Decided to go wondering around the place. Looking at all the venders, and taking all the demo rides that were available. Rode the Buell and then the T509 back-to-back. Wow, the Triumph was a hell of a lot better ride than the Buell - but that's another story.

Suddenly, !!!BwapppVrooommmmm,  Vrooooommmmmm, BWwaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!" Hmmmm? What's this all going on? Sounds like SQUIDS at play, but can't be?!?! The sounds appear to be moving even slower than a Harley-Davidson!

Really, it is possible, trust me.....

So motored the Tiger over to the ruckus and saw a dyno set up.

Wow! Neat! Cool gadget!
Hows it work?

You have to know me to really understand this... (The CNC Bridgeport sits next to the washer/dryer under a pile of dirty clothes...) The guy who owned and operated the Dyno showed me all the parts and how it worked. Poor thing ran with a 386DX-40 as it's main brain and had a printer in a tupper-ware container. (One year it rained so much that it screwed up the printer - Ah, the mother of invention..)

Ok lets do it!

Slap down my $40US and sign a release that holds him not liable if the motor explodes or other small malfunctions occur during the test runs.

I can't help but think, "Challenger, go with throttle-up!"

Load the bike onto the dyno.

Problem: The spark pickup cant be placed on a spark wire.

All right, Take off a body panel -> no problem now!

Start her up and let warm for a minute or so and the first dyno run starts. Wow, he is really flogging the shit out of my poor bike. Steam and water is spewing out of the silencers like old faithful!

The Dyno operator called the torque curve a torque "house". He was astounded by what the Tiger could put out! Never before had he seen a "curve" that was so "flat". Also, he commented on the smoothness of the rev limiter as it cut in near 9000 RPM.

The Tiger is unmodified and had 1800 miles on it.

The arrows (my poor mouse drawings) show the areas of the curves that are less than optimal. This dip is showing that when the throttle is whacked open the carberation is lagging behind the airflow for a while. The dyno operator (and other sources) states that this is due to a lean condition. This is normal for stock setups on the US bikes due to EPA emission regulations.

However, since the curves level off and become mostly horizontal, the lean condition is borderline and not horribly adverse to performance. But when the time comes the needles will be shimmed up 0.020" or so to give a tad richer mixture and the curves should straighten out a bit.

I am going to go back next year when I have done a bit of work on the bike. Probable additions will be a KN air cleaner, slightly shimmed needles, and possibly a drilled set of silencers.