Episode 281 Tuning Stages 1 through Stupid Explained

In Ep. 281 of the Noco Moto Podcast, we question everything about motorcycle tuning culture. From Harley Screamin’ Eagle stages to sprocket swaps and final drive ratios, we dive deep into what makes sense—and what’s just burning cash. Spoiler: it’s mostly burning cash.

Plus:
 🏍️ Worst Bike of the Week – Moto Guzzi Quota
 🏁 Best Bike of the Week – Ducati Paul Smart
🔦 Yamaha’s game-changing matrix LED cornering headlights
🔧 Tuning myths, final drive hacks, and how to spend $7k to go 0.2 seconds faster

And yes, there’s Weird Al cosplay, Taco Bell design nostalgia, and a brutal takedown of grayscale fast food architecture. You’re welcome.

#Motorcycles #MotoGuzzi #PaulSmart #Ducati #MotorcyclePodcast #HarleyDavidson #ScreaminEagle #NocoMoto #TuningMyths #YamahaTracer9

Transcript

I don't want to pick up, just want to ride on my motorcycle.
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Nokia Moto Podcast episode number 281, I think I'm your host
MotoGP with me as you're the host Swiggy, coming to you from Moto One Podcast Network Studios
recording Suite A, otherwise known as the Teaky Room. Let's see, what are we going to talk about?
We're going to talk about motorcycle tuning today or why you shouldn't tune your motorcycle or
why you might want to and what you're going to do about that. We're going to do best worst bike
in the world this week and Swigs, you want to talk about motorcycle lighting, specifically recent
improvements in or possible improvements in a particular bike, a particular bike, but perhaps
industry-wide. Let's step in the right direction, I'll say. Perhaps, hopefully. Okay, and let's see
here, Swiggy missed out. Last Tuesday, Weird Al at Red Rocks.
You missed out. It was so good. I don't know, you should have spent the money. It was absolutely
worth it. Everything, he's saying fat, full fat suits. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the full suits.
Nice. So worth it. So worth it. Oh, so many copies. But do you mean you need it?
No. Eat it and fat are two different songs. Oh, okay. I don't know fat, actually.
Anyway, it was the first really big hit. I think it was sort of the plot of the Weird Al Yankovic
story where his agent calls him up and he's like, Michael Jackson's made a parody of fat.
It's called bad. And he's like devastated. It might be beta or in eat it. It's one of the two,
but yeah. So, no, Eda is the parody of beta. No, I understand that, but fat's the parody of
bad. Oh, yeah. But yeah, they flipped it for the movie and Weird Al becomes devastated. Oh, right.
Yeah, because Michael Jackson parody did song. It's so good. Anyway, yeah, you missed out. It
was great. We were in costume. It was fantastic. If anyone has the chance to go see Weird Al on
the rest of his tour this year, you are, you're just doing it wrong if you don't go and you have
the opportunity. That's what I'm going to say. All right. Let's not waste any time. Let's get
into best respect in the world this week. What do you say? Let's do it. Okay. So this is the part
of the show where swigs and ivy's chosen a motorcycle. We don't know what each other have chosen.
It's always a surprise. One is going to be the best bike in the world this week. One is going to be
the worst. Remember, it's only just for this week. If you agree, disagree, care, don't care,
you can either call us out on your own podcast or you can send an email to wear swigs.
Contact at nokamotopodcast.com. That's right. Or you can send us a text if you are listening to
this podcast and it's audio format. Or you can join the Patreon and send us a message there. Or
you can join the discord and talk to us there. Let's see swigs. You have worst bike in the world
this week. I do. And are you ready to reveal it? I am. All right. Let me get a little sip of
zombie here while we... Ugh. And the worst bike in the world this week is? The 1992 to 2001
MotoGuzi quota. Do I know the quota? I don't think I know this bike.
If this is half as good as the Centaro or the Centaro. Design wise, like aesthetically it's not that bad,
but it's still not great. Oh, it's kind of a Proto TT85 a little bit. You mean V85. That's what I meant.
V85. Yeah. So this is the bike that preceded the Stelvio. No, it's the TT85, isn't it?
It's just the V85. No, they're Adventure Bike.
It's the V85. No, I don't think it is. I think it's the TT85. I'm going to pull this. I'm
fact checking you on this right now. Okay. There is a TT model of the V85 called the V85 TT.
Oh, but it is not the TT85. Okay. All right. Fair enough. All right. So anyway, this bike has vibes of
the V85. It does. What it does not have is any kind of competency whatsoever. So again, so this bike
started production in 1992. And this kind of followed the BMW formula of we're not going to
compromise on our general philosophy. So this is going to be a Transverse V twin. It's going to
have a shaft drive, but we're going to try turn it into a Adventure Bike. And we're going to put
premium technology in it. And this proved to be disastrous. Well, premium technology in a
Moto Gootsie is a trick that apparently they've only just now been able to pull off. So yeah,
premium is already. So at this point, by premium technology, what I really mean is fuel injection,
fuel injection in a mono shock. So this was basically designed to be an Adventure Bike.
Uh, this has 70 horsepower. It's 60 pounds of torque. It weighs 600 pounds. And generally,
and honestly, I couldn't even find a number for the actual ground clearance other than people
saying that it was wildly insufficient. Okay, sure. But, um, I mean, it definitely looks like,
you know, okay, we say that all these Adventure Bikes that they're coming out with today are
really more just for cruising the highways, back roads, occasional fire roads and some lights,
light trail kind of stuff. But the truth is, is that's been the case for a very long time.
So maybe this is one of those early bikes where Gootsie was like, well, yeah, it's more road oriented
than off road, obviously. But, you know, this will go down a dirt or gravel road easier than most bikes.
True, but at least modern bikes have even modern, at least modern Adventure Bikes,
as much as they're oversized in respect, at least do have things like ground clearance and a
respectable horsepower to weight ratio. I do have to say this doesn't look any higher off the
ground than a CB 750. Right. Yeah. Not only that, um, I did the, I looked it up the,
the horsepower to weight ratio of this bike is something like 2.88 horsepower per kilogram.
The, uh, the cutoff for a A2 license in terms of horsepower to weight ratio is 2.7 horsepower per
kilogram. And it's only like for an Australian restricted license. This is only like 110 to 120 percent
of the horsepower to weight ratio limit for the A2 license. Uh, well, for Australia, it's the
lambs, but for the A2, it's like just barely outside. Like this is not a lot of power.
And any, any, you say that, you say that, but, you know, weight doesn't affect top speed.
And he said 60 horsepower. Uh, 70 horsepower. 70. So we're probably getting a little over 55
at the back wheel through that shaft drive. Something like that. Yeah. So it's going to do 100
miles an hour. And it's a Gootsie. And you said it was like, what, 60, 50 foot pounds torque,
so when they're 60. Yeah. 60 is a good number. Um, so it's, it's got the Moto Gootsie mid-range power
promise. Do you know what, uh, the RPM is for max torque? I want, uh, I'm not sure. I know
it kicks on early, well, early ish. Actually, for this generation Moto Gootsie doesn't actually
kick in that early. And it's like, it kicks in at like 3,500 RPM. And is this the Le Mans 1100 or
1000 motor? I believe this motor is modified and it's a little bit different. Um, but this is way
after those bikes. Um, I'm sure it's guy were making them into the late 80s one thing. I'm sure
I'm sure it shares some DNA. And it is, you know, a 1000 to 1100, um, you know, two valve V twins.
So probably it shares quite a bit, but I'm sure I'm pretty sure it's modified for this bike in
particular. Sure. But, um, okay. So air cooled all that kind of stuff. Okay. So here's the other
thing is this is at a time when, um, when Gootsie was even was less popular than it is now. And
they were shipping these over to the US when they went up to the 1100, uh, in the later years. And
these bikes, they never, they, they, they, they shipped them over and there was a colossal error
made with these in the process in that they didn't actually set up the ECUs for the fuel injection
on these for a lot of bikes. And they were absolute dog shit for US customers. And because,
you know, in, in Italy, they're like, well, we can't send you new ECUs or equipment to program
the ECUs. Yeah, it's June. Yeah. It's August. We close the factory down, car back in January.
Right. Um, and, um, the situation got so bad and people got so desperate trying to make these
bikes usable again. That people modified these bikes and started putting carburetors on them.
