Vulcan500.com

i just saw this and had to share with my vulcan 500 brethern. Im and about to order this extremely comfortable looking Drivers (front) seat back rest for my vulcan 500. what you guys think? http://www.utpr.com/vulcan500ltd.html

That looks pretty nifty. Although it looks like a pain in the ass to install. I bought a back rest from a company called Protac that was far easier to install and easily reverted back to stock. http://protac.net/ The price was reasonable too. I don't remember what I paid but it was less than $150 shipped. I've only used mine a couple of times. I discovered I need some handlebar risers or something so that I can actually use the back rest.

These look pretty cool maybe yyou should try them. http://www.chromeworld.com/ProductDetai ... .aspx?pid={b3977fa5-057b-4942-b8f8-1509cd541606}&gid={97180976-c624-4ae6-9391-060516e8412c}&GroupName=Kawasaki+Vulcan+500+Chrome+Accessories&pname=Show+Chrome+4+inch+Twisted+Risers+for+1+inch+Bars&Referer=&Alias=&ptct=SGR-SR&CTitle=&

those won't work with the stock handlebars. I bought some aluminum round stock and plan to make my own similar to what scootworks sells. If I ever find the time to do it.

where'd u get it from? cuz im 6ft 220 would i need those? if i had a backrest like the one i posted. cuz i got highway bars and pegs too. i was just gonna strap my tbag to the sissy bar, roll up a towel and put a bungee cord threw it for my lower back lolol. it works good. but looks ghetto!! lol. How much is it to rebuild a vulcan 500? If i were to rebuild it would a high compression kit be worth it? Or a rebild kit for a ex500? where can i find this kit? and where can i find the high compression kit if the ex500 kit wont work?

I got 1 foot long of 1 1/8 inch" or maybe it was 1 1/4" diameter 6061 aluminum round stock from Grainger. My company has an account there (they don't sell to the general public) and there is a Grainger around the corner so I don't have to pay shipping. Otherwise I would have gone the McMaster Carr route I also got the drill and tap from them to cut the 10mm threads. Amazon.com is another good place to find oddball stuff. I plan to experiment using a coupling nut to extend the mounting studs and try different lengths of pipe as a spacer to see what height I like. Then I'll cut the aluminum to that length drill, tap, polish it up nice and shiny, and bolt it up and enjoy.

As for engine work, if you're having someone do it for you, probably not worth the money. I would guess $500-$1000 depending on what you're having done. If you're doing it yourself, still probably not worth the money unless you just like to wrench on engines. To my knowledge they don't make any rebuild kits. You just have to buy the parts you need and then do it. I don't know why you would want to rebuild the engine unless you're looking for more power. Keep the valves adjusted and these engines are fairly bullet proof. Aside from valve adjustments I probably wont touch the internals of my engine until I hit 100K miles. If for some reason you need your engine rebuilt it's probably cheaper and easier to just buy a low mileage used engine and swap engines.

Caveat: All the numbers I'm going to spout here are from memory and may not be accurate. If you're making any purchase decisions on these numbers, do some searching to verify what I say is correct. If anyone sees something wrong feel free to chime in and correct me. Also the statements below apply to the EN500C The EN500A had more parts in common with the Ninja.

99.9% of everything between the Ninja and Vulcan engines are interchangeable. I say 99.9 because I'm sure there's something somewhere that probably doesnt fit and there are cosmetic differences. Currently my '94 Vulcan has a Ninja valve cover and water pump cover. The Vulcan 500 engine is about 40hp @ just under 8K RPM. The Ninja 500 is just under 60hp @ 9.5K RPM There are only three differences in the engines that yield these different outputs. First the ninja pistons are 10.8 compression ratio where the Vulcan's are 10.2. Second, the cams are different. Third, the ignition timing/rev limit are different. I know the "ignitor" modules are different, I'm not sure if the pickups on the flywheel are different but I imagine it's likely they are. I can say with certainty that the pistons, cams, and flywheels are 100% mechanically interchangeable. I never tried the ignitors so I don't know if they are plug'n'play swappable. Only reason i can think of why they wouldn't be is if their connectors are wired differently. Ok so I lied there is a 4th difference. The carbs are 34mm on the Ninja and 32mm on the Vulcan LTD.

At first glance the 50% hp boost with the ninja seems huge! Keep in mind that the Vulcan engine is tuned for more low end grunt (torque) at the expense of high RPM horse power where the ninja is tuned for maximum high RPM horse power which sacrifices low end torque. Neither is necessarily better than the other it's more personal preference of what you want out of the engine.

If you're contemplating an engine swap (Ninja-Vulcan), I can think of 3 areas that would be of concern:
1: Left side engine (stator) cover would have to be swapped from a Vulcan (I'm assuming the bolt holes line up, from picts it looks like it would simply be a bolt on, but I'm not sure) as the shift lever mounts thru this cover. Either that or you'd have to rig up something else to mount your shift lever to.
2: The output shafts are slightly different. I don't think this presents a problem but, you may have to use some custom spacers to get the sprockets to line up.
3: Ignition module (ignitor) compatibility with the ninja flywheel. Here you might need to swap the ninja flywheel with your Vulcan engine. I'm not sure if the wiring connections are the same, you'd have to study some wiring diagrams, but you could probably keep the Ninja flywheel and use the Ninja ignitor to get the ignition timing that is better tuned to go with the ninja cams and higher rev limit .

