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Busa v ZX12
John Davis - 4/4/05 at 09:21 PM

Hi whats the pros and cons against a busa and zx12, Dry sump for both?
Oil surge problems on one or the other?
Which is more bhp and which engine is lighter?
Which is more reliable?
Which is more readily available for tunning?
Which one can be tuned the highest?
Why has the Busa got more intrest in the main stream if from what I heard the ZX12 has got slightly more power.
This engine is to be fitted to MK Indy.
Cheers John.


Hellfire - 4/4/05 at 09:44 PM

As far as we have heard the ZX12R is a better suited engine due to the output being slightly lower. At the nd of the day - the Race-bike lads have many and widly emotional opinions on both these 'bikes' the safe thing is to say "there's not much between them"

The 'busa is more proven - that's about it!

Dry sump is not necessary for both - ZX12R can be tracked pretty reliably with baffled/chopped sump (PACE) (TAD-LTD) and dry sumping can bring it own problems.

Busa - can be tuned more. More expertise at the moment.

HTH - ours is nearly in and running... will keep you posted! Visit our website for progress...


OX - 4/4/05 at 11:43 PM

zx12r is a brilliant engine but every body that i spoke to said that it just dont take the abuse,but there half the price of a busa


tadltd - 5/4/05 at 12:05 AM

Proof is in the pudding.

We ran a standard, dry-sumped ZX12 for 1.5 years in the LMP, hard track use, all sorts of driver abilities tried it - it was abused, hard!

In that time - and quite deliberately - we didn't change the oil, the oil filter, or the spark plugs. It did 1.5 years of hard, full throttle track work on the same oil and plugs. Believe me, it was abused!! We heard the same rumors about weakness, but we proved them wrong.

Sure we had an engine failure, but that was a result of a mistake on my part - full report on the failure in the News section of our web-site.

Fact is, with the money you saved buying a ZX12 instead of a Busa, you could buy a LOT of power upgrades for it.

Save yourself at least £1000, and get a ZX12.

[Edited on 5/4/05 by tadltd]


phil_far - 6/4/05 at 04:14 PM

So what are the real BHP/Torque figures fro bothe engines?