This would have been, uh, yeah, I mean, I guess this is like in an era where, I mean,
it's weirdly like a bit easier. I guess around this time of the 90s, you can actually just rip
the throttle bodies off something and put carbs on it. Yeah. Because it's going to be a pretty
primitive motor otherwise. Yeah. And if you've got some carbs that fit to like a lima, right?
Yeah. Why not? Yeah. You might need to reject it a little bit or something, but that's not
going to be too big of a feat. So, okay. The last part I want to get to and, um, well, actually,
I mean, it is terrible in terms, objectively in terms of marketing, but I also kind of love it
just for how, just for like how out of touch it is, the name, the quota. Yeah. That is
a curious, curious. So I understand why they did it. And it's because, you know, if you take,
you know, the original like root word quota, I can't remember what the exact Italian pronunciation is,
but, you know, essentially a direct translate, like a literal translation would be heights.
As in, oh, this is a big adventure bike. Yeah. And it's going to take you to new heights,
and it's going to do mountains and hills and all sorts. Right. But I think this is, you know,
it's sort of like how, um, well, it's such an Italian move because obviously someone at
Motogutsi in America would have been like, hey, by the way, you know, that's a word that
implies the bare minimum of something you have to do, right? And also invokes like notions of
bureaucracy and traffic tickets. Yeah. And all sorts of other things. Yeah. Yeah. And the guy,
I think the guy in Italy just said, a fuck of you. Yeah. It would come up with this great name.
Exactly. Yeah. It's so Italian just to be like, I don't fucking care. This is what we named it.
Fucking deal with it. It's sort of like the early like Honda manuals where it's like, we don't
need a translator. We can do this. It's kind of, I think, I feel like the Italians maybe were hoping
that Americans would react like that, um, that Eddie Isard joke about Kennedy calling everybody a
Berliner. Oh, like did he just call us a donut and they're like, it's American. It's slang.
He's a fucking donut. Just rolling with it. That must have, that's the only thing that really
makes any sense. But okay. Yeah. And you know, it kind of, you know, at least, you know, it works for
like the Norge because you're like, what the fuck is a Norge? And then you have to go look it up.
But it doesn't give you this misinformation to start with. It's not preloaded with meaning.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. This is clear is the case of not giving a fuck. But so I have to say, yes,
this is awful. This is a quote, adventure bike in a world where the GS has already existed for almost
a decade. Right? First GS is like 86, 84. Somewhere in there. Oh, that's a good question actually.
Which, I mean, wasn't like, like, you know, miles and miles better than this, like, you know,
ones are today, but still definitely way better than this. Oh, the first GS was 1980.
That, okay, there we go. So we're almost at 15 years past. Oh, they're actually hang on. So
that's the, that's the R80 G slash S. That's, I'm not counting that. I'm just wondering, what was
the first, what was the first, like, like true, like, honestly, it was the R80. But anyway, it doesn't
matter. I think it could be as early as 1980. Anyway, GS had, BMW had been at this game for some time.
But this is a move that's motor picture. I'm going to say the first GS.
I think 1987 is the first bike that people would recognize as like having modern GS DNA in it.
So like, let's say five years earlier. Okay. Anyway, gee, anyway, this is at least a full decade,
if not a decade and a half behind BMW, right? Now, that doesn't surprise me too much. Like,
Motogutsi comes into new markets and new bikes and new designs at, let's say curious times.
Yeah. And they hit the market in weird ways that confuse everybody. Like another one that was
really curious like this, that we think is two bikes in particular. They're really the same
bike that we think are. I'm honestly, I would not be surprised if like Motogutsi came out with a new
bike tomorrow. And they're like, look at this full TFT touch display. And then like while they're
demoing it, like they pull stylus out the side that you have to tap on the screen with like a
palm pile. Right. But if you look at like say like the, the MGX21 flying fortress,
which is a bike I must own one day, I know I love the power. We've ridden dad's California. It's
all that just with extra extra stupid wavy plastic carbon fiber nonsense all over it. I love that
bike. And I would rock it proudly in all its weirdness. But you know, they put that out kind of
at the very end slash height of sort of like victory weirdness. Yeah. Right. But like a little past
the peak, right? Like it was like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like, okay. Victory's kind of on the downslip.
I mean, they're still doing good business. But then they just got flipped over to fucking India and
whatever. It was right around the same time that Indian that a victory started licensing the MPOLs.
Yeah. Yeah. Where's like 2014 to like 2017 was kind of the MGX21. Yeah. And there was,
it was just a time where like, you know, there was a lot of different designs in like an outrageous
sort of baggers and things. There had, there wasn't like a whole lot of huge technological innovations.
It was a big, big style statements. But again, like the big, the big pinnacle of that was like,
you know, when the victory vision came out in like 2000 and like six or whatever it came out, right?
2004. And when, you know, and like Harley had been doing not too much, but there was just room.
There had been a whole like a series of failed Indian motorcycle reboots. And then finally,
the one that stuck that we know now. And Moto Gootsie was just like, here we go. We heard Americans
kind of wanted weird baggers a little while ago. So we're late to the game with this kind of awkward,
not really fitting one, right? And, but even the Moto Gootsie California redesign came at an
odd time. It was like, well, we heard for a while now, the Japanese have quietly had a lot of success
selling metric cruisers. We're going to sell a metric cruiser without the Japanese reliability
now. I know that Moto Gootsie has sold something called the California since, I mean, since,
you know, when dirt was clean, but like that particular redesign of it and everything just felt
like a weird time to do it. And I mean, I guess they didn't go all in on it, but it's also why
redesign and make this whole new bike essentially just to not push it that hard and what would be
its biggest potential market? I don't know, strange things. Still wonderful bike.
But there is one thing I will say about this bike in its defense, the quota, yeah, which is
this yellow and beige color scheme. It's not bad. It's fantastic. Yeah, I look. And the way that it's
just like, it's so in your face, because it's like this whole vertical stripe, like the boundary
is a vertical line across the air box. Well, it's gold separated into two colors. It's like yellow
and silver put, you know, it's more like yellow and beige, but, but you put them together and you'd
have gold. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's so opinionated and it's so in your face and it's so
against any other like, like if you showed this to anybody doing a modern paint scheme for a
bike at any company, be like, this breaks all the rules. You can't do this. And it in contrast,
it's fantastic. Yellow is the second best color for any Italian motorcycle. It is not green,
right? It's not white. It's not black. I do also really like this darker red. And we need to go
back to this. And if you go and watch the, it's not arrogant. What was the race after arrogant?
Ducati did some throwback colors. Oh, yeah. And they did like some dark red. Like it's so dark.
It's like close to brown. It's like, this is probably the Ferrari, like, Rosso Corsa red. It's
just an old picture or a weird like, but like some of these reds and, and like brown colors,
like some of these older ones, the ones that are like, we need to desaturate this enough to hide
the cigarette smoke is a, is it kind of a great color that a great kind of palette that we need
to go back to? Well, I think, you know, when people say that Moto Gootsies and Ducati's always look
great in red. Um, the, the sort of bikes and fairings that they make do particularly
lend themselves to red. This is true. But also, you know, Ducati and Moto Gootsie don't fuck around.
They use Ferrari, Rosso Corsa red. Yeah. And it's just, it's the best red.
I mean, your Corvette's in a pretty good red, but it's not quite as good as the red of your old
Norge is true. Yeah. Yeah. They just don't fuck around. They use the best possible red and they
generally are a bike of a certain type of look that lends itself well to this also. But underrated
is especially Ducati's is yellow, but also, yeah, Moto Gootsies and yellow,
don't sleep on it. Take it over the black any day, any fucking day. Yeah. I, I have seen many
signs that over the past couple of years, people are coming around to the idea that everything
in black, white and silver is super fucking depressing. And people are slowly starting to turn
the corner. I mean, ultimately with cars, we're never going to get back to anything. Oh, we
will. We will, because it's a false economy, right? And here's what's going to do it. So we're
pretty much getting to the point where nobody can afford a new car, right? But even wealthy people
now are like, what the fuck? This doesn't make any sense. Because the only people old enough,
like with enough money to buy a car new now, we're like, well, I'm going to die before this is
paid off. So I'll just lease it, right? Nobody's buying new. Well, no, that's the problem. The problem
is that all these cars is that no, the problem is that nobody's buying these cars new. People
are buying used cars from dealerships that were bought at auction that were originally leased.
