Hey Diddle Diddle!
New member
So I've been posting over the last few weeks about getting the best performance out of a stock 96" for my '09 RKC, and I've gotten a lot of sound advice and feedback from people here and builders over the telephone. I rarely get conflicting advice; rather, like any classic journey tale, I seek the advice of oracles who reveal more secrets, like peeling away layers of the onion's skin until I reach the core reality of my ideal build.
Here's some of the expertise bestowed upon my neophyte ways of thinking about TC96s from a few of the best:
Bob Wood. The man is no joke but he made me laugh over the phone because this man knows his shit like no other and I couldn't write the stuff down fast enough he was telling me to do. He had to tell me several times so I could get it all down on paper. Thanks, Bob, you're the best.
Anyway, he started off by asking me how much I weigh and if I'm riding two-up a lot and am I riding hills or freeway, etc. After I told him what I weigh (300+ with some two-up and mostly around town and Z-way) he told me I need torque, torque and more torque.
He said the big secret here is the gearing, to start with. Go from that 32-tooth to a 30-tooth Andrews up front on the tranny, and go to a 70-tooth out back from an '06. Won't even be the same bike just with this mod, with the mechanical advantage to be had from the gearing. This thing'll take off like a rocket and roll on real good in 5th and 6th. I have cruise control and a 6th gear indicator, and he said if I didn't care about 'em I'd be done, but if I want to keep my cruise control I have to get a compensator to trick the ecm into thinking my road speed's matching my engine/tranny speed, if I'm saying it right.
He said he wouldn't mess with the stock heads since they flow plenty good enough, but to put in the Woods 5-6 for max torque, or if I do the the gear swap, then the triple nickle he's just comin' out with. The Nightprowler directional lifters make things quieter and they lubricate the valves just right. He said he'd leave the stock header alone, too. Then it's just up to the PCV to map me a nice fuel delivery (with a little help from someone who knows what they're doin'.) Think I'd put on a different header, though. Maybe get Bub to weld me up a sweet crossover setup to go with my Bub 7 slip-ons?
I've been reading a lot about head work (what good work will do for your low-down torque and how bad head work kills low-end response) so I called BC Gerolamy in the Sacramento area and spoke to Mark to further enlighten me. Yeah, they can take my stock heads and make them flow faster and do the right stuff to boost my torque with a little higher compression, but the conversaton went in a scary direction for me when I was informed of a few weaknesses in the engine construction of which I was previously unaware (I told ya I don't know shit...yet.)
On the top end the springs are bee-hive style and the valves are throw-away. Advice: don't drop in cams with stock springs...you're just askin' for trouble. So if I have them do the heads, they do the nice five-plane valve job along with the glass bead-blasting and polishing around the valve area, and put in the nice nitride-coated valves and springs for a robust top end.
But what about the bottom-end? More bad news I didn't know about: the crank can twist, not so much with good low-end torque applications, but high HP, high revving applications. You know, the more power you have on tap, the more power the engine has to destroy itself with. Mark said don't rev it above 5800. Great. Here I was originally thinking 100 HP/100TQ out of my 96, but there's another guy in these posts a couple days ago who twisted his crank with a 96, not even a 103". Shit.
So I call the local HD shop and we start talking high-compression pistons and I ask if it's easy to get to the crank and flywheels to true 'em up and peg and tig weld 'em without splittin' the cases, and oh yeah, what about the lefty upgrade and Timken to handle axial thrust? Nope. It's all comin' apart for all that.
So now I'm thinkin': It'd be cool to have what essentially amounts to a blue-printed 96" engine from the ground up; balanced, trued, tigged bottom, pistons fitted to honed cylinders that slide up and down with zero slop in travel, heads fitted and flowing with no clatter, the stuff that dreams are made of, right? This assemblage of trick parts and geometry should result in butter-smooth power delivery, but what kind of power should I reasonably expect after all this work? 110 TQ/100 HP?
To tell you the truth, that doesn't sound so bad out of a 96. At least I know the motor won't frag, ever, but how much mula am I lookin' to spend here?
Yeah, yeah, I know. 103".
Still I want to make the HD bottom end bullet-proof if I go big bore or not.
What about the 103 and 107 SE kits? The published specs sound kinda mild out of the box, and I'm sure lots of guys throw trick heads and cams into the mix with these builds to wake 'em up.
All this tearing down and rebuilding of engines gets me back to my original thinking in my first posts: if I have to tear it down to the nub and trick everything out to make it rock n' roll reliably, then why not swap out for a crate motor? Which crate motor manufacturer and how big? Does S&S build a better motor than SE? Does an S&S 113" make all my dreams come true?
