sfdownhill

Holy smoke - that ride does sound chilly. Glad you were able to make it to the dyno and are happy with the results! It’s always nice at this stage to hear back as folks get their headers and start with the project of gettin’ ‘em on and gettin’ ‘em tuned.

You can PM VFRD member Sebspeed - he’s the fabricator who worked up a center stand stop for 6 gen. Looks awesome with the Wolf vfrcapn - I’ll bet it sounds great too!

Looking good!

Hey ottablue - glad to hear it all worked out. Cheers!

They’re done! If you’ve placed a deposit, please follow Duc2V4’s suggestions in the previous post. We can’t go get the finished headers until we collect the casholine to pay for them. It’s a two and a half hour drive each way out to Wade’s and back, so we’ll be keeping a watchful eye out for everyone’s payments, ready to launch on the mission to pick up everyone’s pipes. PLEASE PLEASE remember to send paypal transfers ‘sending to a friend’ so nobody gets dinged an extra 3-5%. Duc2V4 has done a great job generating individual invoices with personalized shipping quotes, so everything should be clear as a bell. If any questions do come up, please PM - we’re checking regularly for any and all header-based communications.

Further update. Got hold of Wade today - he received the long-awaited tubing merges last week and is currently building our order of headers. After all this time, this is grounds for serious woo and hoo. Duc2V4 and I will be going over the list of purchasers during the next few days so we can get shipping estimates together for everyone, order gaskets for those who have requested them, and arrange to drop off the pipes at the passivators when Wade is done with them.

Update - we traded texts with Wade last week and as of January 23 he still hadn’t received tubing merges for our headers. We will be contacting him again on Monday to find out if he’s gotten the merges and started building yet. Thanks to everyone for their patience.

Hi Viffer J - got your PM and responded. Looks like your friend will be just in time to get in on the current production run, as the builder (Wade) is going to start building as soon as he receives the tubing merges he ordered for our headers.

I remember FMF BMX frames too! Barely able to see over the counter, gazing longingly at the one hanging in the local bicycle shop...

FMF canisters?!?! I thought we agreed on Graves Motorsports mufflers!! (Just kidding)

Yep, Wade is building. I spoke with him yesterday to ask him to notify us when he is getting close to completing our order so we can contact everyone who has placed orders for headers. As an aside here, I also let him know how many 5 gen vs how many 6 gen orders we have. To us VFR owners, the only difference between 5 and 6 gen headers is that 6 gens have a 5/8” shorter collector exit pipe, but, to the builder, there is more to it than simply chopping off 5/8” from the finished assembly. Because the mandrel bending machine clamps so hard on the tubing to bend it accurately, the tubes suffer slight deformation at their ends. So Wade uses a hydraulic machine to expand the ends of tubes to the correct diameter. What this means for the collector exit tube is that he needs to cut off the 6 gen’s 5/8” prior to expanding the tube in order to provide a long enough expanded section to provide the proper length of clamping area for the midpipe to be fastened. I like that our fabricator builds our headers with this amount of foresight and experience. Back to the topic at hand - Wade has all the tubing back from the mandrel bender and is ready to start welding, but his supplier of tubing merges is backordered - one of the ways he keeps our cost so far below other fabricators we contacted is by using pre-manufactured tubing merges made from the same quality 304 stainless steel as the tubing used for the headers. The supplier told Wade he will have the merges for our headers by January 18. I and Duc2V4 both apologize for the delay - it certainly has taken much, much longer than expected to get to this point. We will stay in contact with Wade and, as we get them, will post more updates here.

Hi Madsen. That's an interesting concept...we haven't tried fitting these headers onto a VFR800X Crossrunner, mostly because we don't have Crossrunners here in the USA [To the best of my knowledge]. Does your 2018 Crossrunner have front or side radiators? The headers in this thread come in two versions: [1] a side radiator model that fits the 1998-2001 5th gen and 2002-2009 [2002-2013 in other countries] 6th gen [2] a front radiator model that fits the 2014-2015 [and other years in other countries] VFR800F 8th gen If you have a front radiator, you might check the OEM part numbers of your header assembly and then check the OEM part numbers of the headers for a 2014-2015 VFR800F. If the two part numbers are the same, the headers in this thread will probably fit. Let us know - cheers!

Good deal. People are often critical of the butt dyno, but that's the dyno we have easiest access to; it's the one we use all the time!

Cheers - got your PM and responded.

LAST CHANCE FOR HEADERS Just putting out the final announcement that the latest production run of headers has started. It consists of both types of headers: 5/6 gen for side radiators, and 8 gen for front radiator. If anyone has been thinking about a set of these pipes, sitting on the fence, waiting for a sign, etc, then this might be the time to order a set. The fabricator's minimum order is 15 units, and this last order took us almost a year to gather, so we don't know when we'll be able to assemble the necessary 15 orders again. Could be quite a while.