And the cars that everybody leases are black or white or silver, because those are just the safest
colors. Right. But this is, but well, but this all comes from the idea that people would say,
oh, buy a black or white or silver car, because they're more neutral, because it'll have more
resale value someday. So that's the people leasing them, whatever it perpetuates this myth,
that it's somehow worth more because it's a more neutral color. But we're about to find out,
because you know, the already competitive use market is about to get really fucking competitive,
because no one can buy new. We're going to find out that it turns out that for a long time,
the vast majority of car buyers who are buying used don't give a flying fuck about color.
They just want something reliable that they can afford that isn't missing a fucking bumper
and has hail damage all over it. Right. And you know what? They're like, I'm going to buy it and
drive it into the ground over the next six and a half years. What the fuck do I care if it's
lime green or not? And I think fun colors are going to come back, because one people will realize
that, oh, everyone just prefers wider black isn't true. People do like fun colors in cars.
It's just this weird myth. It's one of these weird fucking things. Like, remember how like every
old guy until like five years ago was like, no, got to change the oil every three thousand miles.
And it's like, really? Because in this book, it says I can go eight thousand miles. Like what? No,
got to do every three thousand miles. It was just something that people heard someone say,
oh, white cars worth more because it's like, it's got more resale value. I can't fucking true.
I can't remember where I saw it online. But I did see somebody posted like a whole album of pictures
of this small town Taco Bell that hadn't been updated since like
the early 90s. And it was probably the most popular drive through in town. Yeah. And like,
all of it's like purple, blue, and yellow, glory. Yeah. And just because it's a time capsule. Yeah.
And it was like pristine and clean. And it was like, this is fantastic. Oh my god. I wish my local
Taco Bell was this instead of this weird like brutalist industrial building in gray scale with
no character. For me, the depressing moment was when they stopped having real window displays.
And they just started doing the big vinyl stickers covering like 80% of all the windows and
every fast food joint. And I was like, not only does this cheap in the look of the building,
but like, it's just a fucking vinyl sticker. Like, it looks awful. Why did we decide this was
good on glass? Like, why did we ever find this acceptable? I was like, this is something I have
previously only seen in poor parts of Europe. Like, why are we? Like, do you remember like in like
the late 90s, there was a real chinsiness to a lot of Europe because it hadn't like before the EU.
It hadn't seen a boom yet. And well, oh, for country, yeah, it hadn't. Yeah. There were definitely.
And that has started to creep into the US like commercial building sort of situation in the
last 10 years here. I'll tell you what I did really like is there's one time actually getting
out of here. I was really hungry and I went and stopped by Jack in the box. And this is at like 11 o'clock.
And the drive through menu, like the little display that they put your order on. Yeah.
It basically crashed. And that's when I learned that all of the whole computer system for the drive
through menu and everything at Jack in the box runs on Ubuntu.
Oh, because the window display manager had crashed. And I could just see it was just a terminal
display to me. So they run Linux, which is kind of cool. Okay. Yeah. I can tell you all about what
Jersey mics and a bunch of other ones run on. But yeah. Okay. Cool.
Um, actually, I think the toast terminals might run on Linux also.
Toast is everywhere. No, no toast is on Windows. No, no toast is definitely Windows.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. Um, I think we should move on to Best Bike in the world this week.
Let's do it. Okay. Do do do. And the best bike in the world this week is
a curious choice for me, but the Ducati Paul smart.
The what now? The Ducati Paul smart.
Um, so I don't know as much about Paul smart as I should, but Paul smart was a
racer race to Ducati's and really was there kind of at the the 70s at this moment that
Ducati took a big leap forward. And some people say that the bike that this bike is based off of
is the most important bike in Ducati's history. I disagree. I think the 851 is the Ducati where
Ducati became the Ducati that we know. But this is a bike that's basically based off of Ducati's
first V twins. So these are from like 2006, I think. They only made these for a year or two. It's a very
like, um, anyway, so in the early, like mid 2000s, Ducati kind of lost its mind. It was like,
okay, so these like late pant engines or you know, I'm not sure exactly what motors and these,
it doesn't really matter. Okay. Um, it is air cooled and everything, but it's kind of looks like
it kind of looks like it's sharing a lot with like a 1000 D. Um, yes. I don't know if it's that
motor. It's it's air cooled and all that kind of stuff. But what it is is it's Ducati going, okay,
we are going to make the most retro thing possible while still being like a modern handling,
like, you know, nice bike in 2006. And we're going to make a limited number of them. And they're all
going to look fucking amazing. We're only doing in this one paid scheme. And it's all a tribute to
Paul Smart kind of this moment where Ducati became relevant in racing again.
So like, um, yeah, if you look at like the picture there, you know, like a bunch of these of the
number 16 on the side because that was his number and all that stuff. But they've all got this blue
trellis frame, this like really funky cool swing arm, which kind of looks like a melted green noodle.
But it somehow works and fits the bike. And then you got the gold shot, the gold suspension and,
yeah, the, the very, it's not like, it's very clearly like intended to be gold.
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's, um, it's cool stuff. Um, like, is the bike uncomfortable? Yes. I
mean, it's a 60s like race bike, right? And it comes with, um, you know, a very 60s
fairing on it. Um, there's like a full fairing version and like a bikini fairing version or
whatever, but it's all very like early 70s Ducati, the whole thing. But, you know, made to a
modern build standard and all this kind of stuff. And these things were instant collector bikes
because what was 2006 swigs? The absolute fucking height of the cafe racer craze.
I mean, maybe the beginning of it, I say we were really already hit and astride.
Uh, I think for people who are actually paying money for it, yes. So this is best bike in the
world for a couple of reasons. One, um, it's a bike that delivers on its promise, right? This is
going to be a probably pretty reliable, like good working, fast, fun to ride, um, uh, vintage
styled. And to some degree, like vintage, you know, like, anyway, vintage styled sport bike,
but does have actual sort of history pedigree and legitness behind it's. Yeah, sorry,
it has legitimacy, right? It is not, it's not totally fucking stupid. And, um,
and, um, you know, if you bought one of these in 2006, holy shit, did they increase in value?
So I think when these came out, they were somewhere around like $14,000, which was quite a lot
of money to shell out for a bike in 2006, you know, 20 years ago. These peaked in value,
somewhere around $48,000. Here's another reason it's best bike in the world this week's wigs.
A Paul Smart, Ducati still carries all of the weights with every old fucking fart that, um,
a Paul Smart, Ducati carries. But their value was crashed down to about $15,000 again.
Okay. I mean, unless that, unless that name means something to you, that's incredibly dear. But
for a low volume collector's bike, that's actually not crazy. So they could go up again,
they probably won't, they've probably like bottomed out and they'll just be kind of like stable.
But if you wanted to just inflation a little bit, but here's the great thing. They're not so fucking
precious that you can't ride them anymore. Mm-hmm. They're just sort of average priced, you know,
nice bikes again. And guess what? They've all got like 800 miles on them because at some point,
everyone was pretty much convinced that theirs was worth $48,000, which was only like five years ago.
Mm-hmm. But, you know, if you want proof that you're not going to be able to sell
vintage-style bikes to people all that much longer, it was only like five years ago. I mean,
just look at the, what the sale prices were tracking on bring a trailer.
It's like five years ago, they were like $48,000. And now they're tracking lower. You know,
they're tracking at abouts or just a tiny bit above what they originally for sale for.
And the answer is is because all the guys that were super duper in love with what it was and
what it represented in the history of it are dying. This is a huge indicator of where the
markets going. It's just more proof in my whole thing of like everything's going to go small and
everything's going to go cheap. And things like this are going to become very much attainable for
people like, uh, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Understandably, have you ever dreamed of owning one of
these? No. So, understandably, this is a very low data set. But yeah, it looks like the last three
bikes were kind of sitting around $15,000 to $16,000. And then the one before that was $20,000.
But do somebody sold one in 2022 for $43,000?
