15T on the front makes the BB a dream on the street/highway. Really makes good use of the extra torque. Not so good for single track, fine for fire roads and trails.

 

try to post here : https://www.kawasakiforums.com/forum...rockets-31645/

i am also there posting about gearing and usage on highways. if you want to do touring i suggest gearing it taller with the BB.

 

Good lookin out J, I'll check out the sprocket thread.

2Vdub, what kind of mpg do you get with a 331 and 15cs? I plan on doing a lot of desert, twisty mountains, fire roads and highway on my "touring" trips.

Right now my bike cruises fine at 70 or so but my god I feel bad for the rpms. The bike needs more low end grunt regardless so I'm debating if I should buy a BB kit.

 

I get mid/high 50s for mpg mixed riding. Never really did all highway. You will need the BB if you are after grunt.

 

Sounds legit. That is pretty much what I get now. If I do a BB is there anything I need to do right away like beef up the clutch or I just do that when it gives me issues?

 

Get some Barnett clutch springs, you will need them. And if your bike is an 09 get a valve cover gasket.

 

Do you wish you went 351? Or is 331 good enough? I'm guessing "seat of the pants" feel is no different.

 

I went conservative, 331 is the largest dry sleeve. Stock cooling jackets intact and more room for head gasket sealing. There have been no issues with the 351, I liked the extra sealing area of the 331 as the 351 cuts into the coolant passages, i did not want to run things at the limit. There are many high mileage 351s out there so no issues. I have no regrets with the 331.

 

You and I think on the same terms. I didn't know that about the water jackets but like you say, I've yet to see a 351 fail. I've been leaning towards the 331 just to leave some cushion.

 

After testing the bike for about a week and covering close to 500 miles, i finally found out the problem why i am losing coolant and engine oil. There is definitely a leakage of coolant to the engine, now i see from the oil window it is "milky" before this it didnt show this problem, it was just losing engine oil and coolant.

most likely there is a small micro gap at the cylinder head gasket, initially when i was breaking in the BB331, the problem was not so obvious because i was riding at half throttle, the problem start to get worse as i increased the RPM and the higher engine pressure probably made the gap at the gasket worse and now it is obvious im getting water into the engine and oil in the radiator. what a nightmare!!

i have ordered another 2 sets of gaskets from Bill and i hope he sends me a good quality gasket because when i first ordered the BB331 and the TM33, i got 2 different quality gaskets from him, one was in loose packing and another was in a sealed orange packing. when installing the gasket in the loose packing, right after starting the engine, water was entering the engine immediately. it was better after installing the gasket in the sealed packing but still this problem happened.

the tech that installed the BB331 is a very experienced tech with more than 10 years of fixing all type of bikes, he has probably changed head gaskets for hundreds of bikes without any problems, im not sure what went wrong. i hope someone can give me some tips on making sure the gasket seals properly this time.