Ditching the Airbox

Hi,

As the title says has anyone any working experience of ditching the airbox and moving over to carb socks or similar?

thanks!

I haven't done it to the CB500, but from experience with other bikes and trying similar things the airbox can be more complicated that it seems from the outside.

For example, (I think!) the CB500 airbox has various baffles/protrusions inside to adjust the airflow and pressure at the carb mouths; these have been added (tuned, in fact) to adjust (usually smooth) the power delivery.  When you remove the airbox you remove these aspects of the original tuning which can have undesired effects.

Anyway, Fast Bikes magazine made a CB500 track/scratch bike - they removed the airbox and did some other modifications, I can't find the original articles online, but here are some links:

http://www.fastbikesmag.com/2011/05/18/fast-bikes-honda-cb500-project-bike-for-sale/

One of the users on this forum (toffeeroffles) bought the bike off Fast Bikes, from what he said here:

https://cb500.forumotion.com/t2743-under-seat-exhaust#20016

he decided to change back to the stock airbox with a K&N filter.

It might well be worth talking to him (you could try sending him a PM) - AFAIK he is the only person that has ridden a CB500 without the stock airbox.  There might well be others, but I don't know of them.


There is some hope for your project: the Fast Bike blokes did manage to get it to run, I believe they had to up the jets quite a lot and take some Dyno time to even it out (a bit).

Thanks, I did think it would be more complicated than that.... I think there is enough there to convince me to refit the airbox

(Good thing too I guess as I couldn't unbolt the filter cover on the one the bike came with so ended up getting another off fleebay already)

its been tried in the racing world. foam filters, rejetting, dyno runs, and they couldnt get it to run as well as a standard airbox with k&n filter.

...but looks a damn sight cooler

Tricky. wrote:its been tried in the racing world. foam filters, rejetting, dyno runs, and they couldnt get it to run as well as a standard airbox with k&n filter.

Oh good, I thought that someone else must have tried it (there are enough CB500s about!).