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We can spend a nice amount of money to gain some horsepower or loose some weight.
I want to share my personal experience with some nice gadgets and aftermarket high performance parts. I must admit that I love gadgets and also that I am a do-it-yourself kind of guy. I am constantly working on my own bike even if I have nothing to add or repair on it: sometimes I would just take it apart to check if everything is OK. I know …it’s insane, but I love it.
Last spring I bought a brand new 2006 Suzuki GSX-R 750 K6 , my dream bike since I saw it the first time in 1990 in a motorcycle magazine back in Hungary. I have always wanted to get a brand new bike, still in the crate, something “virgin” that nobody has ever touched besides the Suzuki factory mechanics. This year my dream finally became true!
While still waiting for it I had already planned some modifications, improvements on this otherwise awesome machine. First, I wanted to add a nice exhaust system, though the factory system is one of the best looking exhausts I’ve ever seen. This became a problem later on, since no aftermarket companies have made a nice looking one for this bike. After extensive research I have finally found a small company called TaylorMade Racing with a beatiful exhaust slip-on that saves about 12 Lbs!! The OEM system is 16 Lbs because of the strict emission and noise regulations. The TaylorMade is about 4 Lbs: you can easily figur out that it’s made of titanium. Originally I wanted to put the Yoshimura R-55 but unfortunately Yoshimura has had problems at their R&D department and they don’t have still an exhaust system for the GSX-R 750 K6 available for sale after almost 12 months.
Through out the year I have been adding parts to my baby a little bit at the time. I installed a beautiful piece of engineering, called Gilles Chain adjuster. It makes the chain adjustment easier, also a wheel change will need less effort since there are no chain adjuster blocks to fall off. Since I was already looking at the Gilles parts in my parts book, I added a titanium axle nut, it looks cool and expensive.
I put a nice looking and most importantly great performing billet front brake master cylinder from Brembo. This piece improved so much the braking performance of my bike that I had to use totally different brake markings on the track. It feels like you hit the wall when you squeeze it!! Now even WERA banned on its events because they give too much advantage to those who use them!! I also added a set of beautifully manufactured Spiegler stainless steel braided brake lines. These brake lines comes in a color you choose, so you can match them to your bike color !! I think it’s a nice feature and also their quality is excellent. OK, at this point it was time to make my bike faster so I added a Dynojet Power Commander III USB to reach the perfection in the fuel injection system, critical goal every time engine parts of a bike are substituted. Even on a stock bike you will feel a clear improvement in the acceleration and the throttle response with the appropriate mapping since stock bikes are tuned for low emissions and not for 100% performance.
After installing the PCIIIUSB, I realized that I had to take my bike to a shop to tune it with a dynamometer. As usual, I decided to do it by myself with the help of a Dynojet Wide Band Commander, that I nick-named “pocket-dyno”. This unit can record 10 minutes of air-fuel ratio (AFR), throttle position (TP) & RPM data. After downloading the data to a laptop computer you can see the AFR compared to the TP and RPM and the PCIIIUSB can be modified to achieve the perfect AFR for the best performance. It might sounds like rocket-science, and it is!!! Don’t try this at home, let the professionals do it at a certified Power Commander dealers like 666 Cycles.
My next step was to install a set of Factory Pro velocity stacks. They give a nice, noticeable punch in the mid RPM range, smooth out the entire power band & improve the acceleration. In the same time I replaced the OEM air filter with a BMC Race air filter.
Also I let my friend Diana at Js Typography, give a custom look for the bike. She added a few blue accent stripes to help the plastic of the bike to stand out: she did an excellent job.
Since I like to travel with my bike, discover new places or just go for a weekend ride to the nearby Bear Mountain State Park, I bought a Garmin GPS receiver. It’s a great help if you just go without real destinations or you don’t want to loose time in searching for directions on a map: you want just yo hop on your bike and ride wherever you find nice twisties, without worrying to get lost. With the optional XM Traffic subscription you can avoid traffic jams or bad weather.
I also recoment another nice little gadget to whoever intends to go for gearing changes, but it’s good even on a completely stock bike: it’s called Speedohealer.
As we know, even with stock gearing the factory speedometer error can be as high as 10%, so even a modest sprocket gearing change can have the speedometer off by 15%. This little black box can calibrate the speed to almost 100% accuracy!! I have used my GPS to get my real speed and calculate the necessary adjustment on the Speedohealer.
Now, I am confident that I have contributed somehow to make your Christmas wish list a little bit longer and the need for that second mortage even more urgent ….
Almos
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1 comment:
Good postt
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