Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Thank you for your kind words.

psr sir you were definitely more than 'some use'. I had been following you throughout the xbhp thread even before this fiasco.

The thing about hot rodding is like, if you do it or don't do it, you are gonna regret sometime.

The REAL thing is the true spirit in which you carry on or leave it and forget it as a bad phase of your life.

Honestly I do regret about doing this mod on my FZ. But alternatively I think its good I did it and learned so very much about this endeavor.

Because if it hadn't been on the FZ, we wouldn't have known the Tooner's true nature of business or personality, for that matter.

And MAYBE I could have done something with the higher capacity bikes like the Duke 200 or later on which I would have bought.

At that time this fiasco would have resulted in a much larger hole in the pocket as well as in my heart(keeping in mind the big bikes).

So then I would have definitely never attempt hot rodding again. But now I am aware what it is and the correct way to approach it.

Coming to NY17, yes you are right that there are some bikes with the dubious kits that are running fine.

But these are far and few. Not worth mentioning that the kits are a success. It has to be the other way round.

These kits are running on pure luck and some common sense of the bike owners. Nothing special from the Tooner. Got it?

I am saying this coz of first hand knowledge that my kit would have blown too, if not for some self thinking and quick action help from our senior riders.

Instead, according to the tooner's claims of in house development and reliability the failure rate shouldn't have been what its in reality.

The thing that irritates and burns me to the core is the pure lack of know how by our tooner about his own kits.

There is not an iota of effort in the after sales. Half the kits blow up there itself. The rest are left to fend for themselves on good luck.

There reliability of the machine depends on how much you have tinkered with the internals.

Also if you compare the price/bhp of hot roddes machines with the stock ones, we can never justify that investment rationally.

Its for the fun and love of the work. That's the truth to me.

cheers...

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

@ Novice...I fully agree with all the points you had mentioned in your post...Thanks for your Kind words,I am flattered to hear that you had followed my posts before..
Wish you speedy recovery and Safe ride..

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

I think it's time i butt in.
My Pulsar200NS has been, as they popularly say, Joeled. Its got the cylinder head mod, a stock replacement simota air filter and a bigger main jet. Now this is the so called 'level1' in our tooner's books. Here's the mail i received from him.

Notice the words: world of difference, blistering acceleration, amazing top end and last but not least, 12-15% improvement in power.

Now i was advised by [MENTION=59533]Rakesh Rok[/MENTION] to not go for this. He said its always better to keep the bike stock.

But adamant me wanted that extra punch, that extra grunt and 12-15% translates to a very meaty hp count indeed. So i too took the plunge. Mysore is my hometown, 150 km away from the 'racehouse'.

I was quoted 10k as is evident from the image. Now im a second year engineering student who managed to save that out of pocket money off many months.

And then came the D day. All the work took nearly 7.5 hours, understandably because the man was preparing for his racing at another city. I had to tell him to hurry a number of times as i had to reach Mysore by dinnertime atleast. After what seemed to be forever, i received my bike at 6pm. On startup, the response was amazing. Cold start was better, idle was stable and throttle response was crisp. It felt good indeed. Made my payment and left.

It was around 8 pm when i was halfway through to mysore when the bike suddenly shut off. The tank was half filled. I couldnt figure out what was wrong. 5-6 missed calls later, our tooner tells me to check a few things with the intake which i did and everything was fine. Sometime later the bike miraculously came to life on cranking. It seemed like petrol wasnt flowing into the carb. I had my doubts but i was enjoying the little (less than expected) powergain that i had. But lo and behold. Shut off again. This happened 5 more times before reaching home. [MENTION=59533]Rakesh Rok[/MENTION] was of help to me indeed.

It turns out it was the case of the breather pipe for the tank getting stuck between the tank itself and the chassis. Got that sorted out but i refrained from having an argument for the sole reason that he was extremely busy that day.

Three days later i faced a terrible lag at ~3k rpm. I sighed wondering if the carb diaphragm issue (common with 200NS) crept up again but just to be sure, got a puc check done and wow. The engine was running callously lean. The mechanics at race concepts had simply fit the big main jet and let it run that way. No tuning done at all. Imagine giving the afr screw a whole 5 turns towards the richer side to achieve perfect tune.

For some reason the afr leans out every 1000 kms and is happening till date.

