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  #1  
Old 22 Nov 2008
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BMW themselves released the cure for pinging, cylinder base gaskets at about £7 each.
I have asked on the BMW forums, and no one has answered. Why do BMW's need dual plugging? Other air cooled bikes seem to manage fine without. It does allow later ignition timing, but I sometimes wonder if the timing was retarded without dual plugging wouldn't it still allow the engine to run smoother. It seems to me abit like the big bore kits. The extra CC's produce less power than the original cc's.. IE 20% increase in swept volume=15% increase in 'claimed' power. Mostly things claime dby people who do teh conversion come down to it 'feels like' so and so is better. I can positively state here, every time I clean my bike it feels like it is 5mph faster in all gears, and runs smoother. Very rarely do you get a catagoric measured difference. If you dont belive me try for your self. clean your bike , check the oil and air pressures and ride, It will feel better.
As an aside, on top gear they did a test recently and spent £15K adding go faster bits to a car. The road test speed increase was barely measurable. The most effective thing was doing a standard service.
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  #2  
Old 23 Nov 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by oldbmw View Post
BMW themselves released the cure for pinging, cylinder base gaskets at about £7 each.
I have asked on the BMW forums, and no one has answered. Why do BMW's need dual plugging? Other air cooled bikes seem to manage fine without. It does allow later ignition timing, but I sometimes wonder if the timing was retarded without dual plugging wouldn't it still allow the engine to run smoother. It seems to me abit like the big bore kits. The extra CC's produce less power than the original cc's.. IE 20% increase in swept volume=15% increase in 'claimed' power. Mostly things claime dby people who do teh conversion come down to it 'feels like' so and so is better. I can positively state here, every time I clean my bike it feels like it is 5mph faster in all gears, and runs smoother. Very rarely do you get a catagoric measured difference. If you dont belive me try for your self. clean your bike , check the oil and air pressures and ride, It will feel better.
As an aside, on top gear they did a test recently and spent £15K adding go faster bits to a car. The road test speed increase was barely measurable. The most effective thing was doing a standard service.
excellent couldnt agree more, add in a sunny day and smooth road.............
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  #3  
Old 26 Nov 2008
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Who need dual plugging?
I guess the general consensus is that not all airheads need dual plugging. Not sure that anyone ever said that they did. Mid-late 70's high-compression models are the only ones I know that really benefit from it. They don't do well on swill, and often ping on even Chevron Superduper when under load. Dual plugging helps there. The thicker base gaskets lower the compression but can also lead to lower combustion temperatures, increased carbon, pre-ignition and eventually higher compression and here we go again.

When looking for a bike for my trip, I was trying to avoid one with a high-compression engine, but got swayed by the other good characteristics of the /6's. I figured that dual-plugging needed to be worked into the cost of the bike. And pinging my way all the way up the hill to my house on it's maiden run was just as expected. Had it dual plugged and now it's quiet even on regular.

That's all I know. Don't know about big bore kits or 15k go-faster kits.
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Old 26 Nov 2008
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The Egyptian Police commissioned a special edition of the R80. 800cc barrels with 1000cc 44/40 heads and 40mm Bing carbs.
This should result in about 7.0:1.
This edition was only made for and sold to the Egytian Police.

To get the best mileage L/dollar one needs to raise the compression ratio.

The plug is places off set in the beemer and VW air-cooled heads. Krauser 4-valve heads have the plug placed at the center which is the best position.

The 1200 oil-heads have 11:1 and dual plugs...

Recomended reading:
* 4-stroke performance tuning, Graham Bell, Haynes Books
* Internal Combustion Engine Fundamental, Prof Heywood, MIT.
* Oak Oshlen - Dual Plugging
* Tom ... ABC home-site - Dual Plugging
* Snowbum - Dual Plugging
* Daniel Derdicke - Dual Plugging
* Technik BMW 2-Ventiler
etc
Then test a dual-plugg vs a single plugged; do not guess - test and try for yourself before you decide what you think about 4 vs 2 plugs on the 2-valves.

As far as I know there are no available Dyno Tests on signle vs dual plugged 2-vales. All I have found is one (1) test, and that was on a Duccati by an American motorcycleshop.
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