(from way off in the distance a quiet voice sounds down a long hallway with a hollow resonant sound)"Just a damn second. Can't a guy have a moment for a personal break.................. (flush)
(distant footsteps moving closer and louder and the voice now minus the hollow resonance) "Now what's the damn fuss all aboot, er, about.
Resonators? Oh that was just ( turning to look back down the hall, light dawns and turns back).......... Oh, on motorcycles. That's different....
Well kiddies it seems that my 9R, and probably the 6R, have a couple of little plastic tube stubs that hang off the sides of the ram air ducts about 1/2 way along towards the airbox. These are there to prevent a resonant effect in the ram air tubes at certain frequencies brought on by the rpm of the engine. Without these "resonators" the ram air duct sounds like an angry bull at the rpms that cause the resonant effect. So you see they really are ANTI-resonators. They were put there to allow the bike to pass the noise restrictions for stock motorcycles. I'm not sure if the rest of you have them but there's a good chance you do if you've got ram air..... And who doesn't these days.
Removing them and smoothing over the hole in the side of the tube will supposedly give you a tiny bit more power at certain rpms. On the Kawi 9R's it's supposed to help smooth the transition from off to on throttle and gave Odysseus over at SBN an extra 1 1/2 ponies on the top end and helped smooth a couple of dips in the dyno curve. But it make a howl like a horny mule now. Guess I'll be finding out soon. I'm going to try it along with the jetting, ignition advancer and air injection blocking plates.
PS; Our mufflers on the bikes don't have resonators. Cars use a resonator, or more acurattley once again, and anti-resonator to tailor the sound of the engine, They seem to be more on V8's but I know a guy at work with a Volkwagon Corrado and he has one too. It's the size of a suitcase apparently. That funny split 6 engine must need a lot of audio shaping......