New dominator owner with tunning q's

[redun]

Hi every body

As the title says i am new on the forum as i am new to the world of thumpers.
I have just bought a 1995 dominator 650 and like all newbies i have a host of ideas/modifications (which i will obviusly share with you guys in the fullness of time) i want to make to my dominator but i need to get a few things straight first and i recon that from what i have read on here this is the best place. so..................

I have basiclly learnt from reading the forum that these engines need to breath better than they do in stock form and the questions below are just to confrim what i have learnt to make sure i have got it right.

1. The dominator and the FMX have virtually the same engine but the frame is different so i cant fit the Arrow FMX header pipes on to my single Dominator Arrow can?
Is my best bet this http://supermoto-umbauten.de/109/Kr%C3%BCmmer.html

2. Can i make all of these changes to my 1995 dominator?
http://www.4strokes.com/tech/honda/xr650lcarbmods/
http://www.4strokes.com/tech/honda/xrlsmog/

3. is it possible to remove the air box and replace with a bolt on air filter? The bike is to be supermoto'd so road only use.

my last question is a running issue. It starts first time and pulls well through the rev range but if i cruise at say 60mph it feels like the engine is stuttering as if there is a alack of lubrication or lose of compression???
are there any standard problems this could be?

cheers

[Simon WS]

My 92 Domie has a Laser exhaust and the carb mods made a big difference for me - I'm still not convinced the mixture is bang-on though so I'm going to continue playing when I get the bike back on the road (doing lots of other stuff).
I also did a direct back to back with the stock air filter a a K&N pod filter and contrary to what I expected the pod seems much better - mine wouldn't do a power wheelie before and did afterwards. Obviously this isn't a definitive test or anything but I expected issues with the pod but didn't get them. The induction noise is much louder though. If you remove the standard air filter you will obviously need to make up a new battery carrier, but it was easy.

The smog equipment removal won't do anything for power and torque, but will make the bike look nicer!

I was a bit surprised at the lack of low down grunt of the standard bike to be honest and (on mine at least) it's unwillingness to pull sweetly from less than 3,000rpm - the carb mods made this much better, but I think there is more to come.

I am seriously thinking about putting a high compression piston in it to see if I can get it to be more grunty like an XR600.

Not sure about your 60mph running issues, but if it is carb weakness it would be good to get richer jets in fast to avoid holing a piston! It's possible it's not engine related but chain/sprockets?

Cheers,

Simon

[redun]

Hi Simon, thanks for the reply.

Do you have a full laser exhaust system?
I was thinking of putting new headers on modding the carb and air filter and then get it set up on a rolling road. I think this would be the best few steps forward for now. I am very interested to learn about how you get on with the high comp piston.
I read a few more posts last night and found that my problem may be a slack chain so i will check that later today.

[Simon WS]

Yes, my bike came with a full Laser system including the headers. They looked pretty horrible at first but they really clean up well with some elbow grease.
I probably won't be doing the piston for a while though I'm afraid as I have lots of other projects on - including improving the braking performance on the Domie.

Simon

[Rex Mundi]

some handy tips in this thread have bookmarked the 4stroke.com and would be intrested to see what you did in way of brake upgrade simon if possable, cheers guys keep up the good work!!

[nick in brum]

im running a ramair bolt on filter and holes in slide drilled out to 4mm, on my special,see" another domi special" thread,if your interested in seeing it,
i found , after a lot of testing/adjusting test runs,that this jetting works best,
170 main jet
needle raised 0.5mm ,standard 3mm washer, i tried another washer that was 0.65mm , not much difference you might think,but made it too rich in mid range,would stutter when cruising,ok when under load accelerating, but wouldnt cruise
50 pilot jet,fuel screw 2.5 turns out, daves mods reccomend 55 pilot , but i found that way too big
it does give a useful boost to low and midrange,i'll be trying a keihin fcr carb soon,they are standard fitment on most 4 stroke mx bikes,such as crf450,its quite a popular mod on xr650l's , people whove done it reckon its well worth it,can pick them up on ebay £100-£150

[Rex Mundi]

cheers will keep that in mind when it comes to a bit of light carb surgery i have a spare carb to get setup so i wont have to take the dommie of the road for long , he says... famous last words, lmao