3000 kms later i got the air filter cleaned but noticed exceptionally high amount of dust in the intake box, though my city is very dust-free indeed. And it was then that i noticed that the airfilter box was haphazardly cut up to fix the stock replacement filter (made for the N250 originally) and raw air was going in. It was not untill 2000 kms more that i finally found the time to perform a diy on the filter box to make a snug fit. And right after i did it, a sudden drop in performance back to stock levels! All i did was cover up the perimeter of the panel filter to avoid further leakage of raw air! So this means no noticeable powergain from the head mod, no world of difference (which was pretty evident right after modification), no blistering acceleration and definitely no 12-15% power increase, and all my money was almost a complete waste. The only saving grace is the sprocket work which i did by myself, which gives me enough torque to hit high speeds quickly, and enough torque to defend myself and my bike for the sake of the bragging rights of owning a Joeled bike.

Next problem faced was of coolant leakage from the bore. If i were asked to do something as simple as getting a bore packing from the service center, i would have, to be used as a replacement while refitting the bore. Instead they used some fevibond or some crap to keep the upper engine in one piece. This paste, though is pretty good, gets easily dissolved in coolant.
Remedy: open up the upper engine again, fix the paper seal and put it back. For this job i had to visit RC again and it was done free of cost. But yet again the breather tube issue began cropping up. Unexpected shutoffs. This time me and tooner had an argument and he was like 'why do you blame us everytime something goes wrong man, something must be wrong with your bike' was what i got. I decided, that was it. Thankfully this time i was in city limits and easily got it rectified.

To summarise my experience, the only positive outcome i had was the easy cold starts, stable idle and crisp throttle response. Otherwise, its been a major headache with quite a notable number of service center visits. Heck, those people would give out a big smile when they'd see me! Thankfully no other major issues faced, and im considering getting the carburetor cleaned up, just in case.

I feel now, that i should have waited for a wee bit more time and tried out goodies from NMW performance, blore. They have some amazing quality stuff with good reviews going about, everywhere.

Im not sure if i should repent or be glad that im not the only dissatisfied RC customer.

Sent from my GT-S5360 using Tapatalk 2

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Sad to know you fell into the trap too Adi.
Save a wee bit more and please revert back to stock. Would save a lot more pocket money going further!

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

@ Aditya.....History and "Tooner " repeat themselves.... only difference, History gives you a fighting chance ..Sad to see repeats of "Tooner" at work...
You are lucky that you got off with 10,000/- only ..elsewhere in Kolkatta a student was tricked out of his hard earned money of 30,000/- + and needless to say the Big Bust Kit just went bust..ofcourse the "Tooner" was busy in Research and Development work Like @ Abhimanyu's Piston, and so couldn't answer the frantic and pleading calls from his own customer..Needless to say the owner of the bike ,reverted back to stock incurring a further expense of another 20,000/- at ASC....

Unless Bike owners educate themselves " Tooners " will continue to exploit the unwary.

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

R15s , Pulsar 220s, fzs , dazzlers and the new addition to the list is Pulsar 200 NS.

I am still wondering why Joel is not speaking anything regarding this..

Sent from my GT-I9082 using xBhp Connect mobile app

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Thank you @Aditya N Bharadwaj for coming forward and sharing your experience. I am glad that slowly but steadily a lot of riders are coming forward and sharing their side of the Tooned story. I sincerely feel one should not be ashamed and should come out clean in the open so that others are not taken for a ride by this Tooner.

If i may, i would recommend you to revert to stock as soon as possible. Get hold of a new head which should not cost you more than 3 - 4k along with a new valve train system. Get hold of a new stock airbox which will cost you not more than 500 bucks for the whole assembly and immediately get rid of the Simota air filter and revert to stock pleated paper air filter. Write it off as a bad experience. If you continue using your vehicle with the airbox slightly open, it will allow more dust particles to go inside the engine and will eventually scratch the cylinder walls and also lead to a rapid state of seizure of the piston and the piston rings further piling up unnecessary bills. It will also dirty the engine oil and degrade it very quickly.

The stock Pulsar 200NS is a very potent bike. Enjoy it the way it is.

If you are still keen on spending more on your bike then you may try getting in touch with Motozone. But know this:

* You will have to provide a new head to them as your OEM stock head has been more or less destroyed by the artwork done by the Tooner reducing reliability and overall port velocity thus reducing the power output of your bike even lower than stock.
* You will have to spend extra for the Head work done and labour costs by Motozone.
* Then again you will have to try and justify the cost per bhp achieved in order to justify the amount spent, not to mention the earlier failed stint cost.

