| Motorcycles and Twowheelers: Motorcycle hobby and interest - "Motorcycle Customization - Shared Passion and Individual Style" Wednesday, 20 August, 2008 | Home | Suggest a Link |
Formula 1 Fantasy LeagueOne of the key parts of motorcycling is making your ride unique to your taste. Motorcycling is all about the shared passion and individual style. Motorcycle customization has become big business driven by this need to take a showroom stock motorcycle and "pimp" it out if you will. The demand for aftermarket parts has created a huge startup with ma and pa stores. Small time fabricators are designing custom pieces for their favorite motorcycles and offering them to the masses.
This is not to say that the major motorcycle corporations have not taken notice. Honda offers their very popular VTX motorcycle models in 13 different customization styles. You can mix and match to your heart is content. Victory motorcycle has also jumped into the customization game by offering customer a Custom Order Program. Victory basically lets the customer build the bike online the way the customer wants it by picking from the various custom options. Victory started this program back in 2004 and have been running it ever since. Most notably with the Victory Hammer and now the extreme custom Victory Jackpot model. With the Ness team providing styling input for the Victory line, the customer ends up being the real winner here.
Victory is a breath of fresh air on the popular V-Twin cruiser market. They offer sharp stylish looking machines that actually are well built and perform really well. Harley-Davidson needs to take note. While Harley-Davidson business model has switched to making dealerships have multi-acre showrooms selling nothing but clothing, Victory came in under the radar and listened to their customers and provided them what they want -- a stylish reliable high performance machine. Harley Davidson owners are quickly trading in their motorcycles for Victory Hammers, Vegas, Jackpots, and Kingpins. You will find it very difficult to find many Victory motorcycles on the showroom. No it is not that they are now just selling clothing like Harley dealers, but that they cannot keep the Victory motorcycles in stock.
The beauty of Victory is that they offer a diverse styling package for their bikes so that they do not just produce a cookie-cutter clone bike like Harley Davidson did with their 100th Anniversary edition bikes. How boring. Everyone bought one thinking it would be unique, only to find out that Harley had way overproduced these bikes and forced them down the throats of the dealerships. Now everyone and their mother own one. No unique styling.
Now with the popularity of the Victory motorcycle growing more each year we are starting to see more shops start to produce quality aftermarket parts and accessories for your beloved Victory. The best way that I have found to keep informed of the latest products and upgrades is to monitor the various Victory motorcycle enthusiasts sites like the Victory Kingpin Cruisers site -- This site is Victory Kingpin-centric but it also discusses all late-model Victory motorcycles and touches on customization tips, products, and maintenance tips and articles. The manufacturers also monitor these sites to get an idea of what their customers are saying. It is a great way to keep informed and benefits everyone.
So now you have your new Victory Kingpin sitting in your garage, you receive heaps of compliments and love to ride the machine. But after awhile you start thinking about upgrades and customizations. Maybe these came to you in your sleep or by looking at someone else's motorcycle or by reading the aforementioned Kingpin Cruisers website.
So what types of upgrades are out there you ask. At first it is best to do the cosmetic upgrades. Bolt on chrome pieces, custom mirrors, swap out the stock turn signals for chrome LED turn signals, upgrade to some PIAA driving lights for better night visibility. You could also get some stock pieces chromed. This takes lots of time and money and in my experience it is far more cost-effective to just buy the piece new already chromed from the manufacturer. Again, the best places to find what is out there is to browse your favorite Victory enthusiasts site.
The main reason to focus on the cosmetic bolt-on pieces at first is that you do not want to be making performance modifications while your new shiny Victory Kingpin is still under warranty. Any such modification may void your warranty. Now having said that, the first major scheduled service for Victory motorcycles is at 20,000 miles while Harley Davidson motorcycles is at 2,000. Yes I said two thousand. Ouch, give me a Victory any day.
So you now have your motorcycle all covered in expensive chrome pieces. You have your bike and the warranty is about to expire. So now you should start looking into some performance modifications.
Performance modifications are great if you enjoy wrenching on your motorcycle and doing all of the work yourself. If you buy these upgrades and have the dealership service department do all of the work, you will find that you will quickly go broke. Think of it this way, if you do your own wrenching, the money you save in labor can be used to buy more goodies for your beloved Victory.
Now you may ask, what if I do not know how to install a certain component. Well, to keep the theme going, I suggest you consult your Victory enthusiasts web site. The Kingpin Cruisers offers free membership and has a volunteer certified Victory Technician there to answer questions and write technical articles on your Victory motorcycle. Plus there are heaps of others on this site that most likely have done the modification you are about to attempt.
