Hopping Up an 883
Article & Photos: Compliments of S&S Cycle
Originally Published In The March 2014 Issue Of Cycle Source Magazine
Harley-Davidson 883 Sportster models are generally pretty economical motorcycles, but not always as economical as this one owned by Ryan Wessel of Onalaska, WI, a suburb of La Crosse. One of Ryan’s coworkers bought it brand new in 2009 and had it trailered to his house, since he didn’t have a motorcycle license and had never ridden a motorcycle. His intention was, of course, to take a safety course and get his license. Well, there’s a special road that they say is paved with good intentions. So Ryan started bugging his friend to sell him the bike. At first it was, “No way! I’m gonna get my license and ride it,” but after about a year of pestering and still no license, the deal went down. Ryan had an essentially brand new bike with no miles on it for about half of the original price. Sweet! Ryan had already been riding for a number of years and his previous ride was a 1000cc Suzuki GSX-R, so he was used to some pretty serious performance. The reason he wanted the Harley- Davidson was because the Gixxer wasn’t comfortable for him and his girlfriend (now his wife) on long rides. Although more comfortable, the 883 was a real letdown in the fast department. In his words, “You really had to plan what you were going to do. You couldn’t just get out there and hit the gas!” He pretty much summed it up like this: “The thing was just slow!” Then, Ryan fell into another deal. He has a computer and networking business, and one of his customers is George B. Smith, co-owner and chairman of the board of directors at S&S Cycle. While doing some computer work for George, Ryan mentioned that he had a slow 883. It just so happened that S&S was looking for a totally stock 883 for some testing, to help develop something like the S&S 4-Step Performance program we have for Big Twins, but for Sportsters. Talk about being at the right place at the right time! Long story short, Ryan’s bike came to the S&S facility in Viola, WI, where the R&D department and the dyno facilities are. In accordance with scientific method, the bike was first put on the dyno, and a base line measurement was taken so we could evaluate the improvements we were going to make. It’s called Proven Performance for a reason! The first step in the XL program is the same as it is for the Big Twins: replace the stock mufflers with a set of S&S slash cut slip-ons and install an S&S Stealth air cleaner. The bike was making about 45 horsepower in the stock configuration, and we weren’t surprised to see a bump in power with the S&S exhaust and intake. (See the dyno chart!) Normally, riders install performance exhaust and air cleaners without much thought for EFI or carb tuning, and it generally works out well. However, the best power and drivability are often found with tuning. A lot of folks don’t do it because it’s an added expense that’s not absolutely necessary. In this case, we knew we weren’t going to stop with mufflers and an air cleaner, and we’d absolutely need to be able to tune the bike later. So we connected a Dynojet Power Vision Tuner and optimized the fuel system with one of our calibration files available from the S&S website. In addition to modifying the fuel map, the PVT calibration file also increased the rev limit to 6500 rpm. When Ryan showed up to test ride the bike, we got the impression that he wasn’t expecting much. Turns out, he’d previously put a new exhaust header and intake on his car with no improvement. He was pretty disappointed with his automotive experience, and it colored his expectations here. As soon as he thumbed the starter, he got this grin on his face. It was like, “OK, this is more like it!” The grin was even bigger when he rode back into the driveway at the S&S Ranch after his ride. With this simple upgrade, he’d gained over 11 horsepower, and it made a tremendous difference in the ride. Think about it, that’s almost a 25% increase. “I was up to 90 miles an hour and I still had another gear left! Amazing! It’s never run like that before!” Just about everything he said had an exclamation mark after it! Most new bikes get performance exhausts right away, but many overlook the air cleaner as a source of extra power. The fact is, an air cleaner/exhaust combination will actually produce a bigger increase in power than the total of the increases of either of them when used individually — greater than the sum of the parts, for lack of a more original phrase. Next month, we’ll pour the cubes into it and really make ‘er bark
After the baseline dyno runs were complete, Aaron, the S&S technician in charge of the project, installed an S&S Stealth Air Cleaner. He’s done this before, so it only took him about 20 minutes. It might take a lesser man 25 or 30 minutes. It’s really an easy job.
Installing the mufflers on the stock header pipes is a pretty simple job, too. Mechanically, there’s not much to an air cleaner and muffler installation.
Even though you can generally get away without tuning your EFI or carb with a simple change like mufflers and air cleaner, it helps to get the best performance and drivability. Besides, we have big plans for this bike so we hooked up a Dynojet® Power Vision® tuner and loaded one of our free calibration files into the stock ECM. S&S has Power Vision Tuner (PVT) calibrations available for most of our performance kits on the S&S website at http:// www.sscycle.com/tune-files/ power-vision/.
Here’s the bottom line. Ryan was all smiles when he came back from the test ride. The increased torque and horsepower were immediately apparent, and besides it sounded great! Even a relatively small engine like an 883 can use more air. The dyno shows that the stock system is starting to lose torque at about 3700 rpm, but the S&S air cleaner and muffler combination keeps the engine breathing and the torque keeps increasing until almost 5500 rpm. This chart also shows that without increasing the rev limit, we wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of the full capability of this engine. That’s a good reason to invest in a tuner, even for such a seemingly minor performance upgrade.