FZ1 Post Stage 1 Initial Road Test

January 9, 2015

My first few ride tests were without the timing advancer and of course Bay Area traffic is always congested, so I hit a top speed of maybe 50MPH in a week of 60-mile-a-day round trip commuting.

In spite of that the Stage 1 kit had some immediately noticeable effects, most notably easier starting, smoother idle, and more available low RPM power.  In fact I could roll on the throttle at 3k without lugging the engine.  Launching from a stop was a bit quicker, and of course the sound from the slip-on made the bike feel much more present and got rid of that appliance-like feel.  Not as resonant as the same muffler on the Bandit but still an improvement.  Were drivers noticing me more as I lane-split past?  Honestly, hard to say.  But at least I wouldn't be in danger of being hit on a stealth bike like before.

The one downside I noticed right away was a gassy smell coming from the bike after riding it.  I'm still not sure whether this is due to the enrichening effect of the Stage 1 kit, or if there is a small leak somewhere.  The bike is certainly not putting gas on the floor or anything like that.  I noticed the Bandits also smelled a bit gassy after their Stage 1 kits were in although with the FZ1 the smell is more noticeable.

On the whole, after a week of commuting my first impression was that the kit was less of a complete makeover than the Stage 1/Comp 1 upgrade on the Bandit.  After the upgrade the Bandit felt like a sleeping bike that had been suddenly woken up.  It almost felt like a new bike.  The FZ1 still felt like an FZ1, maybe like an FZ1 that had been given a cup of coffee.  Granted, the unmodified FZ1 was a higher performing bike than the Bandit to begin with, so maybe I shouldn't have expected as much. And the Stage 1 kit definitely accomplished my main goal of tuning the bike for use with the Holeshot slip-on.  I briefly discussed my 1st impressions with Dale Walker at Holeshot, and in a nutshell he said the timing advancer would make the improvements much more noticeable. Also that the FZ1 was just engineered to be more high-strung.  The 5-valve engine is fundamentally designed to make more power at higher RPM and that would still be the case after the upgrades unless I wanted to mess with the gearing (which I didn't).

I'd read conflicting information about the effects and possible side-effects of timing advancers so initially I wasn't sure if I wanted to install it.  That and the fact that I didn't like any of the install methods, more on that next.  After talking with Dale I decided to go ahead with it.