening the mixture with my old block would have been the perfect reciepe, but I never heard any feedback from you on this and you decided to take up the whole exercise on your own. I fail to understand why you never made any communication with me, and did I ever deny any support at all to you!
There are nearly a hundred bikes running the bigbore and they are all happy and looking forward for the next upgrade.
Reliability of these engine upgrades can only be commented by those who have used it long term and that shows how good or bad it was. Please understand that tuning is for those who believe in it and not for sceptics. Even Yamaha would not have predicted engine seizures with stock blocks even after invested crores on R&D. It all depends on the murphy who is riding it and setting it up.

@TZ750 - Well, an R15 block from showroom costs 7800 almost. A p220 costs nearly 3k. So you cant buy half a dozen normal blocks for the cost of an R15 block. Also 10% power increase does NOT tamper 25% reliability. Anybody can claim anything, but I have my facts. A lot of poor souls read this and get mislead.
Now, lets argue on this.
A bigbore like in the case of the R15, with a hard anodised piston etc, lasts a good 25-30k kms with good service or even more. There is a 12% increase in horsepower on the dyno itself. And a 15% increase in torque and more area under the curve across the rev range. Fuel efficiency goes up, thanks to the improved combustion chamber deisgn on the piston top and also due to a 1 unit bump in compression. The block with normally last with good ring sealing and top performance.
On the contrary, the stock R15 block - 57mm, starts to loose compression and cylinder sealing after 10-15k kms. Reason? - The R15 has a coated cylinder and the rings are not too tempered to keep the friction low and to prevent the coating from being rubbed away sooner. Result - compression loss, oil seeping and dip in performance. At around the 20k marker, please dyno your bike or do a v-box test and you will be surprised that its much slower than what it came from factory.
This is the pattern in which all the R15s have been performing with age and then you have plenty of them wondering why its struggling to cross 100kph. Xbhp is full of suggestions on how to reset tappets, set AFR, plonk airfilter etc etc to bring back the lost performance.
My R15 engine has personally clocked 38k kms and ever since 500kms has beeen running on upgrades. Been on a bigbore setup since 2100kms and till date has been the test mule for all my developments, and even done one round of the championship last year when we were desperate for a spare bottom half engine and clocked 1:59 at chennai. Has seen all the acceleration abuse and countless trackdays. Seen 2-3 dozen dyno runs and top speed runs. Featured in magazines, abused by test reporters in various forms and what not. Now at 38k kms, the big-end of the crankshaft has slowly reported a weak sign and now it needs a crankshaft replacement - 9k. The clutch and everything else is still happy. The plates are 38k kms old. Most who have ridden my bike know how the whole package feels. And most of my buddies have themselves used the bike for a few weeks and days in times of sharing a ride. So let the argument flow. This on a normal usage, would have lasted a good 80-90k kms.
There are only two ways of making more power - reliably and unreliably. The reliable way gives you all the fun at no extra cost or damage. The unreliable way goes to drain everytime. There are a lot of these chinese kits in the market which can be picked through some friends on facebook and online communities, but no one checks if they work or not.

We have reliably won the whole championship last year with the most powerful Indian/imported sub 250cc 4-stroke that ever raced on the Indian circuit, on an R15 with stock gearbox. The timing still holds candle and I worked on the whole project single handed. I must be knowing a little bit atleast about engines then I guess!

Signing off from this thread.

Joel

Keep up the good work Joel Best of luck

@joel - My friends R15 ( March 09 model ) hit 142 meter indicated, while mine went about 134. To confirm meter error, we both were pacing each other at 120 kmph and confirmed that we were at the same speeds ( indicated, as well as actual ).

His bike has done 22,000 kms, while mine is exact half ( 11,000 ). He has a new chain set, and bike is in top notch condition, daresay much better than mine ( i feel, ) since he sets his tappets at home, and is a complete bike freak like you.