But if you go back to like, you know, 2010, they were like, you know, $18,000. It hockey stick way
and then crashed down again. Right. Yeah. So this is best bike in the world for a couple reasons. One,
it is a fucking cool bike. There's no mistake in it. You show up to any cars and coffee, you show
up to the rock store, the ace cafe or my fucking driveway or middle high of vintage days or
sturgis or whatever. And everyone's let knows anything about two wheels is going to lose their
fucking mind and go, this is so fucking cool. You're going to feel fucking cool on this. It's
going to ride fucking cool. It looks, that seat looks awful. I bet I would struggle to do 200
miles straight on it. But what is it similar to like, you know, driving a Ferrari or a Porsche where
it's like, your tailbone will be shattered by the end of this ride and you'll be thankful. You'll
appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. If you know, you're getting the genuine experience. Yeah, it's at that
weird thing driving the Ferrari or like after like half an hour, you're like, my calf is killing me
from having to hold my leg in this really weird position to make it fit past my other foot into
the rear into the wheel, what like every time I change gear, it's like, oh god, this is strange.
I've got to cramp in my toe because am I ankle because I have to hold my foot at an angle to be
able to press the clutch without hitting the brake. Yeah. It's fucking dumb, but you're like,
yeah, but it's part of the experience, right? This would be the same. But it's fucking cool, but it's
also like this glimmer of hope where, you know, people are aged that don't aren't going to have like
very good 401k's that aren't going to really have social security that aren't going to have homes
that return even half the investment that they did for our parents. They're still hope we're going
to get to have some dream bikes at some point. Yeah. Because they're just going to become that
undesirable because for all the people that have been owning them, they're just going to die
and then we'll have them. And they'll be fine. And there'll be a smaller number of people after
they die that want them. And it makes you wonder like, when you think about like your kids, like
what bikes from our generation are they go, would they desire the last R1?
Because you have to think like what do we not care about, but it's still like pretty cool.
Yeah, R1. Because it's unexpected stuff that that becomes really desirable. Nobody ever thought
like a fucking Mazda RX 7 was going to become a collector car. That's true. Yeah, R1 is good. Yeah,
last R1 is going to be a good one. And last R6. I would say from right now bikes that we don't
expect to become super cool. Early DCT stuff maybe? That might be the case. Yeah, early. Yeah, maybe.
Maybe VFRs are going to be insanely cool. Like even like a modern VFR 1200 might become super cool.
Vulcan Vicaros. The 1700 Vulcan Vicaros because it's a full dress, like full on bag or a full
dress tour for right now. It's the cheapest one on the market. And as the price of, you know,
Harley baggers and full dress tours comes down, it'll be like, well, the Vulcan has to be worth
at least a thousand dollars less at any point. So they'll be like, it's not going to become worth a
lot. But it'll become cool and desirable because it's like, well, this is a full bagger at
that's bargain fucking basement prices. And you know, there'll be people like, you know, my kids,
right? You know, all their friends will be like, you're riding a fucking big motorcycle.
Ew. And they're going to be like, yeah, it's fucking weird. Yeah. I've got a fucking Vulcan Vicaro.
But I mean, like when when your kids are like 30, like what's going to be that's weirdly close.
That's 17 years away. Yeah.
It's got to be stuff that's just like somehow not relevant to the world 30 years from now. So maybe
just all the super fast stuff. So maybe sport bikes. Yeah. It may just be like every, every super
sport in every, in every leader bike just becomes insanely cool. And it's like, wait, you can buy
a motorcycle that has three times the horsepower that everyone's riding today. And it's like
a quarter of the price. Yeah. I've got to go back to 600 750s and, and leader bikes.
It's just going to be a thing that doesn't exist in the future. And they're going to be like,
oh, you can only get them from like this era of like, you know, 2001 to like 2018.
So they don't have traction control or ABS or death machines or emergence, like automatic
emergency braking. Like they have no safety features whatsoever. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah.
Can you imagine like, in 20 years, there's still going to be like 50,000,
like jixer 600 750s and 1000s, like still in perfect working order on the road. With a whole bunch
of people who never, who never got their driver's license before automatic emergency braking,
before ABS, before traction control, before like driver monitoring. Like that's going to be a wild
world. That's going to be like a big deal. Yeah. So anyway, just to put a button on this,
the last point I wanted to make about this is one of the coolest reasons that this is now like
kind of becoming realistic for someone like us to own is it's a it's a category of bike that
we almost never talk about. It's a prestige motorcycle. Which is we kind of talked about it on
the last episode with the dual hammerhead. I would say that's also like a prestige motorcycle.
Right. But like, you know, I guess like a brand new gold wing almost, well, almost any motorcycle
over $20,000 is a prestige motorcycle. But only for like the first year or two of its life. And then
it kind of becomes more ordinary. Right. Yeah. But something like this has a prestige that stays
with it's through its entire life cycle. Right. And and that's a rare thing. That's usually
goes into sort of the boutique bike category. And this is from a major manufacturer.
Like a big OEM. Right. Right. And sure, something like this exists from every major OEM. But
they're few and far between. And the whole reason that their prestige is like, well,
yeah, it's kind of like your Corvette. Right. Okay. Weirdly, there's this like Arab Corvettes. Now
that's strangely affordable. But it still says Corvette. So there's something there's a bit of
magic there. Right. Yeah. This will always have that magic attached to it. And I think the price
is kind of stable now. And I don't know that it's going to rise much with inflation. I think it
will probably trail inflation. I think it'll trail a little bit. It'll track a little bit below
inflation. Well, who actually knows Paul Smart? And is that number going to grow or decline over time?
It will decline. But most people, I would say in the world of motorcycle, more people know the
Paul Smart, Ducati than they know Paul Smart. This thing made fucking waves when it came out.
Right. And that's my point is that it's going to be, oh, well, this is a, you know,
this is named after an actual racer. But people are going to know less and less about that racer.
I mean, I want to say I bought my first motorcycle in
oh, three.
So this came out a few years afterwards. I mean, I was, I was going down to a new stand
every month and buying motorcycle print magazines like when this came out.
Like this was a big deal in my world when this came out.
Because yeah, I, I'm pretty sure I was under 21 when I got my first bike. I had not been out of
high school that long. I was like, I got, I was like, oh, shit, I like, I just woke up one day and
realized, fuck, I've had my own place for a while now. There's nobody to tell me I can't have a
motorcycle. Then I was like, I guess I'll get on eBay. Look, what does it cost? Oh,
shit, I can have one for $600. Done. Right. It happened that, like, I woke up that morning and by
like 11 a.m. I bought a motorcycle. It was just that moment. Oh, there's not any barriers in the
way. I have a place. I have a place to park it. I have some basic tools. Let's do this.
And yeah, and this kind of came out. So this is a special bike for me, but there we go. Anyway,
it's a prestige motorcycle. And now swigs, you and I couldn't potentially share in a bit of this
prestige. Weirdly enough. And there'll be more models like this to come. So let's get into a
topic here. What time are we at on the recorder? We are about 50 minutes. That's not too bad.
We should have gotten through this quicker, but whatever, whatever. Okay. So what do we want to
get into the lights or the tuning stages? Let's do lights real quick because I, yeah, there's not
too much. There's not too much to say about this, but it's, um, this is just a thing that caught
my eye that was really cool, but also is very interesting in that Yamaha isn't like especially
promoting it. Hold on real quick. I just want to say I know some people think this about the podcast
just for all these people that think that, you know, we go through a bike and we immediately
list its weight and its horsepower and its torque and blah, blah, blah. And that's all we
fucking like meant like we didn't mention any of those fucking specs about this bike. And that was
very much intentional in my part. I just wanted to talk about what the essence of this bike is.
All right. Go. Yeah. So Yamaha has put out some promotional material on this. And then mostly
it's been journalists really highlighting it. Uh, but for the, the Tracer 9 for 2025.
If you actually go and, you know, we're looking at the, uh, the, the home page for this bike
on the Yamaha website right now. If you go through it, the, the top features, they've got three bullet
points for their top features, which is the rider modes, the seven inch TFT display,
bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. And the 900cc, uh, three cylinder motor that they've been making
for half a decade or more now. Chef's kiss, no notes on that part, legit. But if you just look
at the pictures they have, there are a couple pictures that show off these fans, these, uh,
super fancy new headlights. And I only learned about this because I actually looked at the,
at a bunch of articles that we're talking about this. And they're not talking about it on their
own page. But this is possibly the most significant thing a low key big news. Yeah. So on the Tracer
9 Yamaha has added this brand new set of headlights. And what they've done is they've put,
instead of having them mounted up in like a no sell, like in line with the handlebars,
they're all now mounted in the ferry. Kind of where you would expect like dirt bike radiators to be.
And what they've got exactly where you'd expect it to be. Yeah. Or like air scoops.