I b'lieve if I were to swap in a Ninja motor, I'd just swap in all the ignition electronics and carbs (assuming they're different) from the ninja as well. Assuming I had a whole ex500 donorcycle from the squid farm to pick parts off of. I 'spect it'd end up being cheaper in the long run to get a wrecked donorcycle rather than piecemealing the parts into the en500 engine.

If I ever have catastrophic engine failure, I might swap in an ex500 engine. Otherwise, I'm more inclined to opine that if it ain't broke, ride what ya got until it is broken. :3 If ya want a race bike, get a race bike. If ya wanna do some wrenching and customizing, buy a non-runner for $200, get it running, and go crazy... Instead of paying $2000+ for a running stock bike and chopping on it until it's not worth even $800. I don't intend to sound irascible or anything, and apologize if it's coming through that way. But I just have trouble grokking this attitude that seems to have permeated the motorcycling community these days where everyone feels like they need to pay a bunch of money for a perfectly good stock bike and then tear off the fenders, mufflers, and/or airbox and turn it into a loud and ill-tempered piece of junk. That's what $200 junk-bikes are for, as they're /already/ junk..... >_>

Maybe OCC is to blame.

Leaf wrote: I just have trouble grokking this attitude that seems to have permeated the motorcycling community these days where everyone feels like they need to pay a bunch of money for a perfectly good stock bike and then tear off the fenders, mufflers, and/or airbox and turn it into a loud and ill-tempered piece of junk. That's what $200 junk-bikes are for, as they're /already/ junk....

Agreed!

I'm not doing this to make it loud, or scream or anything, i know for a fact the ninja ex500 engine is way better on the highway and thats what most of my riding is going too be on. The extra hp would do well getting passing pwr on the hway also. Plus my bike only has 30k miles but i am extremely mechanically inclined and have every tool you can think of so this would be easy for me. i just needed to know what was interchangeable and what wasnt. As the low end torwque is made more for low end speed and city driving. The better and higher rpm ex500 would do way better on the highway anyways

You'd be surprised how many non-mechanically inclined people there are that think it's easy to get 500% more horse power (obviously exaggerating) by tweaking this or that and end up ruining what was a perfectly running machine.
Unless you are a speed freak that needs to accelerate from 70 to 100 in a fraction of a second, The stock Vulcan 500 has plenty of go at freeway speeds. With that said, kudos to you if you're willing to do some serious wrenching and tune the engine to bring the EN500C up to the specs of the Ninja. I'd be happy to help you in any way that I can. Here's what I'd recommend for starters:
Get the following:
-Ninja 500 or EN500A carbs (34mm vs 32mm of the EN500C)
-Ninja 500 cams
-Ninja 500 pistons (10.8 vs 10.2 compression ratio) I haven't looked there may be aftermarket with a compression ratio of 11 or more for the Ninja that would fit the Vulcan. Go too high and you'll have to run premium to avoid pinging.

I'm assuming you'll want to ditch the stock air box at this point. It might be worth getting your hands on a ninja intake box to see how it breathes and modding your Vulcan intake to be similar. This would probably save you some time in carb tuning. I'm gonna guess you'll probably just ditch the intake for pod filters. The PO of my '94 ditched the intake for pod filters and the throttle response is very twitchy, but I can live with it. I've found [url]jetsrus.com[/url] as a cheap source for carb jets. Or you could buy the Ninja jet kit from Dynojet as that would give you an adjustable needle.

You're most of the way there. At this point you'll probably be tempted to mod the exhaust. Resist this temptation. The stock exhaust already breathes well and the gain, if any probably wouldn't even register on the butt dyno. Don't believe me? Remove the mufflers, put in ear plugs, and take her for a spin. If you do replace the mufflers, I call dibs on your stock ones Assuming you haven't hacked them up.

At this point the only thing separating your engine from the ninja's is the ignition timing. Here's where having the shop manuals for the Ninja and Vulcan would be necessary. You'd have to replace your ignitor (ignition module) with the Ninja's. Could be as simple as plug'n'play, but I'd want to verify wiring so I keep all the magic smoke inside. You also may have to replace the flywheel as the ignition triggers are machined on to the flywheel. I may be able to help here. For my fuel injection project I bought an '08 ninja flywheel to mod so I don't have to mod my original. I can take pictures/measurements so we can know what is different. Might be worth it to find a wrecked Ninja as a parts donor. Kawasaki's parts fiche has a cross reference so you can see every model/year a particular part was used on. See my How-to post on accessing the parts fiche. You may need to do this as the ninja's ignition has been revised over the years. in other words make sure your the year the Ninja flywheel is from used the same ignitor as the model year of ignitor you buy. Keep us updated.

This conversation got me curious, I've been doing some digging and have found some nfo on differences of the EX500 and EN500 engines. The primary chain ratio (crank to clutch) is shorter on the ninja than on the Vulcan. This would make RPM's higher at a given speed if the EX engine was swapped into an EN500. I also discovered that there are 3 different cams. I'll be putting all the nfo I found together in a post under the Engine section of the forum.