Hello "tleighbell", and welcome to NSR-WORLD.

The 1988 is pretty good to begin with, once delimited, and to get any substantial gains will require getting inside the motor.

It's not that there is no benefit to fitting the HRC heads to an MC18, it's just that the difference is virtually immeasurable. The heads are part of an extremely extensive HRC kit, and fitting one part alone is hardly worth the effort. An HRC MC18 makes over 70hp, but has different crank, cases, barrels, heads, ignition, carbs, inlets, exhausts, electronics, etc.

I'd advise refreshing the motor and chassis, and then taking it to a track day to see how you get on with it, before diving in. An MC18 needs work on the chassis more than it does on the motor! The best mod, pound for pound, is to open up the airbox a little, or fit foam pod filters, if you can find some adjustable needles and you're adept at setup. (Otherwise, just stick to the airbox mod.)

The TYGA pipes will save you weight, and look great, but you'll lose a huge chunk of mid-range on the MC18. If you can keep the motor at peak 95% of the time, then great, but if you can live with the weight of the stock pipes, then I would keep them. The MC18 has a different inlet manifold setup to the MC21 and MC28, The stock setup works well, and the HRC parts for the MC28 were to try and restore the performance lost from changing from the MC18 type of inlet. Again, throwing good money after bad.

The total loss flywheel is no good for anything but the 28. Basically, the static timing is wrong for any other model. More trouble than it's worth.
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Andy.
NSR-WORLD.COM

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