Just a quick update on my motorbikey stuff for those who are interested.
Decided to give the Hog a complete makeover; I'm taking her to Spain on a mini-roadtrip next month, sadly this stuff won't be fitted by then, but I'll have all in place in time for the UK Summer season proper.
Gave the VRod a Stage I kit and tune last year, as the stock bike sounds like a bee farting it's so over-silenced (poxy enviro laws BS) and the engine cannot breathe properly. So, fitting a "racing" (heh!) low-loss Screamin' Eagle airbox, engine remap and removing all silencing from the pipes would sort it, right...? Actually, no.
Whilst this work certainly helped to give a bit more power (and the bike now sounds like a 1300cc V-Twin should), it's being strangled by the bloody catalyst, which can't come out unless the entire and complete exhausts are replaced. Worse, the "fueller" (which is the electronic interface to Harley's tuner unit) doesn't communicate properly for the VRod (don't ask...), meaning it can only be set to default settings which are wrong. Basically, the remap is trying to put too much fuel into the tuned engine, which cannot fully overcome the catalyst's bottleneck, and she's running too rich as a result. In the short term, that mean "grabby" throttle/uneven torque/too much fuel consumption (and not as much power as there should be). In the long term though, serious risk of a coked-up engine, which is obviously bad news.
Harley have offered to return the bike to stock and give a full refund, which is pretty decent of them given that the upgrade is well outside of warranty, but ballsacks to that, eh. The other option is to go for full Stage II dyno tune, with completely new heads, high lift cams and exhausts (de-catted). Because my VRod is the 10th Anniversary version (of which very few were made), the problem is further compounded in that no off-the-shelf pipes even exist, so it's going to have to be a total handmade gas-flowed stainless steel bespoke system; you can imagine they don't come cheap! The stock clutch won't take the power either, so that needs to be replaced with a racing slipper clutch...
What it does mean though, at the end of this very expensive process, I will have a Harley Davidson which has 150bhp (and shedloads of torque)
at the back wheel, on a bike that weighs 300kg. That's obviously massive for a bike, but your average hatchback weighs in at 1500kg these days - five times as much - so is the equivalent of a VW Golf with 750bhp.... That makes me very happy.
Hopefully fun times ahead then; that's one seriously fast Hog.
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Beware of gavia articulata oculos...
Dr Lave wrote:
Of course, he's normally wrong but
interestingly wrong