What do u recommend i tell him to look into to ensure that this performance loss does not happen on his bike which has already crossed the 20,000 kms mark??

@ Harishk. Just read this a few pages back. Swapping parts from here and there, and you expect your bike to last??
@ all, have seen and ridden a few joel'd bikes, presently own one, this is the first time im coming across this kind of situation. Proper running-in, good maintenance and ability to listen to the expert is very important in having a good long lasting bike.

He he he he .... It is said that Artillery is the GOD of War... Joel surely used the equivalent of the M777 field howitzer to fire a salvo... let see what counter arguments come in the return salvo...

@ Joel


I am tired.

What Stock Block Seizures are we talking about?
One in a Million?
Are you sure the seizure was due any Design flaw(R&D)?
If Yamaha considers this Post legal they will sue you for your words.

Just to get 100% satisfaction, I came down to Bangalore to have the setup done for the first time. Right from the day one when the 165CC bore started to give problems, I have taken Pics inch by inch.

I have all pics showing the 165CC Pistons getting busted and Rings Blown out and way it damaged the Con rod and Cam etc etc.


Its common sense, if a person orders for the piston/rings alone(without the bore) means his Piston/rings got damaged and off course the bore will have scratches and need a Re-bore/Polishing, So the 1st question asked by the Spares store would be "Which Over-Size", means the stock piston and rings usually come along with the bore as a Single Part Number and Stock size piston/rings will fit only a stock bore perfectly and 99% the piston & rings would be ordered separately only when a re-bore /polishing is required.

Also its a fact that most of the Indian Bikes come with 3 Over Size Pistons/Rings for re-boring the Cylinder for three times with the difference of 0.5 to 0.75MM to each oversize. In my case , shahdupeshkhan got the HH Ambition Rings alone separately , which comes with the 2nd Oversize Piston.

I too have enough Pics of the Yamaha 170CC piston and Ambition Rings and the way it fits into the newly sleeved bore and how the setup was assembled. (I have scanned all Part's bill and Service bills too)

Not only me, I recently came across nv.rohanraj from Hyd uploading pics in Picasa of his Seized 165CC setup and showed me what has happened, Do you really want to get deep into this? Then we may have to justify many of your offerings like the decomp missing camshaft etc. Then there would be 1000s of Theories explained, while the unit practically fails.

I can post the pics if you like, but it may not turn around good. Moreover I feel and tell every one that you are the best buddy to interact with and offer any amount of help at any time. But my bad, I am not in the same city where you are and cannot wait until your visit here. I have to keep going.

Also, I never wanted to Join XBHP coz I felt the UI is too boring, But I joined XBHP March this year, Just after getting impressed by your works and Just wanted to keep in touch with you. But later I realized this a huge knowledgeable community, So I think its better to stay shut and gain more knowledge in this widespread Community.

Moreover, I understood one-thing everyone speak out their experience different in person and post different in here.

I am very very happy with my bike now and I will leave and leave it here.

PS: Just check out my last email to you, I was asking for your address to send the old block back, coz I have also mentioned that lost your packaging at the Service center which had your address in it. Just drop a Msg, block will be there in 2-3 days and I sincerely Thank you for your humble assistance for sending a New block without even taking the old one.

@ nathanvighnesh

Sure man, I bet my bike will stay young for years (May be until Yamaha stop spares) and I am very much sure with the way the past 4K Kms done and the same butter smoothness being retained.

The most important thing is, with the previous 165CC setup something or other will go bad and had to pay a huge Bill at the SVC center. Now I hardly spend any money at the Service center. Its just like a stock bike and the Bill too (Engine oil + regular Svc).

Hope your bike is doing well too. Post your complete experience as well man, I have an Apache 150 waiting to be worked on.

Modified Engines

Joel it's great to hear that your bike holds the record still. Your are definitely a cut above the rest of the guys in India ... I agree on that. You R&D Skills are amazing and your explanations are right up to the mark. Keep the good work going.

Cheers - TZ750.