And what they've done is they've got this like, this four in a cell array of headlights.
And with a camera as well. And what they've done is they now have full matrix LED headlights
that you can keep your high beams on in traffic and rely on the, uh, adaptive matrix to block out the
light to for oncoming drivers. So you can keep your head your high beams on not in this country,
not in this country because the NHTSA is fucking horrendous at adopting new technology. But if you're
riding this in Italy, for example, you can just leave your brights on and it will automatically
dim them, not in every direction, just the direction of an oncoming driver. Right. And also,
what's the biggest party trick of these lightswigs? So these are fully ECU integrated ECU and IMU
integrated headlights. So these are cornering headlights. So when you dip, when you dip into a turn
on a like a bank road in the middle of the night in the middle of fucking nowhere, this will light up
whichever direction you're leaning in and light it up for you so you can kind of see through
the turn in the middle of nowhere where there's no ambient lighting and there's no, no street lights.
Yeah. And this is a party trick that is to me exactly what should be like like absolutely
front and center on an adventure bike or a touring bike of any kind. Because I love this because
again, this is for the haters that think with, oh my god, Peter Swiggy's hate TFT displays with
the power of a burning sun, suns for no fucking reason. But we don't hate all new technology.
Just pointless technology. Right. This is this provides real value. Yeah. So if you are somebody who's
doing a lot of, if you're doing a lot of touring, if you're going on your multi-month ridiculous trip
or you're doing 500 miles a day and it turns out that you're behind schedule and you end up
doing two or three hours in the pitch black because you overestimate how far you're going.
Or if you're somebody who works a night shift and you're reliably coming home in the dark,
if you're, you know, any of these situations where you're frequently riding in the dark,
having a lighting system like this is an enormous value because it gives you way more light,
like to be able to just ride your bike on the fucking highway with your high beams on.
Oh my god, that's great. To be able to ride with way more light and not have to consciously think
and become chances of other drivers to turn your high beams down, it seems like a little thing.
But when you're on an unfamiliar road in the middle of the night and you just want to get to your
hotel or motel, kind of a big deal. This is the sort of thing that just, it's a game of margins
that just makes you safer and more relaxed and be able to enjoy the ride more.
This is, this is a, this is a feature, and this is also a feature that you cannot get after market
because to be able to integrate it into the ECU, it's got to be making models specific,
it's got to be inside these fairings and be able to hit the angles that it needs to.
Yeah, this is something only an OEM can do. And to have it on a bike like this, this is,
this is a killer feature that would make me, if this situation applied to me,
buy this bike over every other bike on the markets. And way to go fucking Yamaha,
this is the kind of thing I would have expected to come out on the gold wing first.
Yeah, yeah, I'm frankly shocked. It's not on the, like, it's on this specific bike.
And I'm even shocked it's this tracer instead of the tenoray. But okay, now here's the other
things, Swigs. We do not want to see this on every motorcycle.
Correct, yeah, I would agree with that. I think, yeah, there's a $12,13, $14,000 price limit,
because again, we still very much believe in very basic cheap motorcycles,
because that's just a sort of thing that's going to fit into someone's life better. And there's no
need to take a $7,000 motorcycle and make it $7,800 just to incorporate this. There's just no
need for that. I mean, I wouldn't mind that. That wouldn't be too bad a price jump for me.
But I imagine this system is more like a thousand dollars or more, because this is nose. Yeah,
who knows? Because this is, this is something that's as expensive as like fuel injection and ABS,
because this has to be tuned for every model, right? Because it has to, it has to work with
the mounting point. It has to work with the IMU. It has to work with, well, it also requires a full
development team, right? Right. Like, whilst they're testing and calibrating the ABS, you know,
for every model of bike, they've got to have a couple guys who are working for like a full year
on just testing these lighting systems and calibrating them for every situation,
every everything just along with the ABS and all the other electronic features of the bike.
Yeah, there's a reason ABS is like, three to five hundred dollars. There's a great fortnight
video on it. Yeah. So this is probably going to be the same. And it's probably going to be
lower volume in terms of like a sales factor. So I would imagine this would cost a
little bit more. But I would expect, like, I would expect this to be like six to eight hundred
dollars or more per bike. And then it also has to fit into the fairings and everything as well.
So it may be even like, it may be way more. I'm going to say, oh, this, this whole like cluster in
here. Well, it's not the most elegant, beautiful thing I've ever seen. I much prefer it to the look of
like triangle lights. Yeah. Yeah. It's good stuff. Yeah. And but ultimately, I think,
I don't know if I would say like this needs to be cheaper than like, or more expensive than like
$12,000 to be a feature, but probably around like 10,000 or 9,000. But it needs to be,
but I think it still kind of fits into the adventure slash touring category. I want to see
this on basically every bit. Well, in my dream world, like when I'm king of the universe,
you know, the, the president of at least the entire northern hemisphere, I would like to see all
TFTs go away and we'll just replace them with these lighting systems on big expensive banks.
Yeah. But yeah, hats off to Yamaha super cool, actually relevant modern feature on a bike.
Let's keep this up. Yeah, I like it. I like it a lot too. All right. So let's talk about making your
bike go faster. Something we almost never talk about. I don't know why this particularly appealed
to me to talk about this week, but I'm really into this. So I was, I was, as I do, just cruise
in Craigslist, you know, for, for all my, you know, motorcycle needs. And I came across,
you know, a Harley Davidson that's usually if you see this, they're like, oh, it's got the stage
one kit. And this one was like, hey, bubs, I got the stage two kit on this one. And as I tend to do
when I hear this, I'm like, what does that mean? Well, it doesn't actually mean anything,
but there are some rough guidelines to what it means. And I thought, let's walk through the stage
kits plus a little something I like to call the stage like minus one kit. And talk about if you're
going to make your bike faster. And let's take the stage one through four as screaming eagle defines
it. Because when it comes to like stages in tuning, probably the most widely sought out source is
Harley Davidson's like screaming eagle custom shop stuff. At least in the world of motorcycles,
they'll be custom shops. You can take your car to whatever. And they'll have like stage one
through whatever. And they'll lay it out themselves. Like here's our various levels of how we'll
boost your performance. But the Harley Davidson's screaming eagle isn't a terrible model for
describing these. I mean, I have problems with it, but it's as best as we're going to do. And it turns
out most other people will sort of model their systems on this. So when you hear a bike being
stage whatever, we're going to talk about what that means very roughly. And what those approximate
costs could be. What those approximate benefits could be. And why ultimately you probably shouldn't
do any of it. So here goes. Before you do any of this bullshit,
the thing that screaming eagle doesn't even offer that I'm aware of is changing your sprockets or
somehow adjusting your final drive ratio. Now, everything else we talk about here is going
to involve. Well, yes, because that would be cheap. Well, yeah, exactly. Well, relatively cheap.
But yes, in some cases, in a lot of motorcycles, actually cheap, like $30, $40 cheap. Like,
if you didn't know, there is a way that you can get either more acceleration
or a higher top speed, not both, but one or the other for under $50. Technically, you can do it.
Technically, I'm going to say more like $150 because you'll need to buy a new belt or chain
probably, but you can punch out a chain. I mean, yeah, you can add some links and do some
magic. Maybe you've got to spend other $50 on a chain, whatever. I like to spend about $120
on a chain, but sure. Yeah. Or you can just buy a chain punch tool at Harbor Freight and then
spend another $10 on a couple extra master links. Well, I got the motion pro tool. I got the nice
one. But yeah, so your final drive ratio, so your final drive ratio, right, is if you
look in between your engine and your rear wheel, right? Something is connecting your engine to your
rear wheel. It might be a drive shaft. It might be a belt. It might be a chain, right? But there's a
spinny part here, and there's a spinny part here, and they're not the same. And it turns out
whether it's a belt or a chast or nobody else. Well, unless you're watching on YouTube, you're
not going to see this, but it's really annoying me that you're spinning your hands in opposite
directions. Okay. They are going in the same direction. But like, yeah, but there's a spinny thing
and a spinny thing. And then one's bigger than the other. And that's a ratio, right? Just like
on your bicycle, right? Now, if you're doing something like an old Vespa or a lambreta,
you're you're dealing with like eight to like 12 horsepower, usually somewhere in that range.
When you don't have a lot of horsepower or a lot of torque to work with,
you're making a big trade off. Right. And you change your ratios going to be wildly different.
