Part 1Hi,
Thanks to the moderators for taking the effort to clean up off - topic content. Regardless, keeping in line with the objective of educating the riders more about their respective bikes and how the various components of a 4 stroke motor functions, let us look at a series of interesting and informative videos:
1) The first video is for the Noobs as well as readers who may have opted for such after market performance camshafts. The video below will give you guys a basic idea about the stock cam Vs a performance Cam. In the end one thing everyone should understand is no camshaft is perfect even from the manufacturer in terms of performance:
Camshafts (Part 1) - Stock versus Performance Camshafts - YouTube
2) If one may recollect in the previous pages of this thread my report logs suggested a metallic THUD noise and engine backfiring at times when starting or stopping the engine. This video will reflect the certain drawbacks of using a performance cam over a stock cam. For all those who have gone through the earlier log reports on this thread, this explanation will make a lot of sense and you should be able to relate to terminologies like TDC, BDC. Whatever i had witnessed during the course of hot roding and my experience of RC wild camshaft VS Motozone High Lift camshaft. The video below should also give you an idea about the possible gains and losses over a stock camshaft:
Camshafts (Part 2) - Characteristics of a performance camshaft - YouTube
3) The video link below should help the reader understand the actual nature of how and why the intake and exhaust valves in our respective bike's engines open and close. Unlike the popular belief that the valves close the moment a particular stroke is completed, you will be surprised to know that is not the case. The link below will be able to give you an idea about camshaft duration:
Camshafts (Part 3) - Camshaft duration is explained - YouTube
4) This video will explain valve overlap. Unlike what the usual animations we get to see on the net, actually you will be surprised to find that at times the intake and the exhaust valves remain opened for a very short duration of time. This video should give you guys an idea about how and why this thing is allowed inside an engine:
Camshafts (Part 4) - Valve overlap - YouTube
5) This is the final video from the series which will give you and idea about a valve lift:
Camshafts (Part 5) - Camshaft lift is explained - YouTube
I hope after going through these videos, one should be able to understand the importance of a camshaft besides simply just increasing the cubic capacity of an engine using shoddy kits. If one can manage to get a good camshaft, along with good head porting, one be should easily able to achieve around 1bhp gain over a stock engine. a Wild camshaft will drastically reduce the life of the valve train system as it will have a tendency to over-compress the springs etc. a good high lift camshaft will have a lesser impact on the valve train system. When i had installed the RC Camshaft, the reason i was witnessing so many issues was because it was a wild cam, as the intake and exhaust lobes on the cams were not measured or grounded to work efficiently with the valve train system of the FZ engine Vis a Vis: The famous stitching noise or as we all know by now "Tailor Saab" noise.
The power below 3,000 rpms was also ridiculous primarily because the way the cam was opening and closing the valves which didn't allow sufficient amount of AF charge to build up during intake stroke and the engine was gasping for the mixture thus, lompy power making and jerky engine. Beyond 4,000 rpm the nature of the engine changed to abrupt power curve which indicated that this cam was a race cam i.e. will give you good power at the top end but at the cost of rideability on streets and the valve trains getting fried thanks to the hitting action created by the high lift lobes of the wild cam. The cam would have eventually disintegrated the lobes grounded on its body due to excessive friction. No doubt the images i shared in the earlier posts indicated a lot of scratch marks.
In comparison the Motozone camshaft gave me lesser trouble because the Lobes on the cam was measure and designed as per the nature of the valve train system thus, giving me a better rideability factor right from low end to mid range and better top end. Having said that, it still suffered from the issue of making the engine idling only at 1800 rpms and during early morning starts, i had to apply throttle to keep the engine running for a bit till it warms up. This is the difference between a stock camshaft and the aftermarket camshafts. Now you have one more reason to denounce another component from the shoddy kits list..

Hope we learned something new today.

Cheers,


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.....has been the favourite song for RC customers for the waiting period of the Junk Kits - Heck even RE wont be having such long waiting periods for delivering a whole Bike)
)

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