After a long time humming and haing, I decided to get the The Thundercat. Picked her up last Thursday and started work over the week end. Came with the bike, some parts and some very old fuel for $500. I managed to get some fresh fuel into her, gave the carbs and fuel tank a quick flush, and jump started her. She ran sort of OK, a few problems that need to be fixed. Carb float valves need replacing, the old ones were seized Needs a new battery we need to find the vacuum leak. For some reason the bike idles fine untill you rev past 3000rpm, then wehn it drops down, it hangs at 3000 rpm and seems to get stuck. needs indicators, headlight, all the controls for the indicators/horn etc. Needs the tail light, and all of the rear end wiring. the throttle body needs to be taken back to stock. a half turn of the wrist results in the bike going full throttle. all or nothing I guess. road legal tyres, it's running racing slicks at the moment. new spark plugs rear view mirrors and some fairing parts. On the plus side, with some fuel and a bit of a light clean, she started up. I also got the fairings, all of them are in pretty good condition except the front cowling which had the headlight hole fibre glassed over. Anyway, time for some pics.
nice work mate, that fuel looks dead... am surprised you got it to run on it... will need to give everything a good clean... im pretty sure the thundercat is a less tuned R6 yeah?
After watching that video, better lower the idle, but it is revving quite well, does it have a 2nd gear
We had the idle set to about 1500RPM, but as soon as you take the bike past 3000-3500rpm it just hangs there, blipping the throttle sometimes brings the idle down. I think there might be a vacuum leak somewhere. we flushed out the tank and carbs and put some 95 in there.
definitely sounds an air leak, sounds like a fun project, are you planning to get it on the road or keep it as a trackbike ?
I'm thinking about putting her back on the road, but if I find something better, then I might keep it as a track bike. I have till August next year before I can think about riding it.
you can certainly ride it on a track haha, good score mate! i believe its the predecessor to the R6 tim Agreed boss
I'm pretty sure the thundercat uses the FZR600 engine but with a TPS. I believe it was redesigned for the R6.
So, I decided I might take some time to share a few thoughts and ideas and some of the issues the bike is having. I figured the rpm issues was a vacuum seal, I was going to spray some areostart around the carbs and see what happened, but i found out the float valves where minced. The rubber tips had corroded off and the internal spring had seized, so I can't do much with that until I can get a hold of some new valves. The kick stand sensor is broken, and I had to disconnect it, regardless of the position of the kickstand, as soon as it's dropped into gear the bike stalls. That's been disconnected so I can have a little look at it tomorrow. Also I have to rewire the tail lights and the rear indicators, I'm goign to get in there with a battery pack and a multi meter, it looks like it was cut just after the fuze box, hopefully it wont be too much wiring that I have to do, on the plus side, I found a 96 YZF600R wiring loom on ebay for $30 with $9 postage. The previous owner mentioned that the bike would choke or hesitate at about 3-5000 rpm and that you had to roll off the throttle and roll back on before it would accelerate again. I thought it was very similar to the issue I had with my carbs on the ZXR, then I found out that most street fightered YZF600R's have as issue with the air ram system being removed (mine is not street fightered, but the front air ram system has been removed). Something about a hose that equalizes the pressure inside the air box. I'm going to check it out once I get new plugs and float valves. I was thinking about fightering it, mainly because the front fairing is missing all of its internals, and with the CBR front end that's strapped to it, the handle bars are a bit to low now and start scraping on the side/front fairings. I don't know if I should go ahead and fighter it, or if I should try and raise the handle bars so the fairings will fit, what do you guys think? I read something on the forums here that you can modify your throttle so it requires less twist to go wide open, is there a way of reversing that? as of now, the throttle only requires about a 3rd of a turn before it's wide open.
Just buy a new throttle mate wouldn't be expensive and I'm guessing wat u gave atm is a quick action on 1/4 turn I have one for my bike
Been doing a bit of work to the YZF lately. I will be ordering the correct wiring loom this time and left hand control cluster tomorrow, and I'll be stripping the battery out of the ZXR to try and give the bike a bit of a dry run and see if it'll kick over with some fresh fuel. After that I'm tossing up whether or not to just streetfighter the damn thing because getting all the OEM bits and pieces is both expensive (like really really expensive) and next to impossible to track down. but if I streetfighter it, I have to do a fair amount of work to the carbs and intake system because 3000rpm idle and chocking at 8k is probably not a good thing to have.
Looks like a good project! I would hazard a guess that if it's anywhere near as touchy as the older FZR's with airflow that street fightering it may not work too well unless you sort out that ram air problem. Keen to see how it goes