It's going to be something like five to one is what your final drive ratio is. And everything
else is kind of getting you like in stages from just getting a meaningful amount of torque
off the line and then getting you up to that five to one about, right? You know, something like that.
If you're like a 200 CC Vespa, like a P200 that does 60 miles an hour something, it's going to be
about a five to one race somewhere in that, right? But then as soon as you're talking about like
real power in motorcycle or a car, whatever, it goes up to one to one because nothing gets better
than one to one, right? Once you get past one to one, well, then you're an overdrive, which is
no good for acceleration or power. That's just there to, oh, now we're cruising and you are now
getting just better fuel economy, right? Yeah. I mean, that's essentially the state where like,
if you remember as a kid on your six speed bike, when you're in sixth gear and you try and take
off from the line on that, you got to just kind of stand on the pedal. And then after like half a
second, it kind of starts to move forward and you can get your balance and get moving. So let's say
you've got something like a jigsaw 600, right? And your top gear, which is not overdrive or whatever,
is a one to one ratio. Well, you can change the size of your sprockets, either the rear sprocket
that your chain goes on to the rear or your front sprocket. It's usually easy to change your front
sprocket, but you can change either of them because, you know, they wear out over time, don't you know,
and you need to replace them anyway. I feel like most jigsar owners don't. They just end up
looking like a big row of shark fins, but yes, you can change them out with different sizes,
which will change your final drive ratio. So you can change your final drive ratio to be over
or under that one to one, right? Which will either give you a higher top. I just want to make sure,
are we still on track here? Because I thought we were ripping Harley riders. We're going to get to
that. I'm just talking about if you're going to actually make a mod to get yourself more acceleration
or more top speed, this is by far the cheapest, easiest and most cost effective way to do it.
Almost regardless of what vehicle you're on. If you're on a 50cc CVT scooter, you can get a
different variator, which essentially is like upping or dropping the number of teeth in your front
sprocket. Right? Yeah. Whether you're running a belt or whatever you change out the pulley sizes
or whatever, but changing that ratio from your motor to the rear wheel will give you either
better and meaningfully better acceleration or top speed. You can have a higher top speed and it'll
take longer to get there or you'll have a slightly lower top speed and you'll get there quicker.
And if you really need to fuck with the performance of your two wheel vehicle, I highly suggest
that you just do this and don't fuck with anything else.
Right? And this is what I call the the scream and eagle stage negative one.
Right? Okay. Right. This is all right. If you're going to do it, you should probably just do this.
Right? If you have to have a higher top speed for some reason, you know, if it's like a Jix or
600, you'll still accelerate really fucking fast. Even if you've like adjusted your ratio for a
higher top speed, you'll still probably accelerate really fast and have a higher top speed.
But your friends will beat you off the line. But you might pass them like, you know, a couple
miles down the road or you can just be a dickhead and say like, oh, you've got to stop for gas.
I don't. That's true. Yeah. You'll have better fuel economy too because you're accelerating slower.
Yeah. I'll see you in the next gas station. I'm going to get a coffee. I'll see you then.
I don't know if it's good for a whole gas stop. Yeah. Yeah. Scream and eagle stage one says,
let's move more air and fuel. And this is the part of motorcycle tuning or car tuning, frankly,
that you've heard something about. So I'm not going to dig into because I only learned about
we were doing this topic about four hours ago. So I've done no research. I'm going to base all
of my research on just the. Oh, you've pulled up the graph. I'm just going to use the highlighted
sections. And I'm going to use that to derive all of my knowledge of the scream and eagle stages.
And we're just going to go off that. Well, it turns out it's really basic shit that they're talking
about. But it's, well, it, it isn't. It isn't. Okay. So you'll notice, swigs, if you look at
screen, we'll have to put this, this graphic up. But stage one, basically, oh, stage one is airbox
and ECU. I'm sure. And exhaust. So if you go to a Harley Davidson dealership or, you know, whatever,
or you're just looking to sort of up the performance of your bike, everyone talks about, well,
we got to get her breathing really easy, man. Okay. Let's think about this. So they're saying,
let's move more air and fuel through your engine. Okay. I agree. In principle, yes, you move more
air and fuel through. There's more stuff to make go bang. Okay. Sure. Will this produce more power?
Yes. So they are talking about, let's put on a less restrictive exhaust. Okay.
Whether or not it meets like noise compliance or emissions things is questionable. But sure. Okay.
Let's say you're going to replace it with an exhaust and let's say that exhaust has an O2 sensor.
It should have an O2 sensor. It's probably just the mufflers that are past your header pipes,
which have the O2 sensor on them in all likelihood. So it's only half of your exhaust system,
really, that you're replacing. The header pipes and the sensors, you're probably keeping from
original here. So you're getting some shit that honestly sounds a lot bigger difference
that it's making an airflow. But it'll probably be a little less restrictive. Sure. It's got less
muffling shit in it, whatever. And then you're going to change the way that the fuel is mapped.
Because you're putting on a thing which will let you suck in more air. Okay. So you need to add more
fuels. You got to change the computer to add in more fuel. Well, this requires putting it on a
dyno. Now, sometimes a lot of people have done the work for you. There are some people out there
in God bless them. They went to a shop and paid for expensive dyno tuning, which is something like
a hundred bucks an hour. More or less. If you're at a Harley Davidson dealer, be prepared for
$200 an hour. Also, I'm surprised it's that cheap. Well, all they're doing is after they have
been paid something like $150 an hour to fit this new exhaust and air intake into your bike. And
it doesn't matter how long it actually took them to do it. They have a book rate for doing it.
So a dude basically unscrews part of your exhaust system and then screws on new parts, unscrews
your air box, screws another bit on. This is if you get it done on a Harley Davidson. And then
puts it on a rolling road and has to measure out like, okay, blah, blah, blah. Even though
they damn will know exactly where it should be set because someone has done this with this bike
before, put these exact same parts on a stock engine and knows what the setting for the ECU should
be. But Harley won't do that for you. They you have to pay to put your bike on the dyno,
on the rolling road and everything and figure out what the power is and everything and then tune
it special for you, brother. And you know what? For $200 at most Harley Davidson dealers,
you even get to watch them do it. They'll let you sit in the room and put the fucking mufflers
over your head and you're like, yeah, we're tuning for performance, baby.
It's fucking dumbest shit because the guy could have just plugged it into a laptop and been like,
there it goes. Like the whole process could have taken maybe an hour and 20 minutes,
but this gets drug out over an entire fucking day and you end up paying north of $3,000 for a
five to 10% increase in power. It's kind of bullshit. And what does five to 10% increase in
power make? Let's say you're buying a Milwaukee eight like, you know, soft tail, whatever.
This bike's making like 80 horsepower stock. So best case scenario, you're getting 10% more power.
We're up to 88 horsepower.
On an 800, 750 pound bike, we're talking one, two tenths of a second and zero to 60,
maybe four extra miles per hour on the top end,
which you'll never hit anyway for thousands of dollars. This is an insane idea.
Yeah, the value proposition is ludicrous, but not only that, you'd be better off changing your
final drive ratio. Right, but not only that, you're you're talking about stage one of four.
So what is the prestige of stage one? What is like, if you show up to a Harley Davidson,
like Rally, I'm not a pussy. I did the stage one kits. Like, you know, and how
many of you are going to say I did the stage two, the stage three, the stage four. And what's
the implication of stage one? Hey, don't worry, Ben. I bought this one and I had him fit the
stage one kit when I got it because you know Harley Davidson. They build it like their idiots to
start with. Yeah, the fact that this is this is tied to the dealership and to the manufacturer
is kind of insane. What we're we're kind of singling out screaming eagle here, but this is a very
common thing that dudes did with inline four sport bikes too. You know, who did it the best though?
It's not who did it first. It's who did it best. Okay. Uh, Yamaha with the Z1 RTC. Oh,
slapping the turbo on and making you sign the wafer. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, this does not have
good enough clutch brains. Look, if Harley Davidson made you sign a waver and like voided your
warranty, instantly amazing. I would have more respect for them if they did. Actually, I will say,
yeah, this all the screaming eagle shit, they do say that you keep your warranty with all of this
stuff. Pussies. I know. Anyway, so, um, so yeah, this is basically just the modern day version of
putting a bigger carb on it and an open pipe and drilling holes in your air box, right? That's
all we're really talking about. Except you don't have to actually fuck with the carburetor, you
fuck with the fuel injection system with your computer. That's it. Um, this is, I mean, if you have
to do something past, if you have to do something past changing your final drive ratio, I guess,
okay, this is the least dumb one, but it's still a curious way to go. Um, I did this with my CB 350
and I did it successfully. I got more power out of the bike, but this is what they don't tell you.
