I have a soft spot for Yamaha’s MT range of naked bikes. Having owned two MT-07s and an MT-10, I’m of the (very much biased) belief that the MT series is among the very best in the world. Personally, I never felt that these bikes lacked any power whatsoever, especially the MT-10, however, for some people such as the folks at Purpose Built Moto, there’s no harm in giving this liter-class naked bike a little more power – and by a little, I mean around 100 more ponies.
This particular MT-10 is owned and ridden by Cassidy Glyde, who had it boosted with a Garrett turbo from Extreme Creations. For whatever reason, it made its way to Purpose Built Moto’s shop with a blown engine, and upon taking the engine apart, the team found holes in the piston and excessive signs of overheating. Naturally, you boost a superbike to make it go faster. However, adding boost undoubtedly adds a lot of stress to the engine; stress it was never engineered to handle. As such, Purpose Built Moto decided that apart from fixing the engine and tuning the boost, they also needed to beef up the engine for more reliable performance.
The folks at Purpose Built Moto made a few revisions to the design, starting off with rerouting the charge pipes which were situated too close to the exhaust. This meant that the setup was effectively dumping hot air into the engine, causing the turbo to run poorly and build up heat way too quickly. On top of that, the engine’s compression ratio of 12:1 was said to be way too high for a turbocharged setup.
With that being said, the work began on fixing the setup, which quite frankly, seemed to have a lot of potential. A new intake was fabricated, which saw a massive DNA filter housed underneath the tail just in front of the rear wheel. This was made possible thanks to the already installed six-inch swingarm extension made out of sturdy billet aluminum. The team also built an external wastegate for those unmistakable turbo noises. For the sake of street-legality, the option of routing the wastegate internally was also designed into the build.
When it came to managing the boost and keeping the bike running reliability, the folks at Purpose Built Moto sought the help of PWR Performance for a custom intercooler mounted on the left side of the bike. With built in fans that can be switched on via a relay on the bars, it provides reliable cooling both at speed and when stuck in traffic. As for the engine, they beefed it up to handle the extra boost by lowering the compression ratio down to 9.5:1, and stuffing a whole bunch of fancy parts into it. It got custom pistons and upgraded connecting rods which were much heavier duty than the stock, lightweight components that couldn’t handle the boost.
Now for the moment of truth: power figures. The turbocharged MT-10 was put on the dyno and ran with 10 PSI of boost. With its Delkeveic exhaust with the DB killer installed, it put out 230 horsepower at the rear wheel. When the DB killer was pulled out, it made even more power, with 260 horsepower at the rear wheel. The video says that they detuned it a bit for more reliability, but it can easily be retuned for extra power later on. Quite frankly, I think that 230 horsepower with the baffle in is way more power than the MT-10 needs.
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