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Can somebody please make a new pipe for the 85' & 86'? The f2f is good for trail riding but lacks top end. It's been a long time coming.
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Any pipe builders care to explain why it's not viable to build a pipe for the 85' & 86' 250R's? Aren't you guys tired of working on improving existing pipes, and try something new. Especially since nobody is doing it. I'd fork over $700 for a RAW pipe! Especially for a hand coned sexy chromed like the V2.I doubt it would be hard to outdo the FMF. -
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Well if you want to get technical, LRD, HPR, and 1 or 2 other companies already make a bad a$$ pipe for the 85-86 machines. But they WILL require some modifications to your bike.
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I had no idea there was options. Can you tell me about those pipes and what they are best suited for? I'd still pay $700 for a new hand made chromed pipe if somebody could build one that's leaps ahead of the fmf.
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Any pipe builders care to explain why it's not viable to build a pipe for the 85' & 86' 250R's? Aren't you guys tired of working on improving existing pipes, and try something new. Especially since nobody is doing it. I'd fork over $700 for a RAW pipe! Especially for a hand coned sexy chromed like the V2.I doubt it would be hard to outdo the FMF.
There was not a very large number of 1985 and 1986 LT 250 Suzukis made as compared to the number of 1988 to 1992 LT 250s. I not sure it would be a wise business decision for a company to make a small run of pipes for the 85-86 LT 250s unless the pipes were priced at level that the company could spread the cost of the engine and pipe development over 25 units or so.
It would not be hard to outdo the FMF for the 85-86 LT 250.... We did that about 30 years ago and many other pipe companies have also done it. We just had a customers 86 LT 250 on the dyno last week to tune the carb and it had a FMF pipe on it. It had Xxxxx Tech porting, a milled head, the air box lid removed, TM 34 carb and it made 27 hp to the rear wheels on our dyno. Our 85-86 LT 250s that were winning championships when these bikes were new were in the 40 to 45 hp range depending upon the engine package selected.
I cannot build a hand coned pipe and sell it for a price that is competitive with FMF's stamped pipe price that they have had stamping dies for 30 years. I cannot build a hand coned pipe using our tried and proven manufacturing techniques and sell them for 400.00 to 500.00 like some other pipe builders are currently doing on their TIG welded pipes.
The TIG welds as viewed from the outside of these pipes are beautiful. These 400.00 to 500.00 pipes are very nice looking, The welds are hammered for appearance only on the outside of the curves of the pipe. Smoothing the seams and welds along the outside of a curve improves the appearance but does very little for the gas dynamics.
Look closely at the inside of these TIG welded pipes. Most of these tig welds I have seen do not penetrate the thickness of the metal. The inside of the pipe have burrs and sharp corners along the inside of the curves of the pipe body.
Hammering the welds and seams smooth on the inside of the curve where the diameter is less than about 3" helps the gas dynamics of the pipe. Hammering the welds over a curved mandrel along the inside of the pipe body curves, takes a lot of time and requires welds that are annealed and have good penetration to keep from cracking. TIG welding is much faster than torch welding but produces a weld zone that is more brittle than a torch weld.
It takes around takes 700.00 in labor and material to fabricate a nice looking hand coned raw pipe and silencer once patterns have been made. I takes about the same amount of time to fabricate a pipe that works well as it does to fabricate a pipe that works terrible.
It takes a lot of time to fabricate test pipes and evaluate them in the field and on the dyno to find "those needle in a hay stack pipe and port dimensions" that a specific engine likes. Once the pipe dimensions for that specific engine package has been established, patterns for hand coned pipes can to be made for low production numbers or stamping dies can be made if the company thinks that there is a market for a large number of pipe sales.
I have been building two stroke pipes for over 40 years for racing two strokes. The competition used to be so intense that I found that investing the money in stamping dies could never be recouped due to low production numbers and the need for frequent pipe dimension changes to stay on the cutting edge. In the old days we seldom built more than 50 pipes that had the same dimensions. In the old days most of the pipes used on the racing circuit were obsolete in 6 months.
Companies that invest in stamping dies, usually commit themselves to using the stamping dies until they are worn out. Companies that were building engines that were on the cutting edge of performance were constantly testing and updating their pipe dimensions for their hand coned pipes.
