well i was in an accident. i started another thread on that "1 idiot driver= a lifetime of pain". well anyways, i was planning on turboing my bike beforehand along with a 95ci big bore kit and cams. LOOKING FOR: anyone who has a turboed harley or has ever done a turbo(you other techs out there). also anyone who has any pics of turboed harleys. im including some pics of turboed bikes and custom parts. i was also gonna custom fab an exhaust and intake but if anyone knows where i can find a pre-built exhaust id be interested.

turbo softail. this is one bad a$$ bike!!

turbo dyna. i really like this setup

custom intake

one of my favorite. a turbo buell XB(im a previous buell owner)

 

come on people lets get some posts here

 

Back in the day...well..not that for back...say 2001, I turbocharged my dresser. At the time a company called Aerocharger had a kit on the market. They did not have a fuel injected model, so I traded my 2000 TC-88 down to a 97 normally aspirated EVO just for the try. It was a bolt-on and the cost was around 3K as I recall. The thing was totally wicked, but I could never tune it properly to run on both ends. If I set it up for low speed cruising and decided to gas it, the fuel delivery could not keep up with the turbo needs and it would nose-over, spit-n-sputter up there around 110. If I set it up for full power, it would load-up and flood-out under normal driving conditions. I will say the thing was a real beast and I could outrun anything in town. There was a slight turbo delay, but once you past that.......it was HANG ON.

The bad stuff:
I could never keep it tuned in the center of my riding style. It was VERY noisy. It added a terrific amount of heat in the engine and you simply could not run it on a hot day. I could find nobody else to ride with. It was so fast that nobody could play with me. It was suppose to make no more than 6-pounds of boost, but I had a boost gauge on there and have seen it up near 20 and even pegged when I got on it. It would boil the rear tire at just about any speed.

Now...here is what I later discovered. I had a cam bearing fail long after I had gotten rid of this turbo and discovered the bike (which I had bought used and took the guys word on it being stock) had a cam in it. The engine is suppose to be box-stock and mine had a cam....there is how I got my 20-plus pounds of boost.

This whole affair is a testimonial to the strength of the EVO. How I avoided blowing off the heads or bending the rods I will never know.

I don't even know if Aerocharger is still in business, but don't touch anything they may have to offer. I was anxious to get one and then more anxious to see it go. I sold it to some Fireman in Michigan and changed my phone number and address as soon as he paid me for it!

Good Luck!

 

Thank you 1550vt for the input. this is exactly the kind of input im looking for. so on the tuning issue i have a couple questions. what carb did you use? S+S? by the way you talk about tuning it yourself i assume you never had it tuned by a dyno shop? the cam sounds like the reason you had trouble with yours. ive heard that if you do not have a custom ground cam for the turbo that the best cam is the stock one.
Sounds like you had quite an experience. you say it raised the engine temps, thats something i have never considered. that might be an issue when i do this as i live in Texas. i am trying for a bike that is somewhat of a daily rider. meaning that i can jump on it and ride a 100 miles with no problems. too much to ask?

thank you for the input on this. youve given me some things to think about. please post pics of your old bike if you have any

 

I have done some pretty strange things to an HD. People use to tell me that I could over hall a small block chevy V8 with a pipe wrench and a pair of pliers. I was never THAT good, but do like to tinker. Every Harley I have ever owned was just a test-bed for playing with, which includes the one I have now.

The carburetor was a stock HD CV. I don't recall the actual size, but likely a 42/44mm. The CV was a very good choice because of it's "adjustability". Even the diaphragm spring can be stretched or compressed. I was just about to change the CV to another type before I sold the unit. It would probably have been more money down the drain.

I actually never got to a point that either required or needed a dyno to fine tune. I was hung on the basic tuning and if you can't get one to simply run right...no need to try and put it on a dyno. I worked with the people at Aerocharger to try and make this thing "workable". They had had these out there on the market for years and Richard Petty actually came through town once on Kyle's Victory tour and he was sporting one just like the one I had. I think my problem was the CV carb. The early models did not use the CV and I believe they made less power, but were driveable under all conditions.

As far as the cam, I am sure it was causing some of my problems, but I had discussions with other guys running (for sure) stock cams and had the same issues that I did. Mine was so wicked-*** fast and powerful because of the cam. Look....20-plus pounds of boost is UNREAL and that is what I could achieve easily.

When I could get it to idle and putt around, it would empty the bowl if I hit on it and the fuel pump could not keep up. If I set it up for high-end running, it would continuously foul the plugs or simply flood-out and die when you did try to just putt around.

The heat is added in a couple of different ways. Basically, more fuel/air means more power which means more energy in the engine and heat is the natural by-product of that. Another way is due to basic turbo operation. The turbo is powered by exhaust gasses which are very hot. This heat is transmitted through the turbo body and eventually finds its way into the air stream. Automobiles have what they call an innercooler that cools this intake air (to some degree), but you are basically compressing the hot air and shoving it down the throat of the intake. Also, just the problem of having all this stuff hung on the bike, which is air cooled anyway, disrupts natural air flow in-and-around the cylinders. You just don't have any room to hang stuff out in the fresh air and you are running hot exhaust pipes to-and-fro about the motor.

No doubt you can make a rocket ship, but who are you going to ride with? I used to get a big kick out of just blowing people off the highway, but had little overall driveability at all.

There are lots of turbo kits out there, but I don't know how they handle all these issues and the turbo lag as well. I just tend to think they are mostly for looking at and having people ask...."what's that". Maybe the efi models have solved a lot of these problems when they tossed the carburetor. If you are going to try something like this, I would not use the CV carburetor. I'd look at a flat-slide or some other model.

 

those are all very good points and i will definately take a lot of consideration before doing the turbo. I believe one of the issues with drivability can be solved with the addition of the 95ci big bore kit. As the saying goes with turbos the better the engine you begin with the more power you get after turbocharging. Actually what my train of thought is, is if i put the big bore kit in it will raise the low end torque thereby helping with driveability at low end speeds. that way i dont have to worry about lag as much. And as i said before i will be starting with just a turbo and i have a guy that is going to rebuild it for me and said he can tweek it for more flow reducing turbo lag and raising power. we'll see.
I already have a HSR 42 mikuni flat slide carb on my bike so i plan to re-use that carb as ive seen pics of turboed harleys running the mikunis. I believe i will get more driveability with this carb over an S+S as it is VERY tunable.
I could see the heat issue as you essentially have a restriction in the exhaust pipe with the turbo, and the heat would back up the turbo into the cylinder. I guess ill address that issue when i come to it.
I also plan to have the heads flowed for more power. Hopefully overall ill have a somewhat driveable bike that will still blow the other bikes off the road.

 

I think that Mikuni flat-slide will solve lots of problems. I always thought the variable venturi feature in the CV was causing lots of problems. I do believe most of the older kits used the Mikuni and Aerocharger was trying to make it work with the CV. I was not the only one with CV issues. It would make a lot more power with the CV, but it was just too difficult to tune.

Go for it!

 

It would seem very hard to me to get a vacuum slide carb to work with a turbocharger. i mean you would have A TON of vacuum drawing the slide all the way open even at low speeds then when you open it up you would starve for fuel. so too much fuel down low and not enough up high. i could see why you had problems with your bike. a mikuni slide is cable operated and i think would be the best choice.

thanks again for your input man. i have roamed the forums for awhile and this is the best info i have recieved.

 

just found this website with tons of good info on turbo harleys. from the pics it appears he is using a CV carb.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3D18%26um%3D1

 

no more input on the subject? cant believe NOBODY but one person has done a turbo