Picked up this 07 FXDL up to use as a commuter/back road bike. Had 6600 miles on it and was pretty cherry. With the weather finally breaking a bit in the north east was finally able to put 150 miles on it and man, it's a fun ripper. After I got it I spent some time acquiring parts while I sent the bike to Rob's Dyno Service here in MA to do some engine work and a tune.

Rob installed a Feuling 543 cam chest kit and Sputhe stabilizers. Bike made 86/96 on the dyno with the cam, a Ness intake/TBR Exhaust. In Rob's view the TBR exhaust that came on the bike when I got it is complete garbage and is robbing a bunch of grunt down low, take that FWIW.

In addition to the TBR exhaust, the bike came with a bunch of Amazon parts on it, risers, grips, pegs, lights.... Other than the lights, which actually seem to work pretty well, the rest of the chinesium had to go. I went with Thrashin Supply for 9.5 pull back risers, militant pegs, perch clamps, shift linkage and peg, fork brace. I put a set of Hart Luck grips on and swapped out the Lucky Dave's seat that came on it when I bought it for a Saddleman.

Besides the Lucky Dave's Seat and the TBR exhaust, the bike came with a couple nice parts I kept, the big ticket are the 14in Legends Revo-A, which are really, really good. It also came with some Thrashin mid bends which are what I would have put on anyway so that was a nice score. I'm also running the cheap lights for now but do need to do the ballast thing as the turn signals will flash normal speed 3 or 4 times and then go to double speed and the key light will pop on the dash.

From the time I got the bike there was some intermittency with function from the switch housings, being that I had put all of like 10 miles on it before dropping it off for the cam/tune, I knew my goal of reliable ripper was not in the cards until I went through the wiring and once the bike came home and I could get to installing the new parts I got, as expected, the old riser/bar install was pretty bad. So, I spent a fair bit of time getting that sorted. I did find that I was not going to be happy with the bar wiring accommodation for the blinkers, I didn't pay enough attention when removing the parts to realize that was likely a major cause of the intermittency I was seeing but when I went to put everything back together saw there was no room to adequately protect the blinker wiring with the holes in the Thrashin bars as they were. After getting some helpful feedback from folks on here, I added some length to the wiring relief cut in the bars and got everything back together such that I am certain it won't cause me issues in the future. Additionally, with the stock Lowrider riser setup removed, the previous owner just zip tied the indicator light housing to the risers, this was not going to work for me and after a bunch of searching for a cleaner solution saw someone on here reference a Design Engineering LED bolt they wired to the neutral and oil pressure light circuits and used the bolts to hold the dash down - genius. I copied their style and was able to ditch the housing altogether and keep the only lights I care about in what I would say is the cleanest possible fashion. Install was a bit fiddly but totally worth it.

Some pictures:

The bike as it was when I picked it up on Christmas Eve.



Week or so later, got the intake in and dropped the bike off with Rob. The Saddleman arrive just in time to make the trip.



Rob had the bike for a while as he waited to get a warm enough couple of days to tune the bike. I was hoping for more like 90/100 but after putting miles on it the past couple days - no complaints. More power can wait until the next phase and hopefully the cam will be even better suited to some more cubic inches and higher compression.



Got the bike back and it was parts swapping time... but first fix the bars so I had some peace of mind there was sufficient room for wiring. I'd guesstimate the relief in the bar as shown below is 30% longer than how it comes from Thrashin. I also took the time to chamfer the inside of the hole to best guard against anything rubbing through over time.





With that out of the way I moved on to the indicator lights... prettay, prettay good if I do say so myself.



And then with the rest of the bolt on stuff installed, some of it with that oh so sweet ARP hardware, the finished product. Well, finished for now. Phase 2 will be the motor build, cartridges and a dual disk for the front end. The only thing remaining for this season is to get the wheels powder coated as close to chrome as I can get,,, that I want done ASAP. But... all that said, bike looks good, rides better and is a generally awesome place to spend time - especially for what I will principally use it for - hauling my *** 45 miles of backroads each way to work rapidly.





Nothing like a shitty day at the office where you look out the window and see your relief just waiting for you throw a leg over and push the button.

 

Very cool and detailed post. Congrats, dig the bike.

 

You might be better off with a good set of slip on mufflers than that pipe thats on there.

 

Thanks dude ! I’m stoked on it, actually getting to use it after 3 months of salty roads gives me a whole new level of appreciation.

To clean up that bottom end, yeah you may be right. But, I don’t have and won’t be throwing good money on a stock/slip on exhaust, just not enough value there for me. When I go to phase 2 though I do want to see what this exhaust does with a bigger/high comp motor vs whatever exhaust I change up to at that time with a back to back dyno. Should be interesting.

 

What's wrong with the pipe?

 

My tuner Rob who hates this pipe with the fury of a thousand suns says the depression in the curve highlighted below is strictly due to the poor design of the TBR pipe. He told me well before the work was ever done it would be there and was backed up by the results.

 

So can you feel that dip?

Is it the pipe or the fact that the 543 43 degree intake close and 10 degrees more exhaust duration than intake. I'd this motor would run a lot better as is with a smaller cam like a W5 or Andrews 26 or more compression.. Another idea would be to bore the motor out and increase compression.. I'd bet the motor would run a hole lot stronger.. 43 deg intake close on about 9.3 to 1 CR only gets you about 175 psi cranking compression.

 

Feels pissah to me man. And, as said above, the plan is to dig more into the motor later so I picked a cam I thought would be at home with the bigger, higher compression motor while still giving me some nice gains on the stock setup in the interim.

All that said, he still hates the TBR and in his opinion, the big dip in power is principally a result of the pipe and not the cam. At least that’s what he told me. Again, take it FWIW, I’m indifferent really cause the pipe was free to me and I don’t feel a need to even consider changing it until the next phase of motor work is needed.

 

What does the baffle look like? Smooth or louvered?