Only and only if you are looking at it like a Hot roder i would advise you to go ahead and take a step like this. If you feel you cannot keep up with the amount that needs to be spent in the of pursuit for more, safe but reliable performance over stock.. stick to what you have from the OEM company and quickly get everything back to stock OEM as soon as possible in order to prevent any further damage to your bike.


Sir i believe we should no longer call it a Big Bore kit but a "BIG BLOWN KIT" guaranteed by Tooner to blow up your engine and your bank balance in a very short span of time!!


Cheers,

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

As mentioned please revert to stock. Will save more money from future bills. Even I thought removing the ffe will solve the issue, but the damage was done in 1500kms of ride.

Update :
Gave my bike to SVC for thorough check up. The first thing they checked was valves, they were fried, and directly asked them, have you got any other "silencer". I hesitantly said yes. And to that they told me that it was creating too much "back pressure". My whole engine has to be rebuild.

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Utter nonsense!! .. The FFE will reduce back pressure and not increase it! Most likely your vehicle was running lean mate which lead to overheating of the engine and the valves got fried in the process. I won't blame you in this regard as the Tooner had also told me that nothing needs to be done in relation to the AFR or the need to tune the carburettor if one installs his FFE as one of my earlier post in this thread would suggest.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the SVC is out there to fleece you. Would recommend that you visit another SVC and get the head and the engine block and piston inspected. If only the valve train system needs to be replaced then it shouldn't cost you much greens. You should then ideally replace everything right from the rockers arms to to the lock nuts just to be sure that the integrity of the valve train system is at its absolute best. If the block and piston have taken a hit then yes the pinch will be bigger...


All the best..

Cheers,

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

If your carb had not been adjusted for the FFE, then Valves will fry... the seats will also form pits, so the Valve seats, valves both have to be changed at the same time, and set in place...I do not think anything would have happened to the bore...hope your's is not the famous Big Blown kit....

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Now let me start, errrr the first thing that comes out of my mind seeing your RC is the day you got it modded, pushing the bike at night and me towing you, still makes me laugh thinking about it . . . Thought of sharing the pic I took that day but it's missing, guess I deleted it by mistake. . .

Now coming to the main part, IDIOT you wasted your parents hard earned money, performance, power, performance, power, performance, power, where the shit is it now. . ? You paid not just 10k, 10k+ for absolutely nothing. . . Thank god my much scoldings to you after that really saved you from getting yourself to another shit where you wanted to go for a bigger bore and all other shit, . . I too at the beginning wanted to go for a mod, something like a FFE and an air filter for better performance, I too had shot a mail to Race Toons but the reply I got back, I didn't have faith in him, so opted out as no, stopped spending for anything like that, now saving those money to buy myself a bigger bike next, which will take some time though. . . Aditya I have been saying you the same right from beginning, instead of wasting so much money, save them all and go for a big bike, simple, mods and all as I have seen last long, . . The mods done here aren't so reliable, I learnt my lesson far before when I wanted a FZ headlight switched to my unicorn's, I felt like shit with that but thankfully my money spent to that was less than 1k as I tried it out with some jugaad instead of new ones. . . Simple it's never too late for you now, as advice given by others get it back to stock, your sprocketting is enough, after riding your bike with this sprocket set up, I know what your bike is capable of, simply just revert back, . . Try contacting to the SVC, if they can't do it, will ask my mechanic, he'll do it for you but make sure YOU STICK TO YOUR WORDS AND COME THERE. . .

Lastly, hope everything is done here, at least I hope now you learnt your lesson and won't try out any shit in the future. . . Else your wish, your money, your bike and nothing from mine. . . Think wisely and choose. . .

Most importantly,



Cheers!!!

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

I'm guessing more people will come forward with more stories soon.

As of now, I've managed to neatly cover up the unwanted openings around the air filter in the box. No raw air is leaking in. I'm keeping a tab on the FE of the engine, which more-or-less translates to how healthy the engine is running. I'm currently getting 35+ with careful throttle. I also managed 55 km/l once. My engine oils last me 3-4k kms and considering my style of riding, it's pretty good. Now what needs to be done is to get rid of any excess dust in the carburetor jets which may *god forbid* *touchwood* one day completely clog the carburetor ending in carb failure in God knows what part of what highway if I'm unlucky.