You know, I might have just gone with the top end and gearing, a la Bob Wood, until I Googled twisted cranks.
Here's some of the expertise bestowed upon my neophyte ways of thinking about TC96s from a few of the best:
Bob Wood. The man is no joke but he made me laugh over the phone because this man knows his shit like no other and I couldn't write the stuff down fast enough he was telling me to do. He had to tell me several times so I could get it all down on paper. Thanks, Bob, you're the best.
Anyway, he started off by asking me how much I weigh and if I'm riding two-up a lot and am I riding hills or freeway, etc. After I told him what I weigh (300+ with some two-up and mostly around town and Z-way) he told me I need torque, torque and more torque.
He said the big secret here is the gearing, to start with. Go from that 32-tooth to a 30-tooth Andrews up front on the tranny, and go to a 70-tooth out back from an '06. Won't even be the same bike just with this mod, with the mechanical advantage to be had from the gearing. This thing'll take off like a rocket and roll on real good in 5th and 6th. I have cruise control and a 6th gear indicator, and he said if I didn't care about 'em I'd be done, but if I want to keep my cruise control I have to get a compensator to trick the ecm into thinking my road speed's matching my engine/tranny speed, if I'm saying it right.
He said he wouldn't mess with the stock heads since they flow plenty good enough, but to put in the Woods 5-6 for max torque, or if I do the the gear swap, then the triple nickle he's just comin' out with. The Nightprowler directional lifters make things quieter and they lubricate the valves just right. He said he'd leave the stock header alone, too. Then it's just up to the PCV to map me a nice fuel delivery (with a little help from someone who knows what they're doin'.) Think I'd put on a different header, though. Maybe get Bub to weld me up a sweet crossover setup to go with my Bub 7 slip-ons?
I've been reading a lot about head work (what good work will do for your low-down torque and how bad head work kills low-end response) so I called BC Gerolamy in the Sacramento area and spoke to Mark to further enlighten me. Yeah, they can take my stock heads and make them flow faster and do the right stuff to boost my torque with a little higher compression, but the conversaton went in a scary direction for me when I was informed of a few weaknesses in the engine construction of which I was previously unaware (I told ya I don't know shit...yet.)
On the top end the springs are bee-hive style and the valves are throw-away. Advice: don't drop in cams with stock springs...you're just askin' for trouble. So if I have them do the heads, they do the nice five-plane valve job along with the glass bead-blasting and polishing around the valve area, and put in the nice nitride-coated valves and springs for a robust top end.
But what about the bottom-end? More bad news I didn't know about: the crank can twist, not so much with good low-end torque applications, but high HP, high revving applications. You know, the more power you have on tap, the more power the engine has to destroy itself with. Mark said don't rev it above 5800. Great. Here I was originally thinking 100 HP/100TQ out of my 96, but there's another guy in these posts a couple days ago who twisted his crank with a 96, not even a 103". Shit.
So I call the local HD shop and we start talking high-compression pistons and I ask if it's easy to get to the crank and flywheels to true 'em up and peg and tig weld 'em without splittin' the cases, and oh yeah, what about the lefty upgrade and Timken to handle axial thrust? Nope. It's all comin' apart for all that.
So now I'm thinkin': It'd be cool to have what essentially amounts to a blue-printed 96" engine from the ground up; balanced, trued, tigged bottom, pistons fitted to honed cylinders that slide up and down with zero slop in travel, heads fitted and flowing with no clatter, the stuff that dreams are made of, right? This assemblage of trick parts and geometry should result in butter-smooth power delivery, but what kind of power should I reasonably expect after all this work? 110 TQ/100 HP?
To tell you the truth, that doesn't sound so bad out of a 96. At least I know the motor won't frag, ever, but how much mula am I lookin' to spend here?
Yeah, yeah, I know. 103".
Still I want to make the HD bottom end bullet-proof if I go big bore or not.
What about the 103 and 107 SE kits? The published specs sound kinda mild out of the box, and I'm sure lots of guys throw trick heads and cams into the mix with these builds to wake 'em up.
All this tearing down and rebuilding of engines gets me back to my original thinking in my first posts: if I have to tear it down to the nub and trick everything out to make it rock n' roll reliably, then why not swap out for a crate motor? Which crate motor manufacturer and how big? Does S&S build a better motor than SE? Does an S&S 113" make all my dreams come true?
You know, I might have just gone with the top end and gearing, a la Bob Wood, until I Googled twisted cranks.