Wayne Hanson of Speed's Performance travels the country with his sons in their mobile bike shop, stopping at more than 15 major events and performance tuning anywhere from 3,500 to 5,000 bikes a season!

peed's Performance Plus is a Drag Specialties dealer/vendor with a difference. Wayne Hanson and his sons Jamie and Jason take their mobile bike shop and tuning center all across the country traveling coast-to-coast. They'll set up at more than 15 major events every year and an equal number of minor ones, performance tuning literally thousands of bikes a season. They'll tune anywhere from 3,500 to 5,000 machines and see it all, everything from the wildest big-inch customs to brand-new bikes rolled in straight from the showroom. And these days, Wayne says, the vast majority of the work is performed on fuel-injected motorcycles. "Easily 75% of the business," he says. The owners of those newer FI Harley-Davidsons come in looking for what Harley riders have always wanted too...better throttle response, improved rideability and a nice boost in power. Wayne Hanson, maybe one of the best tuners in the country, has a great set up to fill that need. He calls it his "Stage I" tune and it's ideal for the vast majority of street riders, says this master-tuner.
     Performance tuning a fuel-injected bike isn't any harder than it was for all those carbureted Harleys of the past. In fact, using some of the hardware and software now available Wayne says it's actually easier and the results are definitely more precise. As a fuel-delivery system Electronic Fuel Injection (EFI) has it all over a carburetor. "I'll take an injected bike any day of the week," attests Wayne. In this Two Part Series we'll first take a look at how Speed's Performance goes about waking up a stock or fairly stock V-twin, in a matter or hours transforming it into a real smile-maker for another happy customer. Next time we'll follow up with the specialized EFI tuning to go along with big-displacement, high-compression and radical cam timing. "And that," Wayne says, "Is a whole different ballgame."
     For a basic "Stage I" tune of a stock EFI Harley, Speed's has found a sweet combination of parts and techniques that deliver lots of low-end power for the kind of grunt a rider feels every time he cracks the throttle. The advent of fuel injection hasn't changed the starting point, either. Just like a carburetor-based tune it begins with a free-flowing air filter, a free-flowing performance exhaust, an efficient crankcase ventilation system and then comes the careful adjustments to the fuel-delivery system to balance with all those changes. All that's changed is how that FI fuel delivery is regulated and adjusted.

The first step in Hansons "Stage I" tune is to swap the OE air filter for something like the K&N RK Series Filter Kit, shown here.

     The first move is to swap the OE air filter and its restricted airbox for something better. The stock filter is a major impediment to airflow and there are lots of options for a replacement from K&N, Drag Specialties and others.      However, the Speed's team says don't consider anything smaller than a 2 3/4-inches wide; that's the minimum it takes to move enough air into an 88-inch engine. That high-flow air filter needs an open-back cover, too, and for a racier appearance something like an Arlen Ness Big Sucker or one of Speed's own "ram air" forward-facing filter kits are both good choices. The second change is the exhaust system. While Speed's recommends a 2-into-1 with a collector as the most efficient pipe design, a set of equal-length staggered duals, they say, preferably with some sort of crossover pipe or connecting chamber is a good second choice. The next area addressed is crankcase ventilation. Efficiently venting the engine lowers the pressure under the pistons and that benefits everything from the power produced to ensuring that gaskets remain leak-free to the overall mileage from a gallon of gas. Speed's has a neat system available to accomplish all this, too; their crank vents incorporate a check-ball and valve eliminating oil build up or misting from the breather bolts themselves.

Wayne spends a lot of time on the dyno, working to get the bikes to their most efficient and power-producing state.

