Kuryakyn's Cheap Thrill

It seems like no matter how powerful and fast our motorcycles are, we just can't resist the urge for more. You can increase the compression, flow the heads, juice up the cams, add nitrous or a blower-you get the idea. Nobody should have to settle for what took the Factory engineers years, if not decades, to design, hone (no pun intended), and perfect on our beloved machines. Size matters to us, from the duallies we drive to the 24-ounce ribeye down at BeefBarn.

Aside from the simple pipe/airbox modification, probably no other job is easier to perform or gains the greatest bang for the buck than increasing the displacement of the motor. Many companies produce big-bore pistons that work well with most of the stock H-D components. Combine the increase in cubic inches with a slightly more aggressive cam design and the aforementioned pipes and air cleaner, and you can have yourself a very dependable, streetworthy motor. Streetworthy means the bike has the torque where you want it, most likely in that sweet 2-4,000 rpm midrange where we spend most of our time. Combine that with reliability and the bike is going to be fun to ride. On the flip side are motors built for peak (high rpm) power numbers that often give up power in the low rpm range while reducing reliability and possibly running poorly on pump-gas.

Kuryakyn has all the bases covered as far as motor hop-ups are concerned. Their individual components and motor kits range from mild to wild. As the parts get more aggressive (as in high lift cams, billet heads, larger throttle bodies, etc.) they yield more power, but at an expense, not the least of which is economic. We contacted Kryakyn to see what they had for the more budget-minded consumer that seeks more power but still wants to retain stock-like rideability and reliability. We were starting with a stock 96ci '07 Softail Deluxe that we wanted to bump up in size. They came up with the Cheap Thrills kit that fit the bill and in the process would increase displacement to 103 inches. Before we get into the specific parts, the following are the reasons we went with Kryakyn: gains in power and torque, a wide, usable powerbands easy starting without compression releases, quiet and smooth operation, can run on 91 octane pump gas without detonation (pinging), and performance-matched components.

The parts we received consisted of:

The previous Big Bore Cylinder Honing story in this issue showed you how we took the stock 96-inch cylinders and bored and honed them to accommodate the larger 103 pistons. Once that was finished we took the Cheap Thrills parts to Harley-Davidson of Anaheim-Fullerton to have tech Matt Cortez rebuild the motor and install a set of Vance and Hines Long Shot pipes, along with a Power Commander. Once the bike was put back together, we put 1,000 miles on the bike before dyno-tuning the EFI to gain maximum power.

Check out how what can be done in a day's worth of wrenching.