The power of Zen

TALK WRENCH

I own a second-hand, 2001 Zen MPFI which has done 60,000 km. I owned an '97 Zen (carburetted) earlier. I am quite happy with the Zen, but have observed something peculiar "� every time I floor the throttle for rapid acceleration, which is sometimes needed on the highways for overtaking, the engine makes a metallic spraying sound which is not very pleasant to the senses and makes the engine seem whiny. This does not happen when the throttle is kept at lower revs or while cruising.

I never observed this with my carburetted Zen earlier, is this normal? The new Zen does have better torque characteristics compared to the earlier model, as I am able to take on lower speeds on higher gears with more ease, but overall power does not seem substantially higher, which I expected, as 10 bhp more should count.

Naveen Sanders, via email

Your Zen most probably requires a good fuel injector cleanup "� trust an authorised service centre to take care of it and you'll lose most of that that whiny metallic sound (it is part of the MPFI package though) and also find that extra 10 bhp again!

Be careful of where you fill up gas "� and shift into a lower gear when into overtakes "� the Zen's engine is not all that torquey in the lower rev band and needs to be kept at least above 2500 rpm for any serious moves, preferably singing between 3500 and 4000 rpm, which is where the sweet spot is "� try it out and you'll find that you can blow bigger competition into the weeds!