PM engagement commenced...

There is a definite theme to everyone’s curiosity, and the timing couldn’t be better. We have been negotiating with Wade the fabricator, attempting to buy our way past or navigate around his 15 unit minimum order. Last week we finally got a commitment from him to build 12 headers for 5/6 gen VFRs and 3 headers for 8 gen VFRs. These are a couple more units than we have deposits for, but the iron was finally hot, so we had to strike. As fast as we could get down to the post office, we used Priority Express to send him deposits for all 15 headers, so: WE ARE NOW IN BUILD PHASE! WOOHOO! It will be 6 weeks to get the finished headers in our hands, and about a week after that to get them all to the passivators and picked back up. Then we’ll be shipping all those shiny new pipes out to all you extraordinarily patient folks who placed deposits. One person dropped out a few days ago, so there will be an extra set of 5/6 gen headers available.

dudutzu - the 8 gen headers pair the same cylinders as the 5 and 6 gen headers. The only difference is that on the 8 gen, the front two primary tubes are shaped differently to fit behind the front-mounted radiator. 5 and 6 gen have side-mounted radiators. If you've got an 8 gen, check out the 'Full Exhaust System' thread in the 8 gen forum. It is directed at the 8 gen headers and summarizes this header thread in a couple pages, including dyno charts [So you don't have to read through the 41 pages of data that's logged here]. A better summary statement was never made. Thanks for the detailed article Greg - you rock, always have. Right on!

Thanks for the detailed report Jim - glad to hear you've been infected with the TRG virus [Throttle-Response-Grin]. It's something of a relief now that more guys are getting the headers set up correctly and reporting back - for a while Duc2V4, RVFR, SamuelX, and I were feeling a bit like we were hollering to the moon.

We don’t see ponying up for extra sets of headers as a feasible option. We’re checking to see if the tube-bending guy might get started on our current order if he gets paid for bending 15 sets, but only has to bend tubes for ~ 10 sets.

We proposed to Wade that we’d consider paying his mandrel tube-bending subcontractor the total amount for bending his minimum order of 15 sets even though we’d only be purchasing 10 sets. Thanks to VFRD member Dangeruss for this creative potential solution. The minimum order is the bender’s requirement, not Wade’s. The response was a bit cryptic, so we are continuing the conversation in an attempt to get a clear answer.

Great questions all, but somewhere in there, some combination of my knowledge, experience and authority has been exceeded - lol - I have a heavy underpowered 5 gen with Power Commander! (Really all VFRs under 1200cc’s are underpowered - see exceptions below) Look up threads/posts by VFRD member Mohawk - I believe he is the VFR weight loss champion having lost ~ 34kg off his 5 gen (Absolutely apologize, HighSideNZ, if I’ve got that wrong and your 6 gen is skinniest!). HighSideNZ, Mohawk, and CandyRedRC46 all come to mind when I think of the horsepower brokers on this forum - having achieved 120-140+ hp with their VFR800s. You can learn at least 1.5 metric tons from their mods, builds, threads and posts. Someone running Rapid Bike or familiar with that system should be able to chime in with whether it’s possible for the average user to step into tuning mode and tweak their own fuel map...

Duc2V4 has Rapid Bike (RB) with autotune on both his 5 gen with the WiLD headers and his 6 gen w 98/99 catless headers - he is so pleased with the RB autotune performance on both bikes that he hasn’t done any dyno tuning (yet). We have both looked into dyno tuning w RB, but, like you, haven’t come across the ‘how to’ guide. Seems RB is designed more for letting the autotune make changes and develop mapping for the air/fuel ratio (AFR) the operator selects.

Hi Jim, I believe the 6 gen map we sent you is a good starting point, though custom dyno tuning done on your own VFR may yield slight improvement. A second map for race fuel is definitely viable, and PCV does provide for a handlebar mounted switch for selecting between maps. The O2 sensors you want are wideband, usually Bosch (Available from Dynojet and others) and have standard M18 18mm threads (M18x1.5 if I recall correctly). Installation of the headers on 6 gen does require a bit of trimming to the heat shield attached the the rear fender at the back of the engine, but comes out pretty nice if care is taken. The force required to install headers might be described as ‘brute’, but only for a minute while joining the main header assembly to the rear primary ‘J-pipes’. The portions of the two rear cylinders’ primaries that run vertically are not parallel, so are a bit tricky to insert into the main assembly. We look forward to hearing how your project goes. Cheers

We are currently at 9 deposited orders for 5/6 gen headers and 2 deposited orders for 8 gen headers. We are working on getting Wade (the fabricator) to combine the two configurations toward the minimum order of 15 units.