Since I think I'm the first one here that has gotten one of these I thought I'd write up a preliminary report on my experience so far.
Last weekend I took advantage of Peter's Birthday offer and ordered one. BTW, Hope you had a great one Peter
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He gave me an expected delivery date of 4/2 but it actually arrived 4/1, a day early. Thanks Peter and DHL.
Opening the well packaged contents my thought was, holy cow this thing is small, smaller than a regular coffee thermos. Overall length is 13 1/4" measured with an engineering certified Ace Hardware wooden yardstick/paint stirrer. End cap to business end is 12" and roughly 3" in diameter. Other items were the mid-pipe and insulated hanger.
Overall appearance and thoughts are that the well made and good looking. Shiny parts are shiny and the Kahbun Phybre is really good looking. The can is strong. The removable was lightly attached with a stainless machine screw and a nylok lock nut which I had some doubt about.
Getting the stubbie and installation coinsided with the bike's 12k service and inspection. Clint, Shop Manager at Cycle Parts in Eugene, and I planned out a full set of dyno runs to see what effect the exhaust change would make. All the 12k items wer to be done prior to the dyno runs. Fresh plugs, air filter element, valves, TB balanced, latest stock pipe tune, etc. The only parimeter outside normal stock is my fuel pressure was upped to 60psi from the stock 40 psi a long time ago, actually when I bought the bike new.
A couple of unfortunate caviats also. The torque sensor was not providing consistant results so we threw that out. He has new on order but it fifn't arrive in time so we are limited to HP results. The computer hooked to the dyno is steam driven without a USB port so I couldn't offload the results and his printer picked this time to take a dump so I couldn't make a scan of the results. So, until he gets a printer you will just have to take my word for the run results. I think I'm going to buy him a computer. Also, the runs were calibrated to current adiabatic conditions so the results would be repeatable anywhere else.
We made the first runs with the complete stock setup. Since we have done runs before throughout the time I've had the bike the new results were consistant with the bike's history. In fact she gained a bit since the last. Just enough to take it outside of machine error. IT could be the the engine freed up a bit more and we left the old tire on the back which would be a bit lighter?
On the installation we had our only issue. I contacted Peter and he accidently supplied the short can support bracket when we should have had the long one. The short one when lined up to mount with the normal bolt off the passenger peg mount wasn't possible because the CF can would touch the peg mount. We made an extension tab appox. out of scrap aluminum 1 3/4" long to mount the can in it's proper position. This coinsides with the long hanger Peter has.
The first runs in the stock configuration showed 2 things when compared with the rest of the runs.
1. Triumph factory does a fine job building a well balanced engine with well matched components. Other than weighing like a cast iron engine block the stock can does flow very well indeed.
2. It is very difficult in these days for an aftermarket manufacturer like Wolf/Trident to improve on the stock system other than weight.
After the runs with the stock setup we installed the Stubbie allowing the bike to cool to a nominal temperature checking with temp. probes.
We made the next runs with the Stubbie and the stock tune because I wanted to see how it would do in this configuration with the increased fuel pressure which does enrichen things up. I won't dwell too much on this as the pipe and can were tuned for the TOR tune. But sufice it to say you need to have the TOR tune installed or go the TunBoy/TuneEdit route. With the baffle in she slobbered all over herself with lean bogs and holes and made less power all the way up the scale to the top end. With the baffel out the same results in the low to lower mid-range but gave a bit more at the top end. The stock tune would be fine to get it to a dealer to have the TOR installed but I wouldn't do too much more than that.
After that we installed the TOR mapping and ran with and without the baffle.
With the TOR tune and the baffle in, this is where things perked up and picked up. We were worried at first but with the TOR mapping in place we started to feel better. The HP was up over stock from the bottom to the upper mid-range where it started to tail off and at cutoff was actually a little lower than the stock Triumph muffler. (Read back to where I said that the factory doesn't do too bad of a job.)
The last runs were with the baffle out. After a few normalizing clearing blasts we made the run for the gold. After the run and looking at the results Clint and I both looked at each other and said almost the same thing. " Holy crap, this thing kicks ass!". Or words like that
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Again, I don't have the exact figure in front of me but this will be close enough not to taint the results.
To recap.
Starting off with the stock muffler and proper mapping Valerie hit a top HP at cutoff of around 105 to 106 or so. She was pretty clean running anyhow with just a few lean bogs in the bottom end through lower mid-range.
With the TOR installed and the baffle in The HP at the bottom started a bit higher and stayed higher through the mid to upper mid-range then tail off to just a HP or 2 below the stock muffler at the very top. I'd say this is very good as this is where you want your gains to be made, where it's a useful gain. It also cleaned up some of the lean issues in the lower end of the range so I'm happy with this.
With the baffle out....Take it into the kitchen and use it for a cheese grater because the results are totally amazing. I'll get to the sound last.
The gold run started with the highest HP reading at the very bottom and took off from there to a top at cutoff of 111.7 to 112hp. CRS. Again, I do not want to seem like I'm tainting an advertizer's product but Clint and I both were as some say, gob smacked.
While the HP gain was not expected to that extent, the really amaging part was that from where the line started at the bottom to cutoff diverged from the stock at a good angle and straight as a string with NO bogs or peaks just a totally straight line. No curve shift changes or anything Just a dead straight line to cutoff. I am tickled spitless over this.
In Clint's own words he has never had any exhaust change on these bikes show this big of an improvement in not only the HP but in the quality of performance with ANY can. In fact most, including the famous name ones don't do anything at all except make more noise and actually degrade performance. Only a very few contribute but not to this degree.
The sound is fantastic. With the baffle in it has a bark to it, really neat. With the baffle out it turns into a wail. The difference in noise level without a DB reading isn't that much different to the ear but the charactic is. We were expecting it to be louder because of it's size but that wasn't the case. So I've put the baffle in my unused parts box as I can't see an issue with noise.
As far as drivability, yesterday after getting it back I had new tires(tyres) different suspension setup and it was around 40 F and between poring rain and getting pelted with hail I didn't have much quality seat time. Momma might have raised a ugly kid but not a stupid kid. I'll post pics,vid and maybe a sound bite when I can and can figure out how to.
The only other thing is with bags. I have the large Givi cases and though the blast does hit the bottom of the right there is a large air gap. I don't know about the stock Triumph bags but Peter can address this if someone has a question. Also, Peter left the mid-pipe long so I could cut it to the OA length I want so that will increase the insulating air gap more.
BTW the nylok locking nut did melt so we replaced that with an all metal locking one. Peter might want to look at a change here. His Trident patch also came off during a run and got ate by the dyno drum.
In closing, I can say that I am very pleased with the end results. Between the amount and quality of the performance gain coupled with loosing about 20 lbs of weight off the back end (seems like it). I consider this to be a worthwhile modification to those that are interested and Peter's claims are more than valid.
Don
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