dirtsurfer wrote:
That rubber packing really looks like a piece of re-purposed radiator hose and is that a reed valve in the second picture? and Intriguingly use of 8 screws to hold in place!
Yeah, so? Radiator hose comes in exactly the right size, is resistant to petrol, reinforced, and very strong. Pray tell: what would you use for the flush spigot of the stock BVF?
Andy, it's a reed valve that exactly replaces the original inlet manifold. I have changed very little to the porting inside the cylinder, but doubtlessly I rounded the top of the exhaust a bit & some widening of the ports, but nothing special. I took a couple of mm off the inlet skirt, & lightened & optimised the piston a bit, but otherwise a standard 3-ring piston.
Riding-wise it gave more power low down: the gains were particularly in the lower rev regions, so that the bike became less sensitive to shifting in order to keep it on top of the original narrow power band. It wasn't really any faster (around 85mph), but that wasn't my intention either. The bike was a commuter.
The reeds didn't come from any other bike, I made them for this reed valve, from aramide & epoxy. I made the entire thing, except for the re-purposed radiator hose and the 8 screws, those were made by someone else. I used it for some 4 years.
Of course if you want to really increase the power of the engine you'd have to reduce the dead volume between the reed & the piston, so then you have to shorten the inlet path & drop the reed box into it. In this one, the reeds stop a few mm short of the end of the box.
It all depends on what you're after (and that's also why I asked: Why replace the BVF?). If you want to go fast, you better use a different bike.
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Edit: the piston I used with the RV is the one on the right, it's a Megu. The one in the middle is a new Almot, the one on the left is a RAM with about 2000 miles. The inside of the raised skirt is shown below.

- RAM, Almot & Megu with lifted skirt.jpg (16.83 KiB) Viewed 78 times

- Megu with lifted skirt, inside.jpg (30.03 KiB) Viewed 78 times
Porting is indeed pretty much standard, see download/file.php?id=4989&mode=view