Yes, there's more power, but it's in different places. Right. Yeah. So on the CB 350, all of a sudden,
it was a pig under 40 miles an hour. And once I got above over 40 and really got it high in the
rev range and got the gears up, all of a sudden it came alive. And it was like, oh, this bike that
used to top out at like 64 miles an hour now does 87 after I fit like some Bacuni, like VM,
like 30 carbs to it and jetted the shit. I went through a lot of jets to get it right and ran some
aftermarket pipes on the thing and modified the air box, all of that shit. And I got it run
in sweet and wasn't more powerful. Fuck yes. But I knew that I was just eating that cam alive
when I got above 60 miles an hour. It just the thing doesn't have the oil system for it on the top
and do you want a 350 that like has worse power delivery than a 150 cc scooter around town.
No, I mean, that thing had like pretty good poke. It was like 24 it was
but yeah, it was it was kind of meant to top out at like 63 64 and it was topping out about 87.
And that's what GPS I was doing it. Not the not the actual speed. The actual speed
I want it couldn't be trusted above like 23 miles an hour. Oh, I know I I rode that thing wide
open at full tuck on on 85 when I had the the Bacuni's on it. Yeah. And the speed. The speed
it was just like you're doing somewhere in this 23 mile per hour range. Yeah. Well dad was
dad was riding alongside the magnet in the back of that thing was fucked. Yeah. Dad was riding
alongside me on the on the the Vulcan. And I I signaled to him and I went to him like at the end
of the day like point at your speed of what yeah, I was like looking at your speed at the end of
like how fast were we going when it when I when I when I'm ocean to use like oh, we were doing 65
and it was probably reading like 75 at the time. It was bouncing around 75. Oh yeah, but I'm
saying with a good like two or three miles build up, I could get it up to like 80 something
high 80s agent. It was just like, but I was just eating the engine. It wasn't worth it. Again,
all the low and mid-range power was gone. It was just all upper and power. Right. Yeah. Yeah,
I just had to build up like that much pressure in the fucking venturies of the carburetor to just
get that fuel and air moving. And below that, you know, because here's the thing. These bikes and
their fuel systems and the exhaust and everything is set up for basically like a an RPM range.
And when you change how much air and fuels moving through it, that range that it's optimized for
moves. And it usually moves up. And this is why I know it sounds bullshit to a lot of people,
but tuned for the mid-range isn't like this bullshit statement that you think it is. It means,
hey, we took this thing and doesn't have less top end power. Yes. But holy shit is like the power
in the middle more usable. And this is to do with what size valves are in it. This has to do with,
yeah, how much air and fuels moving in there. This has to do with how the head is shaped, you know,
and for the whole thing, the bore versus the stroke. The best example of this is the best example of
this is what can a Chevy LS motor do if you don't care about the longevity of the motor?
Yeah, it turns out it could basically like replace the motor in a fucking like a SpaceX rocket.
You're not for very long. Yeah, you can get an LS motor, like you can get a 90s LS motor to do 800
horsepower as long as you don't expect it to live very long. Oh, and a blower to it. You'll get
north of a thousand real quick. Right. Like it's not a problem. But, but you're going to measure
that engine's life in hours, not miles. Yeah. And that's, and that's those that welcome to the world
of marine engines or drag racing. Yeah. Yeah. Like those, those engines, those drag racing engines,
like, yeah, they'll be like, oh, shit, they're getting like 3000 horsepower out of a seven-liter
motor. It's like, yeah, for a two-minute engine life. Exactly. Yeah, for like two, they'll run it
like four times and then it'll explode. Yeah. Anyway, stage two. Stage two, and here's the big lie.
Now we have to talk about the lie of tuning stages. Every time you go to another stage,
you're not adding to the last stage. You have to spend all the money from the previous stage
again. Yeah, because an engine with the air intake, the ECU, it's all a careful balance.
The ratio, the piston rod, well, I guess piston rods and cams are technically you could go,
you could skip to the end. But yeah, the air intake, like the piston rods, you mean the con rods,
or the push rods? What rods do you say? It doesn't matter. Just keep going. I'm sorry. No, I mean
the piston rods. But like, oh, I guess technically by this image, yeah, I guess the other pit,
yeah, it does matter. Not conclusive from this image, but they have the con rods highlighted
in this photo. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, in terms of reinforcing parts to take more power,
okay, yeah, so you could skip to the end. Fine. But in terms of air intake, in terms of ECU
programming for your fuel rates at different RPMs, in terms of exhaust flow, like all of those
things have to be recalculated every time. Okay, so basically stage two goes, okay, we got your
air intake bringing in more air, which by the way means it's also bringing in more dirt and
bullshit. I mean, just so you know, not good for your motor necessarily. Second,
we got your exhaust pushing more out so you can move more through the middle.
Well, with your ECU flash from stage one, we got the maximum amount going through the middle.
Well, stage two says, well, what if the middle can let more through,
which means we're going to put in what they call a hot cam, which so if it's a Harley Davidson
motor, the cams at the bottom, if it's a Honda or anything that's from basically this century
philosophically, where I'm a walkie the cams are at the top of the motor. And it's a thing with
lobes on it. And they move around and they have little bits that stick out and as they move around,
they make your valves open and shut. And so the lobes stick out more oblong, they're a little more
egg-shaped than the can that you took that you pulled out of this thing to put this new cam in.
And so the valves will open longer and well, the valves will open further and they'll stay open
a little longer. So that's more left and more duration. How much, I mean, it all depends on
what the motor is and whatever, but there'll be a little bit more left. And if there's more left,
there will be more duration, but you could have just a tiny bit more left and longer duration,
or lots more left and still more, but not quite as much more duration. There's various ways that
they can be shaped, but basically it means that the that the valves will be open more and
for longer, which means more fuel and air will come in. So there's more big bang.
Well, now that there's this more big bang, you're going to need different pistons and different
con rods, which means now the whole engine's got to come apart, or the whole top end's got to come
apart because the jugs have to come off and the con rods have to replace, because now there's
enough more big bang that if you don't replace them with stronger rods, they might bend, or the
pistons might get a whole blown through them. And you might need different rings too. And then
guess what? After all of this, you've got to pay $200 an hour for multiple hours for it to go
on the rolling road to get tuned again, even though someone's done this exact same tune before,
but Harley Davis is not, you're just going to let you have their numbers, you've got to recalculate
it all again. And guess what they're going to say? Well, you know, unless you give us like another
$1,300 for an even better exhaust system, I don't know that you're really getting everything at,
do you really want to be spending $5,000 to not be getting everything out of it? I think you
should be spending another $7,300 here, bro. For now, what we're talking maybe
20% increase in power? Okay, from stock, not from what you got on stage one, just from stock.
Okay, but again, we're talking about even more diminishing returns. Yes, it's like another 10%
in power. But when I said before that 10% in power, like percent power increases are diminishing
returns and performance. So yes, it is double the increase in power, but you're only going to see
like one and a half to 1.3% that, you know, like what you would have seen over stage one.
Like it's not, if stage one got you a tenth of a second faster, zero to 60,
this is getting you a tenth and a third faster on zero to 60.
Yeah, so for what could easily be $7,500, it's fucking crazy. So I do want to just truncate this
a little bit because we're already at an hour and a half. Let me just be, yeah, okay, we've probably
got 10, 20 minutes left before we got to go on to Patreon only, but yeah. But
and in this whole scenario, you also have to look at this from the perspective of
if you got like a 103 inch motor, why not go for the 109 or the 111 or the 112 or whatever
bigger motor. Yeah, get the bigger motor at time of purchase. Yeah, get the bigger motor
at time of purchase. But also, if you have the biggest motor,
why do you need more power? Because ever since the mill walkie eights got a little bit more refined,
you know, you're, you know, around the Milwaukee eight went overhead cam and four valve and 80 plus
horsepower with over a hundred foot pounds of torque. So as far as I'm concerned, there's no need
to tune a Milwaukee eight of any kind. It solved every Harley Davidson performance problem that
ever existed. Yeah. And honestly, if you own that bike and you're riding up against a similar bike,
you know what, you can beat anybody off the line purely with rider skill with better clutch control,
with better launch skill, with in a straight line, you can with a little bit of practice, you can
beat anyone that you know. So let's blow. But also through stage three here and then we'll leave
stage four for patreon. And then after we get through stage four, I have looked at the winners
of and the patreon, we stop at the winners in terms of performance models. Oh, we will too,
because there is a clear one. We'll get through stage three here. Then in in patreon, we'll do
stage four plus I'm going to talk about how a 1980s Harley Davidson EVO motor compares to a brand new
Mustang GT. And it'll fucking surprise you. Okay. So let's go with stage three. Stage three is
stage three, I think is the most glorious stage. Stage three is the pinnacle of red neck living.