Let us discuss a little more about performance modifications. When your Victory motorcycle is assembled and shipped to the dealership, it is tuned to run on the lean side. What does this mean? Well to satisfy EPA standard, manufacturers lean out their motorcycles so they run hotter and by controlling the air/fuel mixture. In this case a lean condition has more air in the mixture than fuel. This will cause your bike to backfire and rob you of a few horsepower.
Related to this lean running condition is the design of the stock air box. On the Victory it is shaped like a coffin and does not allow for direct airflow into the throttle bodies for maximum performance. Instead the air has to go through a couple ninety-degree turns, through some velocity tubes and take another ninety-degree turn downward into the throttle bodies. Not too efficient. So you ask, what can I do to optimize this airflow? The following is a list of options:
Once you have spent your money and installed these parts, I strongly suggest you have your motorcycle fine-tuned on a dyno. Most service shops have a dyno machine and charge from $40 on up for tuning. You may possibly see an additional 11 horsepower gain with these modifications. Not too bad for a Victory cruiser.
The performance modifications mentioned above are a very cost-effective solution for increasing the performance and horsepower of your motorcycle. There are more expensive routes that are available. These include: Upgrading to a Stage II performance kit and upgrading your exhaust system.
The final performance modification I suggest for the Victory motorcycles, especially the 2004 models with the 5-speed transmission, is the Overdrive drive sprocket pulley by TurboTec. For the 2004 5-speed transmission Victory motorcycles, this will make it so you will not have to downshift as much at highway cruising speeds, giving you lower RPMs at speed and thus a smoother ride.
The pulley is slightly larger than the stock pulley, which is why the shifting pattern changes for the better at speed. For standing start bursts, this overdrive pulley will shed some of that initial blast, but the benefit is smoother highway shifting. This is an inexpensive performance modification that you can install yourself. And if you have doubts about the installation, be sure to read and post questions on your Victory Kingpin enthusiast's site.
In summary, I hope this article has given you some sense of the various cosmetic and performance upgrades available to the consumer. I am very pleased with the products that Victory is producing and think they are going to continue to become more popular each year. So stay tuned for more articles on upgrades to make your Victory motorcycle unique.
With the popularity of shows like Orange County Choppers where we watch Pauly and his dad argue while building hot rod motorcycles, magazines about building hot rod bikes are gaining in popularity. There are two magazines in print today that specialize in providing editorial reviews about hot rod street bikes.
These two magazines are similar in subject but offer slightly different perspectives. Hot Rod Bikes is for the person who loves to work on his own hot rod motorcycle as well as to ride. Hot Rod Bikes provides instructions on how to modify your factory bike to suit your taste. It
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Weeks before I'm ready to leave on a long motorcycle trip, I start getting excited. Often I get to the point where I can't think of anything else.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that I spend the time getting prepared for it. I usually put this off to the very end. I've learned, however, over the years that this means that my packing never matches what I will really need for the trip. Proof: last year I was in Sturgis with nothing more than a sweatshirt and leather vest riding around in 45 to 55 degree weather. DUMB MOVE.
Anyway, to
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Motorcycle chopper kits are a growth industry. But what does that mean to you and me? Well, one thing that we know is that we will have more choppers to ogle at. There is not a single day that goes by without more and more pictures of chopper bikes that have just been finished showing up in all the motorcycle magazines. Then at the weekends, when we are on our “hot” rides, we will see four or five show finish level bikes. There are more choppers around now than there have been in the last twenty five years.
Most of these
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The latest craze worldwide is purchasing and racing Pocket Bikes.
However, these can be very dangerous to the inexperienced rider. These bikes are not toys and should never be underestimated.
The bikes that are more powerful and expensive are strictly built for experienced adult riders, not children looking for a joyride. These bikes are built sleek and fast for racing. They have power of 9.5 hp or 12+ hp - these models are definitely suggested for professional racers only.
Due to the incredible power to weight ratio, if you have no previous experience with these bikes, take safety precautions and educate
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The step from reading about building motorcycle kits and watching bike builds on television to the real thing is a little more difficult than it looks…
So you want to be a custom bike builder? Well, friend, before you rush out and buy that motorcycle kit, the one that will set you on the road to riches and fame, stop and think about the level of expertise and artistry the top builders have attained. More importantly think about how long it has taken them to attain it! Let’s look at a few key issues…
You’d be surprised how well educated a lot
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