Any others who live and ride the Max at 5000+ ft elevation?

[Shuriken]

Just curious how many of you live and ride your VMax at high elevations? I ride mostly at 5700ft elevation while occasionally taking trips to 8500ft and higher, and back down to 3500ft or so.

Over the years of owning and riding bikes at 6660ft elevation, I can say that my elevation seems to choke out engine performance. I'm always fighting the carb at this altitude.

I would like to know which other members ride at high elevations and if they notice any power loss. All of my bikes seem to run worse where I live, even when plug color looks good. Just seems that wheelies and all that are much harder to come by on my bikes. For example, I could bounce the front wheel a few inches on my XS11s with just 1st gear throttle. The XL500 dirt bike will stand up easy in 1st and I can pull the bars hard to get a 2nd gear wheelie. My XL350 will not wheelie at all and the VMax does not seem to want to wheelie.

Many of you talk about how easy it is to wheelie the Max. I think my Max would have some nasty pull at 2000ft or less but I'd like to get it just right even at this elevation.

Comments?

 

[vmaxinID]

I'm at 4300 ft and I just dialed in at the dyno, and got 107hp.

Elevation eats a bit of power.

 

[NM_MAX]

The elevation here in Albuquerque, NM averages about 5,500 ft above sea level. I think I've had the front wheel maybe an inch or two off the ground and that only happens when it is cool outside. It gets even worse when you take it up in to the mountains. I did a ride a few weeks ago in the Santa Fe National Forest and I can tell you I sure wasn't going to win any races. I think the elevation was around 8,800 feet. I ended up just taking it easy and enjoying the ride. I did end up averaging almost 50 mpg on that trip though. Based on those experiences I would have to say that the elevation plays a big factor.

I know that it makes a big difference for cars. One of my co-workers has a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX. The car has a turbo which seems to eliminate the elevation penalty. As a result he is able to hang with cars that would normally be way out of his league, mostly Corvettes and Mercedes AMG, etc.