The big bore kit. The big bore kit is the ultimate life goal of everybody who makes less than
$40,000 a year. Oh, yeah, because the big bore kit, you can just say, it's a bigger. There's now
a number attached to the performance that you're at. Yeah. That's like, this is 100cc's bigger. So
clearly it's more powerful. Right. Bigger number means better. So the big bore kit again,
for the say reasons, you might have to do the exhaust and the intake again. You definitely have
to do the fuel system again. And again, and for all this fuel system stuff and the dyno tuning again,
even if you've got an old EVO Harley with a carburetor, like this means a new carburetor and
jetting nightmares every single time you're doing this, just because you're vintage, don't think
you're getting around this fucking problem. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so at this point,
we're not just replacing the con rods. We might be replacing the actual crankshaft as well.
Uh, we're putting on bigger jugs, which means guess what? New rods and new pistons again.
Right. Well, you're definitely changing the crank. Hopefully at this point, you're still keeping the
air intake you got from stage two, probably, but you are spending money replacing everything again.
And this is how they get you. They're like, well, if you're going to do stage two,
you know, you're just throwing money away if you don't do stage three, brother.
Well, actually, this is, this is far more brutal if it's, um, if it's, uh, pushrod because,
yeah, you do have to change the whole crank. Oh, at this point, yeah, you're replacing the push
rods too. Yeah, because you could just do a top end if potentially if you're just doing,
if it's over at cam, but you have to change the whole crank out because if you're going to change
all of the cams on the crankshaft, you might as well just change out the whole,
the whole crankshaft.
Well, again, we're not talking just about Harley's. This kind of is sort of if you're tuning
any engine. We're just going through Harley-Davidson staging like two, like things here,
but like, yes, okay, what you're saying roughly as, yes, it's adds up. But like at this point,
like I said, you're changing like the jugs, right? And okay, sure. But again, now what are we
talking about in performance? And I think even screaming ego at this point is like, well, stage two
gives you like 15 to 20%. You know, stage three is like, okay, it's like a 25% increase in power
over stock. It's like, it's so much money. Like you're replacing almost every part of the motor
from where the sticky outfin bit starts all the way up and shit inside like below there too.
Like you're changing a lot of shit, right? For a 25% increase in power, which you didn't really
need to start with. And Swigs, I know you're going down here and looking at these prices
on the the screaming ego performance page. They will not sell you these parts directly.
They're just letting you know what the parts cost is up front.
You cannot buy this shit and install it yourself from Harley. Oh, yeah.
You have to buy this shit, add tax and then pay a dude, you know, 160 bucks an hour, whatever,
to install it and then pay for the dyno time. And when we're looking at stage three here,
we're already looking at like seven, eight, nine thousand dollars in parts. So just looking at like
stage three here, they're already talking about like here like five thousand dollars in parts.
And then there's going to be at least a 30 to 50% premium on dealership like labor and everything
on top of that. Like, well, again, this is an include another exhaust. This is how you turn your
$14,000 motorcycle into a $30,000 motorcycle that actually is still a $10,000 motorcycle. Yes.
Yes. None of this shit adds value whatsoever. Exactly. It's fucking crazy. So again,
if you really need your bike to go faster for some reason, just change your final drive ratio.
If you need it to accelerate faster, change that final drive ratio. Yeah. You know what, spend
rather than spend $10,000 to make your bike worth less. You know what, put a different
front and rear sprocket on your bike. Yeah. And then get up to that speed and then say,
do I want to go another $9,000 to make like, you change it up and down. So experience the
acceleration and then change it to experience the top speed experience of both then go,
do I want to go another not the cost of another whole motorcycle
to attain both of these at will like boom on the throttler or if you really like torque.
Are you okay with spending another three cents per mile to get a bit more torque?
Because that seems a lot more reasonable.
Fucking up your bike in a way that nobody else would want to buy it. Uh-huh.
Like from factory. There have been times in my life that I have looked at like, you know,
like a 98 to like 2003 Suzuki Jix or 600 or 750 s rad. And I'm like, oh my god, I want to buy
this so fucking bad. And then the description's like, yep, did the drill, the holes in the
air box mod change the the the the the gearing and I'm like, oh, I don't want it anymore.
Yeah, why'd you fuck with it?
And these are just the cheap easy things that are relatively easy to reverse.
Right? The moment I see an R6 for sale and they're like, put a different cam in it. I'm like,
I'm out. I'm out. No. Yeah. No. The bike was already fucking wicked.
Uh, no one ever accused the stock R6 of being slow.
Ever. I mean, really, why don't you just ride around in R6 and just tell people that you
put a different cam in it? No one will ever fucking know. And to be fucking honest,
all these dudes are like the scream and eagle bullshit on the side of their harleys.
I I never see them breaking 85 miles an hour.
But how much is it just by screaming eagle stickers?
Yeah, I remember we were heading out of town actually to to vintage days and we stopped at
an O'Reilly's to pick up like an inverter for the for the pickup. Oh, yeah. And we we came
across that guy on the R6. And this is the most stereotypical R6 interaction. It was an R1. But
yeah, like it was an R1. It's it's the most stereotypical R1 interaction you can possibly have.
Which is one, he told us all the mods he had on the bike. Mm-hmm. And then two,
he tried to sell it to us. Right. So good. So good. Yeah. So really, you've heard people say
this a million times. But if you want your bike to go faster, just buy a faster bike.
Like sell your bike and roll that into a bike that goes faster. The one should be obvious.
The one to a lot of people I'll give to this. And it's because I'm doing it is if you've got something.
So if you've got something so old like 1950s, 1960s, it's actually quite common these days that
instead of buying original or reproduction parts, you can get kits which are an upgrade to
basically refresh your motor. So if you have an old Vespa, you know, 125 or a lamb bread or whatever,
or even actually some modern like 125 scooters, it can actually be cost effective to buy the
bigger kits. But even in the case of my lamb bread, I keep talking about spending stupid amounts
of money on my lamb bread. I'm talking about like $2,800. Right. Right.
For like the pinnacle of what actually the pinnacle of what I could do is actually somewhere around
$12,000. But that's for like a 330 CC motor that's like made of billet from scratch that comes
in plug and play. I'm not doing that. But for like for keeping the original. You're also about
making it like 38 horsepower or something ridiculous. Right. I'm fine with like 14 exactly.
I just want to be able to do 60 miles an hour right on state highway and not give a fuck exactly.
Yeah. But you know, to take up to 200 CCs and make it a little bit more powerful than like,
you know, maybe like 10% more powerful than the most powerful like Vespas and Lambretta's were back
in like the 60s and 70s. Just a little bit above that. They make some ones that have a little bit,
you know, pistons, two-stroke pistons with some better airflow and like really generous port timings
that make that possible for not too much work that you can just do in your garage. And this is also,
by the way, replacing every oil seal in the motor and everything. I thought about replacing the gear
box. Oh, that's the other thing with stage three. Sorry. Stage three, you've increased your power
25%. You're probably going to not up your top speed very much unless you now buy a new transmission
for your Harley Davidson or whatever other bike.
Like you're by stage three on almost anything, you've probably exceeded the value of the motorcycle
unless it was brand new. Just saying. What time are we at? What was it say?
Well, it says 152, but we're probably at like 145. 145? Yeah, we should have said it now. We don't
have the sound effects. Let's just sing it out swigs and then we'll do a teaky drink break and
come back for the remainder of the episode. Let's do it.
Fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer-fer. And I don't want to die. I just want to ride on my motor side.
emco... Badoop-badoop-doo.