Case Work on Viragos

This one makes me a little nervous as it involves the back-and-forth shipping of empty cases: bulky and fragile. Be sure to empty all fittings and just send in the basre aluminum with the cast-in iron parts. Bolt them securely together. Lay multiple layers of bubble wrap around them. Fill with styrofoam "peanuts" or expanding foam. Anything that must be removed or scraped off on our end will incur more costs to you -- if you expect to get them back.

What we'll do:

Chemical dip (unless you ask us to skip it) to strip all grease and dirt. Blasting with several grades of beads, ending with walnut shells. All oil passages will be blocked at this stage. Optionally, we'll powder-coat black or silver inside; your choice outside. Your main bearing bores will be hard chromed down to 90mm ID and the 6308 bearings of your choice will be seated. Bearings that have oiling channels and oil holes could have passages bored into the transmission feed lines in order to make sure that there is no starvation problems as stock these bearings are fed by splash. Case spigots bored to appropriate girth for your application. We'll look into a maximum bore cut with snug-fit aluminum rings for smaller sizes included. All potential obstacles to long stroke cranks will be fly cut off; all iffy protrusions. New dowels for oil passages and a plugged tap hole for those that want to run an oil cooler from near the pressure release, rather than off the filter cover.

That's all that comes to mind at the moment. No prices set. Reckon on $65 each way on shipping. I must get quotes on plating and powder coating and prices on various bearings. All of these procedures take place elsewhere. Before you ask, do NOT ship complete engines for us to build. This location is not zoned for it. And we can't afford to farm it out. Shipping and transportation add up and no matter how good of friends we are with third parties, they won't work for free.

I counsel the following: do not even consider going to a single carb setup. Period. It will turn your potential sport-bike into a toad. If you want to have low end torque and not be able to rev, buy an older single.

Let's try this: Preliminary descriptions and tentative pricing for dual carb kits for the Virago, RH/RJ, and TR1. All kits come with a Mikuni tuning guide. All kits come with two (2) carbs. All fit to the stock air box. They come with all cables. Custom setups, such as with after-market air cleaners, can be provided.

All these carbs shine with a high-compression big-bore, the first emphasizing low-end power. A big bore and perhaps a C05 cam set will have you out-pulling any stock two-valve twins. Going with a C01 cam kit will put you far ahead.

For stock or near stock motors we have a pretty nice little dual Mikuni VM34 carb kit. Seen below, it consists of aluminum flanges, rubber manifolds, two carbs, and a throttle cable. Niche Cycle built the original kit on an XV920R. They put one on a Gen I Virago 750, and found that it worked just as well. They have put a carb sync plug in each flange and included a number of pilot and main jets. However this leaves you no place to plug in vacuum lines for the petcocks. From me, the flanges will have an additional tap with a rubber cap in case you've moved on from vacuum petcocks. These will fit Virago 700s up to one thousands, and connect to the stock tubes into the frame and back to the stock air cleaner. I'm also including a hefty Mikuni tuning manual so you know, if necessary, how to select the right jets and how to install them. The included one-into-two throttle cable is meant for stock bars or lower; like clip-ons. If you have high bars, say so and we'll dispatch everything with a 48" cable.'

For built 750s or stock 920s with performance exhausts there is a kit I'm putting together. Two Mikuni TM38-85s outfitted out the same way as the 34 kits, and hook up to the stock air ducts, a throttle cable, a handful of jets and a Mikuni tuning manual. Remember to tell us if you have high bars so we send the right cable.

Note that for smoothest operation you must have the intake ports opened to fit the carb flanges.

Extreme builds need monstrous intakes. So coming soon is the introduction of dual Keihin FCR41 kits for those who had their engines bored to at least 99mm; this represents the 1065cc kits for the 920/1000 and the 1155cc kit for the eleven hundred.

Keihin kits are a lot of work to develop from scratch. The carbs must be chosen from a variety of configurations. The spigot that connects the carb to the intake flange must be picked; the same with the intake bell on the back. Even the cable hanger on the carbs must be chosen to provide the optimal alignment. It will likely be different on the front and rear carbs. Cables need to be made. Throttles with enough 'throw" must be used. A choke cable kit must be installed on each carb; actually, this is tentative: we may be forced to use the down-draft versions of these carbs. No configuration of down-draft carbs have choke circuits. Then a baseline jetting must be found, and a lot of jets and such must be included for those having custom pipes bent up. As it stands expect a final price of about $2400 for the complete kit. Remember that these are 41s, NOT 39s.