Written by Russel
Disclaimer:
This is purely my view on the performance & accessory mods done on the motorcycle in perspective. The views are subjective and could vary by north to others too! No offense / hurt intended 🙂
All Unnecessary weights!
Yes! Get rid of all unnecessary weights on the bike. This is the first and foremost rule of any performance mod. You can’t load a bunch of gizmos made of steel and expect the bike to shoot off like a rocket!
You can start by removing the saree guard. Do this only if you are not planning on taking your saree wearing family member as pillion.
Exhaust cans (these weigh about 6 – 8 kgs each!), center/main stand, those engine guard bars (add these only if you feel is necessary. I personally do not like them cos I feel they steal away the bike’s looks).
But the ground rule is – ‘In the least, do not add anything to the bike unless it is truly necessary”
The Seat
This is one of the main things to consider (probably the first things) when one decides that the twins is their everyday ride/mile muncher.
The stock seat is on the softer side. In my practical experience, I couldn’t ride more than 95 km – 110 km at a stretch. Mind you, I weigh around 80 – 85kgs.
I also did a run on my friend’s interceptor with his touring seat – still same issue but with an added extra 50 km.
The stock seat foam is pretty soft and plush – best suited for short rides or city weekend fun rides. When it comes to longer rides, the rider would simply sink into the seat. He/she will literally sit on the seat pan accompanied by the frame rails of the bike.
After 3 seat jobs, I’ve have settled for a 3-layered seat – the stock foam layer on the top followed by a medium compound in the middle and a hard compound at the bottom. This must not cost you more than 2000 INR. I also had suggested this to couple of my friends.
The Exhaust
Now this is a well debated subject and many people have many different opinions and understanding on exhausts. All the discussion and topic boils down to these
- Exhaust Note: What sort of performance gain it gives?Full System / End-can alone
- How much will it set you back on the monetary side
For the interceptor, thankfully we have a plethora of custom exhaust builders that make a variety of exhausts ranging from a full system to just the end can.
In my opinion and experience, most if not all exhausts causes a drop in back pressure which in-turn changes the initial torque characteristics. This makes it all the more progressive and concentrating the output high up the rev range. This might not be the taste suited to many experienced riders who would instantly say “Man! I lost the initial surge!”. To counter that, the exhaust maker provides something called a baffle or DB killer.
These do produce a little backpressure (if designed properly) and brings back the lost initial torque curve to some extent. But then again this business is always about compromising one of the two – Initial torque or the top end gain.
Simply put, if you were going to be touring, stick with stock. They are quiet but loud enough to keep your smile endless. It also retains all the torque as designed at a 100%.
For those who do both city and touring and require that additional minor gains in performance, go for the aftermarket “end cans”.
Don’t forget to use the DB killer provided so that you don’t have a ringing ear at the end of the ride while still retaining that wide grin.
For all the performance junkies that does/does not fall under the above two categories – go for a full system.
Remove the DB killer and have racing plugs + HT wires + Resistor caps work in conjunction.
Engine Sump Guard
This is an essential aftermarket accessory that would help both the city riders and the tourers. What this does is protect the exposed oil filter which sadly is positioned right at the bottom and front of the engine.
This makes it potentially vulnerable to speeding rocks or anything that gets thrown at it from the front wheel or even from being on the road.
An ECU Remap
This again is not all that necessary unless you really want to play with the map(s) that you are running. There is a company – RaceDynamics that provides a piggyback system which lets you have more than one custom maps.
All of this is just for those who have the urge to fine tune the existing performance delivery of the stock ECU (which already is a great package to be frank).
For those who do not want to go that extra mile, get the latest update that RE provides. These factory maps are not switchable but rest assured these are tested on different terrains and conditions of ‘India’. It will work in almost all places worldwide.
Air Filter
Here again, this is totally not necessary if you didn’t do the exhaust upgrade that I mentioned in point #2. The theory in a simplified way is this – Breathe in easily and breathe out easily. Now you must understand that when one plays with an exhaust system, he/she is literally going to unknowingly play with the Air/Fuel ratio.
With the exhaust upgrade, what happens is that we let the engine exhale easily. But this coupled with the stock air filter + snorkel setup, the engine inhalation becomes more restricted / rather insufficient. To balance this shortcoming in air intake, the least one can do is to do away with the snorkel.
This by itself will increase air intake to a certain extent. Now there are a lot of manufacturers that make ‘Snorkel Eliminators’ that gets rid of the snorkel but still holds the air filter in place. This would set you back by about 900-1200 INR if not more.