If not any fresh charge losses, I'm sure there are no flow gains coz I've definitely not gained any power/torque at all. Feels stock albeit a muted induction roar from the air filter. Now anytime I come across a term 'cylinder head mod', I ask myself why these people invest in a lost cause but then remind myself that generalizing is wrong. Maybe someday that hot-rodder in me finds that tuner who can keep his promise.

But, like I mentioned I'm a student. Gathering all the bits to revert back to stock will again cost another 10k (thanks for that) which will take time. I'll let the engine be as it is for now. Let it run tooned, without any gains, but thankfully without any losses either. I'll still keep my own 'race concept': MY revised final drive ratio, arising out of extensive reading/researching of posts on xbhp & experimenting with the same and not out of some 'equation' derived by 'research done abroad' for 'bulletproof performance' out of a botched up idea hatching in the head of a tuner-for-words. Maybe, I have gotten away with it. But, for the sake of knowledge, how do I find out if the ports are unsymmetrical or improperly finished? I'm not that much an expert.

But someday, when I start earning, there's no way I can be satisfied with any stock bike. Atleast a slip-on exhaust has to take it's place. Well that's the mentality of a hot-rodder. But this time, no misleading mails, no guesses and assumptions. Invest in the best and one wont be disappointed. We all know Jockey chaddi is any day better than Rupa Frontline chaddi

P.S I bet I'm not the only one who was assured of bulletproof reliability.

Hey thanks for your help and suggestions man! I'll refrain from kicking your butt this time for abusing me bro

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

@shv18 , @psr : Yeah I understood it later that it should be the AFR. Btw I thought the ffe is "plug n play" as per what tooner says.
Anyways I am back with my bike, a bill of Rs10500 after a long discussion with service manager over there.
Run in starts, and next service is at 500-600kms.
Updating the RTR thread with bill photo and other tits and bits.

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Glad to see you back in good spirit. Though i would still recommend that atleast you replace the stock airbox assembly with a brand new one. You should be happy about the fact that Bajaj has kept the pricing of the spare parts really low. The overall cost of the airbox assembly and the OEM stock pleated paper air filter shouldn't break your bank balance. At the max you are looking at a cost of 700 bucks everything included for the parts. That is the only way of ensuring that no further damage has been done to your vehicle's engine and its internals.

Regarding the head porting: Pulsar 200NS is an SOHC 4 valve engine. So you have two intake ports and two exhaust ones.

Going by the earlier posts mentioned on this thread regarding how one does head porting and what happens during the process; if we have known Tooner's misdeeds by now he has no knowledge about what is the correct way to measure the flow rate from the carb to the intake ports. As per your write up he quickly finished the head job in less than 6 hours, which is simply not possible. A proper head porting job as per the video links shared will take as minimum as 3 days as after chiseling off extra metal bits, a proper tuner repeatedly measures and measures again to ensure that both the intake ports are identical and have equal but correct amount of excess metal taken off as per required. If required the shape of the ports are altered from stock OEM shape in order to provide smoother intake and outflow of gases from the combustion chamber. As i have mentioned before the main objective is to ensure that the volumetric efficiency of the head is increased in comparison to stock which offers better fuelling and thus achieving more power.

What Tooner hurriedly did was quickly take off metal bits without measuring things properly and as a result the wall of one intake port was bigger than the other. This induces uneven pressure and affects the port velocity or in short the AF charge coming from the carb is not efficiently introduced into the combustion chamber thus no gains in power. A properly ported head would have immediately provided you a better and stronger mid range right from 3k rpms all the way till redline due to better volumetric efficiency achieved in the process in the same amount of charge sent from the carburettor without the need to upjet and send any higher rate of air + fuel mixture from same..

Regardless, as long as you have learnt a valuable lesson and now shall do the needful to set things right, i am sure your vehicle will not give you any trouble.. I am glad that you didn't opt for a BB "BIG BLOWN KIT" or else the damage to the wallet would have had been at par as mine..


All the best..


Cheers,

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

You never kicked me before either . . . Again really happy that you at last spoke all this. . . I have been asking you to say it at the beginning but good that now you came out with all that. . .

Cheers!!!