I spoke with Curtis Sparks Racing today about doing a little work on my Honda and Yamaha 450s. They said they both start stock at 37 hp, but the Yamaha is much easier and cheaper to make faster. There isn't enough info learned on the Honda yet to make it real fast, but in the end they think the Honda will end up slightly faster than the Yamaha (we are talking about mostly off the shelf type stuff, not full race.) They do have a JE piston they use now.

I plan on bringing both Yams and the Honda up there (Bakersfield) and dropping them off for a week or two and let them pipe, piston (the Honda), jet, cam, filter, air-box and dyno away. I asked about some more serious engine work but thier machine shop is so backed up they couldn't even give me a date to bring them in.

They did say they wouldn't be the fastest hill-shooter around, but they would gain about 9-10 hp. 47hp at 350 lbs, not too bad...

Sweet, sounds like you will have some ripping quads

tron..interesting thanks for sharing...sparks is one of the bigger names, so I'm sure you will end up with some fast quads..

Is their guess of the honda being slightly faster based on the head flowing slightly better than the yamaha?

when me and my dad picked up my yamaha 450 from berts they said it was faster than the honda 450r and they said the yamaha is suposed to be able to pull a stock banshee by 15-20quadlengths in second gear, that may not be fast to some people but its fast to me, since i have been riding a honda 250x fot 3 or 4 years. it was a big choice for me because i have to be more responsible on account its mutch faster than im used to.

We have two Yamaha 450 owners in our group and they do not pull the Banshee. I have seen them pull the Honda 450r also and I am a Honda man myself. Just me 2 cents.

When I picked up my banshee they told me I could ride it to work.

We were at the Gecko drags last weekend, and my bro was smoking pretty much everything he went up against, including a couple 2 wheelers, I am not counting highly modded banshees, but there were a couple he did beat, enough for them to ask him what he did to his bike, we simply did the pipe, jet, filter and cam mod, and you can certainly tell which bikes have it done and which bikes dont. I am not saying he is the fastest cuz he is not, but against the average guy he did really well, put a smile on his face at least. thats all that matters to me.

The Honda requires a power up kit $300 and it includes a new cam (that is furthur expense / work to install, plus carb mods.

The Yami YFZ 450 is a simple rejet and pipe and you have a steamer. An easy cam advance of 1 degree gives noticable more power.

This site explains it all on the Yami yfz 450:
http://www.eskimo.com/~daddog/jetting/whydoihavetojet.htm



I have two YFZ's, raced everything out there, and it's very fast. My son, who's 110lbs lighter than me, is in the very top group performance wise at Dumonts comp. It's who shifts the best and can handle the whoops.

Built Polaris Predators are easy prey for the YFZ 450. They'll usually only race YFZ's with stock tires and a stock pipe, and still get beat by a lot of quad lengths.

A re jetted and paddled yfz leaves the Predator quite some distance down the hill.

get the YFZ450

i pick the banshee.

I pick an lt80

i may have herd wrong but i didnt say the raced out banshee i was talking about a stock one