STORY AND PHOTOS BY STEPHEN BERNER Smiling …ssdl1.cachefly.net/Articles/JJ S Cycle...

I nteresting the way things play out. Afriend since the early 90s, a road trip-ping partner, too, DaveD last season fi-nally sold off (traded in, actually) BlackBart, his high-mileage 1986 FLHT. Daveis the last friend to use an Evo as his daily

(and yes, I do mean daily) driver, road trip-ping, and commuting machine. Once theroads are clear of snow, DaveD is on hisbike everyday, weather permitting or not.

Pat, his wife and riding partner, was en-couraging him to upgrade to a TC-era ma-

chine and so with that thought bubblingaround his mind Dave was on the lookoutfor a deal. Now Bart was full of quirks andhomebrew touches and although the bikeworked youd have to have a clue as tohow to maintain this vintage machine tobe a happy customer. In a nutshell, noteveryone could own Bart and be happy.Rather than try and sell privately to one ofhis friends for a cheap lowball price as aproject bike, Dave opted to trade-in with aHarley-Davidson dealer. He did well on thetrade; better than I thought he would.

So the new object of his affection was athrottle-by-wire 2008 Road Glide, traded-in by its previous owner for a newer bikewith the 2009-up frame. Dave, the guywho I thought would never give up hisbatwing, went for something different. Iwas flabbergasted but happy for him. Hehad earned a new machine and I knewhed dig it. The Road Glide rocksand thisis coming from a confirmed Batwing fan.Dave had a totally fresh perspective onthe new bike, coming off of an early Evomachine. In this day and age that justdoesnt happen very often so I was reallyinterested in what Dave had to say abouthis new TBW Road Glide.

Straight up, he didnt dig it. The TC en-gine and 6-speed with the Brembo de-signed brakes is a big enough change toswallow at once, but couple that lump withthe big Road Glide fixed fairing and Davewas just not feeling very at home. Hemissed the rattly kicking snap of Bartsloose Evo and that bikes overall small-ness. We forget that the new bikes wefavor are monsters compared with theFLs of even a few short years ago. Dontbother comparing them to the 4-speedframe models and the generation preced-ing that. Crazy how big these modern ma-chines are in comparison. Dave had a fewvery particular gripes about the machinesmechanical state: it ran lean, felt hot, andwas sluggish and constricted.

We talked; I recommended he shouldgive it some time and the bike would grow

on him, and that hed get over

60 IronWorks August 2011

IW GarageSTORY AND PHOTOS BY STEPHEN BERNER

Smiling Now: Daves Stage 1 Road GlideJJs Cycle, Rinehart Racing and Zippers Performance team up

Josh and Mr. Bill at work.

IWaug11pgs_SS_IW0204Pgs_CS 5/31/11 12:49 PM Page 60

61IronWorks August 2011

Bart. To wipe away the sniffles I offered tohelp him with the engine room mods heneeded to make. We settled on somewell-known IW Garage supporters tuningproducts for this Stage1+ upgrade. Wecalled the generous folks at Rinehart Rac-ing for their fresh off the press 2-into-1chrome exhaust, and contacted Zippersfor their MaxFlow air cleaner unit with a fil-ter and backing plate plus a ThunderMaxthrottle-by-wire ECM with AutoTune. Thosethree parts alone would make a substan-tial difference in how the engine handledits chores and allow him to make furtherchanges down the road if desired.

A local independent shop to Dave andnew to IronWorks, JJs Cycle in Watervliet,NY, offered to partner with us and will beproviding the wrench spinning and dyno ex-pertise to see just what we wind up withfrom a data perspective. More to the point,we will see how Dave likes his newly mod-ded machine after he gets some seat time.

Buzzy, the owner, along with Josh (dynooperator) and Mr. Bill (lead tech) take theFLTR directly into JJs dyno room to seewhat we are starting with. 63 HP and 73ft/lbs of torque. Not the worst performerweve seen, but certainly there is room forimprovement.

Bike up on the lift, stock exhaust strippedoff, seat and air cleaner assembly removedand the battery disconnected along with themain fuse. New parts easily installed: the aircleaner with a deep pleated air filter included(Dave kept the stock cover,) and the 2-into-1Rinehart exhaust are easily fit to the motor.Oftentimes you have to wrestle and wranglethe header on a pipe of a 2-into-1 configura-

tion but the Rinehart,as expected, slips oneasily. The exhaustlooks great: big can,wonderful chrome, slickheat shield on the col-lectorthis is a nicepiece. Spacer hard-ware is included to relo-cate your right floor-board to make roomfor the pipe. Heatshields go on easily,they wrap the pipeclosely, and look excellent.

The Zippers Thun-derMax throttle-by-wireECM with AutoTune is a plug and play unitthat swaps out for your stock ECM. Zip-pers loaded the map we needed into theunit at their facility when we ordered it toease installation and give us a strong start-ing point for the closed loop system uponstartup. Josh wanted to make sure all wasright when he installed the system and soonce the unit was installed on the bike, heconnected his laptop, carefully following di-rections, and made sure the right map wasloaded. Some familiarity with how a comput-er works is required and Joshs experienceworking with other fuel injection and map-ping systems and computers in generalsped us through set up. It makes a differ-ence working with someone who is experi-enced and knowledgeable.

With all the hardware bolted on andbuttoned up, looking good, the bike is sentfor a 25+ mile ride to get some experi-

ence and then put back on the dyno tosee what Josh finds. Pretty good for ashort blast: 72hp and 85 ft/lbs of torque.The torque being the most noticeablenumber for daily commuting riders is ex-cellent. We know that once Dave getssome miles on the bike it will get evenmore finely tuned and numbers will im-prove, although all agreed this is a strongout of the box result.

After two weeks of having the bike, Icaught up with our bike owner and hesaid this:

I havent seen the dyno print outs (Isnagged them, sorry! -ed.) so this is bythe seat of my pants. The exhaust soundsnice, doesnt drown out the stereo. Reallysounds good when you make it pull hard.The power band has moved down about300 or 400 rpms. I like this because be-fore, I always seemed to be rowing the

The dyno room at JJs Cycle.

The brains of the operation. One good looking pipe.


tranny under 50mph. Now I can be doing50 in 5th at 2000 rpm and it will stillhave enough to pull out the back side of acorner. This also makes 60 mph in 6thgear very doable, which is great on theslab because the roll on is very smooth.And 3000 rpm at 80 is a kick, almostfeels sleepy. Yep it definitely went from ap-pliance-like to a having a little soul and per-sonality. It feels better with every ride.

Followed a day or two later by this:The idle has gotten smoother. One

big change that I have noticed is the waythe bike starts. Used to be when you hitthe starter and the motor caught itsounded like someone smacked the pis-ton with a hammer. Now it just magicallyruns when you push the button. Almostlike flipping a light switch. The more Iride, the more fun it is. I actually dontmiss my 86 so much anymore.

Home run! Thanks to JJs Cycle, Rine-hart, and Zippers. Its always a pleasureworking on machines when you havegreat parts in hand being installed by talented techs. IW

62 IronWorks August 2011Reader Service No. 34

Reader Service No. 33

*RESOURCES

JJs CyclesWatervliet, NY518-266-9657www.jjscycle.com

Rinehart RacingAsheville, NC877-264-8282www.rinehartracing.com

Zippers PerformanceElkridge, MD410-579-2828www.zippersperformance.com


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IW_0811_002IW_0811_43IW_0811_83

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