     So far everything described pertains to both carbureted and fuel-injected motorcycles. Same, same.
It's that  next area addressed, adjusting the fuel delivery to match the improved airflow, where things change. Carbureted bikes require re-jetting and FI bikes need to be re-mapped, changing the electronic signals to the injectors. Factory-delivered, a Harley is set up on the lean side and that condition only gets worse with added air. Going hand-in-glove with this are the stricter emission standards certain to come. Soon, Wayne says, instead of a stock Harley running at its current air/fuel ratio of 13.6:1 in the cruising range and about 13.4:1 in the 60- to 80% range and 13 or 13.2:1 at wide open throttle we'll see all of that start much leaner with OE settings of up to 14.4:1 in the cruising ranges. That's fine if the goal is to meet stringent manufacturing regulations, not so fine for real-world performance. Fortunately it's something easily corrected.
     To understand the benefits of EFI and its almost infinite adjustability it's useful to first understand what's going on inside a carburetor and how it delivers fuel. Most carburetors use an idle circuit, a low-speed circuit and a main circuit. Some, like the Mikuni, Edelbrock and the factory CV models with an aftermarket jet-kit installed, also incorporate an adjustable needle to more closely regulate the 1/3- to 3/4-throttle range. In all cases as the intake-track signals are drawn through the carburetor fuel is lifted through those various circuits as a fine mist and introduced into the passing air stream. Precisely regulating all those circuits, and the carburetor venting which plays a large role in controlling them, isn't as easy as some claim. It takes years of experience to get it right, and many times just a change in jet size alone, while certainly getting much closer to what's needed, isn't the complete answer. It's better, but rarely perfect.
     Contrast that with what's possible on a fuel-injected motor using one of the many aftermarket tuning systems available. With this fuel-injection hardware and software the performance-tune of the fuel delivery begins by precisely setting the idle mixture and then continuing on from there at 2% of throttle, 5%, 10%, 20% and so on right up to the wide-open position. Quite often those adjustments are also possible at 250 RPM increments right up to 6,000 RPM and beyond. That's tight fuel tuning with no gaps anywhere. With some of the adjustment systems available changes can simultaneously be made to the ignition timing, and ignition timing is crucial to good performance. On a carbureted bike that ignition tuning would require an extra piece of hardware and the software to run it.
     While all of the EFI tuning systems in the aftermarket are better than simply leaving the stock Electronic Control Module (ECM) alone, some are more tunable then others. Some of these tuning systems, like the Daytona Twin Tec TCFI II Fuel Injection Controller, completely replace the factory ECM while others, like the Terry Components Terminal Velocity EFI Management System and the Power Commander III USB, "piggyback' onto the stock Harley-Davidson ECM adjusting the signal either up or down. Each design comes with the software to program and adjust it, and using a laptop computer pre-written performance maps can be installed and custom ones written. Still other EFI tuning systems require no computer adjustments at all. They regulate the factory EFI with a series of adjustment screws on their faces. Simple to operate, they allow the electronic signal from the factory ECM to be amplified thus pulling the injectors open a little further and keeping them open longer. Adding fuel in this manner is, in effect, tuning the sophisticated fuel-injection system like it was a carburetor. There are low-speed adjustments, mid-range adjustments and top-end adjustments, usually augmented with a load-adjustment feature that corresponds to a carburetor's accelerator pump. While easier to use, it's not nearly as accurate as a system able to make minute adjustments throughout the engine's entire operating range.
     And that brings up the latest wrinkle in EFI tuning. For the 2006 models Harley-Davidson made a change in the motorcycle's electronics, modifying the way the ECM sends and receives its signals from the various sensors on the motorcycle. This change actually started with the late-'05 models, and now, instead of two wires running to each sensor there's only one. More significant is the "closed-loop" FI system introduced on the 2006 Dynas. This FI management system utilizes a pair of oxygen sensors in the exhaust to sense airflow and fuel-delivery changes in engine operation on-the-fly as the bike is ridden, adjusting the fuel supply and ignition advance accordingly. Some of the newer aftermarket tuning systems are closed-loop design, as well, incorporating O2 sensors of their own that can be mounted in the exhaust head pipes. In theory this "on the fly" automatic adjustability would seem to eliminate any need for further dyno tuning. The on-board sensors would do it all.      Wayne Hanson's not convinced, however, and makes a compelling argument why.

As efficient as those closed-loop adjustment systems are, their range of adjustment is somewhat limited, he feels. While the claim is a wide adjustment range able to react to most any situation (after riding the bike a few times, it's said, the system will have seen all the hills and valleys in the required fuel-delivery and ignition maps and have made the necessary adjustments), that's questionable, in Wayne's opinion. Everyone might not agree with him, but as someone who works at a dyno every day, he feels the optimum set up with a closed-loop tuner is still a tune-up and dyno-mapping session that begins with the oxygen sensors in that closed-loop system turned off. Then, with the motorcycle adjusted to its most efficient and power-producing state the oxygen sensors can be reconnected. Working from that initial tune, the closed-loop adjustments will be far more precise and more effectively manage fuel consumption and emissions from that point on. And that's on a stock or fairly stock bike. It's still an open question how those closed-loop FI adjustment systems react to large changes in displacement, exhaust flow, cam profiles and bigger throttle bodies. Given all that Wayne feels it just makes sense, performance-wise, to start off with a custom map that's as close as you can get to what's required then let the closed-loop technology take over with its on-the-fly fine tuning from there.
     Have times changed? You bet they have, and for the better. Performance tuning a motorcycle has never been more precise and the results any crisper. Like Wayne Hanson says, "There's no comparison. I'll take a fuel-injected bike any day of the week." Next time we'll take that fuel-injected bike and its performance tuning one step further, adjusting for increased displacement, higher compression and radical camshaft profiles. Stay tuned, no pun intended...

Speed's Performance Plus is one hoppin' place at rallies!