Thundercat vs Injected F2's

[Flyboy]

Having never seen a Thundercat powered outfit in Australia, I'm interested to know how much the carby fed outfits give up to a modern injected outfit at club level? We're talking average punter type teams not TT winning outfits.

Is a tuned carby motor really all that inferior or are they good bang for buck deals?

[oldbelly]

I built the Thundercat motors for Rob Fisher for the 2002 TT. His last pair of wins. They made 109 bhp. I bought the bike off Rob and sold it to Terry Goldie at the end of 2003. He cleaned up down your end at the time. The latest F2s are lapping quicker over here at most circuits but not by much. It all depends on the competition and the individual teams. The Thundercat was the best ever engine in F2s since it went fourstroke in my opinion. Where you would be at a dissadvantage would be getting off the line. The carb R6s for instance were much better off the grid.

[Womble]

I have run thundercats this year in bemsee they loose out on absolute top end and off line but if you can keep them singing They will out pull anything in the midrange

[Standinski]

I agree with Geoff, I can remember Bill Currie & Geoff having some good races in my time as one of Bills team. the windle /thundercat Bill had, which is as it was in 2006 before he had the lcr . We did a lot of dyno work to do with timing advance, & this took out the dip in power mid range.
giving a very good power curve up to 1250 rpm. Its still has that engine in it, and the outfit is in his colour & décor as it finished tt 2006
Still miss him & Kevin

[Steve-morgan]

A tuned thundercat will be fast enough in any club racing if the carbs are set up right.

[little chud]

I'd agree with Steve,

A well set up thundercat will be OK at club level.

Having just switched back to carbed R6 from a very quick injected 03-06 Honda I'm hard pushed to tell any difference. But then again it is pulling a lot of weight. I've not noticed any lack of power off the line. In fact we usually get very good starts, but again that could be down to no wheel spin

I'm sticking with mine for this year because I can't afford to do anything else. But I don't think I'd go any quicker at the club meetings on injection unless I got the very latest engine/ignition etc. The southern 100 on a standard carbed R6 mind you will be a different story.

john

[lang]

The YZF 600 Thundercats I built and tuned using genuine YEC race camshafts, YEC ignitor, Cosworth pistons and 33mm Keihin carburettors produced 111bhp with 49 ft lb torque, the financial cost to do an engine to this specification was high.
For comparison a std 2014 Honda 600 using Motec management system is producing 117bhp with 43 ft lb torque.
One thing to consider is, generally a fuel injected F2 sidecar usually has a 4 to 5 inch higher frontal area than a machine with carburettors (due to the higher engine, and the air box) this obviously takes more power to push through the air, and the lower an outfit is, the better it handles.
Geoff is right, due to its design and shape the Yamaha FZR and YZF motors were the best 600 F2 engines to date.













f

[westy12]

Terry Goldie sold the DMR thundercat to Warrick Levy.
Warrick set a new lap record at EC of 1:45 in 2006. It stood until Dwight Beare broke it in 2014.
I had a 5EB R6 with FCR's and chased Warrick all year in 2006. He had an old engine out of a wreck which had 80 000k's on the clock.

Short answer is a good thundercat would still be quite competetive in Australia in my opinion.

My DMR is for sale and would be great for club and national level. Located near Bathurst in NSW