If that was not you’re your cup of tea, you could just buy a couple of good quality large sized washers and SS bolts, get the snorkel off and hold back the air filter with these washers and this would hardly cost you about 100-150 INR.
But now, if you wanted to relieve the engine’s hypoxia condition a little more, you can now enter the world of aftermarket air filters.
The stock ones are paper element filters which does do the needed filtering but then restricts the intake by a great margin (this is designed specifically to work with the stock exhaust).
Aftermarket air filter
With an aftermarket air filter, the filtering elements can range from surgical cotton to much more complex mediums coupled with mineral oils to make the necessary filtering happen but at the same time let more air into the engine and balance out the intake shortage resulting from the aftermarket exhaust. Heads-up!! You now have three (or may be five) manufacturers making them for the interceptor 650!
Air to Fuel Ratio
As with the A/F ratio, thankfully the factory ECU has a compensation limit set to about 10-15% A/F variance which essentially means your stock ECU will compensate the fuel disbursement for the difference in A/F ratio that the air filter + exhaust /snorkel eliminator + stock filter + Exhaust
Tubeless conversion kit
This is something that I would mandate to get done especially if you are a tourer. There are two or three manufacturers producing this kit out of which we have one manufacturer from our own motherland India – ‘Way2Speed’.
Assume you were to go on a long trip along with your group or even alone and uneventfully, you end up with a puncture and to make things more inauspicious, this happens in the middle of nowhere.
It would almost bring your ride to a full stop and if on a group ride have all others having to wait for you. Not the kind of situations you’d want to be in. These tubeless kits make life easier.
In the event of a puncture where you could just plug in the tubeless puncture compound and continue with the ride without having to worry anymore.
Wheel balancing/trueing/wobbling
This is one of the most discussed topics on the interceptor groups and this wobbling issue does not exist on the continental GT650! From what I have learned and experienced, by design, the interceptor is tail heavy.
YES! Tail heavy.
Couple this with the rider, mostly riders that upgraded from a Bullet, would have the most upright sitting posture that can even beat an army / soldier’s sitting posture and voila you have a planted tail heavy motorcycle.
Now, almost every RE twin I’ve seen (including mine), the rear wheel has some sort of trueing/alignment issue. Without a properly trued and aligned wheel, you might experience drifts during your ride or even speed specific wobbles.
The most common speeds at which the wobble has been experienced is between 80kmph-100kmph. Another factor contributing to the wobble is the poor maintenance of air pressure in your wheels. A lower air-pressure is a deadly combo with an already wobbling motorcycle. It would just amplify your wobbling!!
So, to avoid the wobbling, you need to do the below:
- Get you tires checked for truing or alignment issues! Does not cost much and is always a good practice!
- Maintain the recommended tire pressure at all times! I can’t insist on this more! This is of utmost importance
- Than sit like a brick wall, lean a bit more towards the front! This gives a little more weight on the front of the motorcycle.
- This shifts the center of mass and CG to a more balanced position.
Chain cleaning and lubing
I can’t emphasize more on this! This is one of the most important things one must ritually follow! What best can you get if you had all gizmos and mods done and no way to transfer all that improved performance to your wheels? Always make it a habit to free your chain off muck and dirt and then lube it for it to last longer.
Since this is the second in line responsible for your bike to even move an inch, these are really costly items and you would definitely not want to have a worn out chain or damaged sprocket.
Sprocketing:
Again a subjective topic, I’d recommend only to those who wants to play with the way your bike accelerates. An important thing you must keep in mind (especially for those entering this area of performance mods) is that:
Changing FRONT SPROCKET +/- ‘1’ TOOTH = REAR SPROCKET +/- 3 OR 4 TEETHS
In simple terms, for drastic differences, you change the front sprocket and for subtle changes you change the rear sprocket. In even simpler terms,
More acceleration (Bottom End): Use a smaller front sprocket, or, larger rear sprocket
More top speed (Top End): Use a larger front sprocket, or, smaller rear sprocket
In both cases, the number of tooth is something you might want to experiment or know before you buy your sprocket.
Touring Setup
Mainly for the tourers – Get a proper touring setup which is easily removable and the same time sturdy enough to get your things strapped on to.
I personally do not like a lot of lights on my bike which essentially converts the bike into a light show, but, you can also invest in a good pair of fog/ride assist lights for the rides at night.