The cost for Updating and changing pipe dimensions for hand coned pipes is about 10 to 30 times cheaper than the cost for making a new set of stamping dies. We have seen many companies over the years make adjustments to their existing stampings in an effort to make them perform similar to hand coned pipes that have been improved since their stamping dies were made. Sometimes it is possible, but most of the time new stamping dies are required to make the small dimension changes that are needed to bring their pipes to a competitive performance level. -
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Excellent post Jerry
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What kind of engine mods were needed to make the 40-45 hp? And are the other pipes you mentioned hard to find? And how much would one expect to pay for each of those pipes? What are each of those pipes best suited for?
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The pipes I was referring to are the hybrid pipes.
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Motorgeek, what if a person came to somebody like you, with your experience, with an engine built with all the goodies in it that we know of...and done to it. Could you or somebody like yourself, build a hand made pipe around that engine, and that fits without modifying the frame, or does one simply build an engine around the pipe?
Basically I want Carl to build my engine with all of those little things done to it. To make as much power as possible, and I want a beautiful hand made pipe built for the motor. It can be raw, Ill get it chromed myself. Any advice on how to get this done would be greatly appreciated. I'm feeling lost and confused cause I'm new to this. Which comes first? ... The chicken or the egg? I don't want a pipe that is based off 25 or 30 year old tech technology. There must be a better pipe waiting for someone like yourself to create. -
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What kind of engine mods were needed to make the 40-45 hp? And are the other pipes you mentioned hard to find? And how much would one expect to pay for each of those pipes? What are each of those pipes best suited for?
I would have to look for the blueprints if I can find them. I have not tried to build any of those engines in probably 25 years or more. There was not any black magic in those engines or any of my engines. The trick is to get everything working together. ALL OF THE COMPONENTS, ports, pipe, head, carb and ignition have to work in concert with each other. There is NOT ANY ONE COMPONENT that is responsible for making the majority of the power gains.
It is not uncommon to spend over 200 hours in developing an engine to perform at that level. -
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If the 86' was making 40-45 hp way back then, how much hp can be achieved today?
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If the 86' was making 40-45 hp way back then, how much hp can be achieved today?
I do not know how much more power can be found in these old engines. How much more time do you want to invest in looking?? How much money are you willing to spend on these old engines. The reality is: This old engine cannot be developed to make the kind of power and have a wide power band like the modern two strokes. The technology is just not in the ports, reed, crankcases etc on these 85-86 LT 250s.
We have to start with the port technology that Suzuki cast for us 30 years ago Some port designs are superior to others. Port technology has progressed a lot in 30 years. Pipe technology has progressed a lot in 30 years but we can only do so much with pipes on 30 year old port technology.
If you were to increase the displacement to over 300cc, it will make a little more power if you spend the time to simultaneously develop the ports and pipe together. I have not had very good results trying to build killer pipes for engines that were developed for other pipes on the market. We usually have to try different port modifications when trying to use some of the more modern pipe technology.
I would be leery of installing a big bore kit in one of these 85-86 castings. We had cylinders splitting in half when these were just real good running 250s. When you start putting big bore sleeves in them, the castings become much weaker because of all of the metal that has to be remove to make room for the big bore sleeve. Weak cylinders are more flexible after the big bore sleeves are installed and are also more prone to head gasket blowing problems.
Current state of the art 125 two stroke road racing and shifter kart engines are making almost 60 hp. The CR250s that we built for the shifter karts and micro sprints in the late 1990s were a little over 70 hp. 500 cc two stroke road racing engines were making well over 220 hp when the FIM abolished the class and replaced it with big multi cylinder four strokes.
There is more to porting that cutting the ports to a popular port timing spec when building a two stroke. The port timings on highly developed two strokes are about the same as they were in the late 1960s. Yamahas 1968 TD1 250 twin road racer had around 35 to 40 hp. 30 years later Yamaha's TZ 250 road racing engines made around 80 hp with similiar port timing. Around 2005 the Rotax/Aprilia 250 road racing twins were making 115 hp.
There are a lot of builders around the globe that can cut the basic port timings and reshape the port tunnels needed to make the engine breath at the higher RPM. There is a lot more to designing pipes than entering the port timings of your engine into a pipe design software package or downloading a pipe design app for your phone. There is only so much that can be done to these old engines regardless how much money is spend testing and developing a new pipe.
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Who has pictures of the Lrd and other pipes available for the 85 & 86?
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Can anybody tell us what pipes are available and what kind of a pipe there are? Maybe even pictures or prices too?
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