Why Harley Tuning Helps Your Engine
One of the best ways to improve your riding experience with Harley is by tuning its dyno performance. So, if you have a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, you won’t go wrong doing it. This is especially if you want to improve the performance of your engine.
Tuning makes your engine more powerful and smoother. Even better, it gives you maximum driving pleasure.
Harley-Davidson tuning affects the engine management system directly. And probably that’s why it comes with several benefits. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of these advantages. Also, you will know whether your Harley needs tuning and how you can go about it. Are you ready? Read on!
Benefits of Harley tuning to your engine
Tuning has a lot of benefits to both you and your motorcycle. For instance, it helps to measure and adjust the engine variables of your bike. This includes features such as horsepower, torque, and fuel economy. Adjusting and resetting all these features helps improve your bike’s performance, fuel mixture, and timing.
So, what benefits will you get by tuning your Harley motorcycle? Here are some of the two main reasons to do so.
- Fuel efficiency and smoother rides
Tuning helps improve the fuel efficiency of your bike. If your bike’s MPG was initially high, then tuning may be the best hack to lower it. But how does this work? Here’s how.
The engine fuel consumption depends on two significant factors.
The first one is the engine cubic capacity. This is the number of cylinders in which fuel is placed in an injection phase. Another factor is revolutions per minute (RPM), the rate of filling the cylinders, which determines how much fuel your motorcycle consumes.
So what’s the effect of tuning? It lowers the RPM by automatically giving your motorcycle higher gears. This makes the fuel consumption lower and improves your riding experience.
- Improves performance
Harley tuning improves engine performance in many ways. There are several things you need to adjust to get the maximum performance of your motorcycle. Let’s take a look at some of them.
- Adjusting the rev limit
Many motorcycle manufacturers limit the rev because of safety and regulation purposes. You can easily tune the rev by either removing, increasing, or lowering the values. However, you need to know that this leads to wear and tear because of heat buildup in the engine.
- Tuning the torque map
You can tune the toque map by adjusting the ECU (Engine Control Unit). The toque output is usually based on the RPM, and the force exerted on the pedal. If you want better performance, tune the engine toque map values. This gives you more toque on high or low RPM, depending on driving conditions.
- Air-Fuel Ratio
As you may already know, an engine needs oxygen and fuel to deliver power. So, it would help if you optimized the air-fuel ratio to get the best fuel consumption and performance. Tuning ensures you get the best road performance and gives you good fuel economy.
- Tuning top speed
Most governments have regulations on the top speed for motorcycles. To comply with this rule, most manufacturers put a speed limit on their bikes. You can tune this by changing the ECU values – but it is a risk breaking the law.
When does your Harley need tuning?
Even with the many advantages you get from tuning your bike, you still need to know when to do so. It is essential to check on various signals that help you know whether or not to tune your motorcycle.
Here are a few of the things to check before tuning your Harley bike.
- Difficulty in Braking
If you notice that your bike doesn’t have good braking, then you should consider tuning. This will ensure that the brake pads are made better and more efficient.
- Hard to change gears
Gears also give you a sign of whether or not to tune the motorcycle. If you’ve noticed that gears are not shifting smoothly, then it’s time to tune your Harley.
- Difficulty in starting
So, your Harley bike has got difficulty starting; tuning may be the solution. The whole tuning process ensures enough power is generated for the motorcycle instantly.
- Too much fuel consumption
By tuning a Harley motorcycle, you can lower its fuel consumption. You can achieve this by reducing the RPM and fuel intake frequency.
How to tune your Harley
By now, you already know the benefits of tuning and when your motorcycle needs it. But how exactly does it work? Before setting and tuning your engine, you may have to place it on dyno tuning. This helps to check its performance by chassis dyno.
Here, the bike is placed on the dyno rollers and hooked to its sensors. The sensors record the amount of force exerted on the rollers; more force means higher horsepower.
When the bike is hooked to the dyno, only its tires move, not the entire bike. Therefore, it may heat up because there is no surrounding air to cool it. That is why a dyno have an advanced cooling system that keeps the engine in good shape throughout the process.
In short, dyno turning helps you run the bike and read its essential parameters. You can then use a computer to adjust the settings and test again. If dyno tuning doesn’t sound cool for you, then street tuning may work just fine.
This is where you take your motorcycle for a spin test after adjusting the values. It requires you to work in an outdoor environment such as a race track. Most people prefer street tuning because it is cheaper and allows you to test your bike in a natural setting. However, dyno tuning is still more efficient and will enable you to monitor the performance in real-time.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, Harley tuning is one of the best ways to maximize your engine performance. It gives you the option to improve on a toque, horsepower, fuel consumption, and other variables. If you want to increase the speed limit, tuning will also do the magic. You can check on the braking system and gears as well. Tuning helps you get to higher gears easily, thus maintaining low fuel consumption. There are two types of tuning; dyno and street tuning. Whichever one you choose, get your Harley motorcycle tuned today!
