My friend is thinking of putting in a reed kit on his stock 2000 ZR 500. The question is: Which ones to go with? What are the gains? Do you need to re-jet your carbs? Who has done this, and how happy were you with the gained performance?

Buying V-force or the like will yield very little if any h/p and or throttle response, your best bet would be either a set of Carbon Tech or Boyessan reeds. Either will increase throttle response but neither are a big h/p builder.
Best bang for your bucks is clutching.

Rick.

:withstupid: , you really need more than 600 cc's to get much noticable gains with reeds.
Just go with a set of boysens, V force or the like is just a waste on a 500.
JMO,
Vman

I heard you don't get much gains worth out of the money you are going to spend for the smaller cc sleds. Could be wonrg though, I also would go with some sort of clutching work over reeds.

I'll have to disagree with all of you. From my experience Vfroce 2 reeds made a huge difference on my 00zr500 carb. I started out by jetting down one size i think it was for the first 400 miles which helped with throttle responce. Then I installed vforce 2 reeds and BM reed block spacers. This made a huge difference in throttle response in the low and midrange. I ran this setup against a 02 zr500 carb with the apv and pipe temp sensor. Rider was 150#s with the same carb setup on his and bone stock I weighed around 220#s both running 1.25 stiff paddles. I would pull away from him and stay there everytime. We swapped riders and the difference got even bigger and he noticed a big difference in throttle response also going to mine. I've road several peoples zr500s when i had mine and since all stock some efi some carb with and without APVs but all stock and none seem to compare to me. Another trick I found with the 00zr500 is to swap the helix out. I ran a 55-51 instead of the stock 53-51 towards the end which made a big difference i've heard it will pull a 55-49 or 55-47 which gives you a lil more top end and still the snap off the line. Just my experience though.

Thanks everybody. I appreciate the feedback. Do those Black Magic Pipes really make all the HP they say? Pretty pricey system. Let me know what set up you guys run, for example: reed kit,pipe,jets,clutching. Looking for the best combo. I think my friend wants more top end speed to run with the 600's. If you had to do a first mod on an all stock ZR 500, what would it be? Some of you mentioned clutching, how hard is that to do yourself? Thanks again.