| Author | Message | ||
     M1combat |
Effing beautiful... A friend of mine bought a 12SCG a while back and asked me what sort of stuff he should pick up for it. I gave him a pretty long list... So, I went over there to give him a hand installing the parts on Saturday. I got there about 10:30AM, we got done about 5:00AM. Granted, there were two short trips into town for a tire swap but still, there was a good deal of stuff including a few peices of carbon, a steering damper, race ECM, race filter, extended flyscreen, axle sliders, chin spoiler brackets, Drummer catch can, and some other stuff. That Drummer SS II is freakin' beautiful. There's no way a mass produced pipe could look that good and be put together so well. It's a work of art along with the Drummer catch can we put on. It sounds great. I've got an older Drummer prototype on my bike and the SS II isn't quite as loud but I think it'll get there with a couple thousand miles of use. It sounds better to my ear though. Nice and deep and people look at the little SCG making that noise and look a little confused. The istall instructions were superb. Every step was explained in plenty of detail and made perfect sense. It's not just a swap exactly, because the Drummer is designed to be somewhat tuneable WRT being able to get it all settled well before you really tighten everything down. It all went well except for the fact that you need to install the chin spoiler mounts before you put on the pipe (well, the right one anyhow). That was in the instructions, but apparently I missed it so we had to remove the Drummer and install it a second time. It went well other than that though. The catch can is great too. I have one of those on my bike as well and the quality has actually gone up it looks like. Just in the anodizing is all. Mine wasn't anodized at all as it was a very early one. The extended fly screen from ZG works beautifully. I would get to 105 on the bike before and felt like I really needed to hold on but with the extended screen I can rn it up to 135 before I get as much wind as I used to at 105. We put a steering damper on it (the LSL one that goes under the steering head). That works well. The Lightning seemed a bit over eager at high lean angles before. I figure it's the bars and seating position as my firebolt never felt like that. After putting on the steering damper it feels a lot more like the firebolt in the area of mid-corner stability. I'm sure that someone who hasn't put 35K miles on a firebolt wouldn't notice the "extra" responsive nature of the lightning anyway, but I think it was an improvement. We put on some American Sport Bike carbon fiber bits and lemme tell you... that stuff is TOP notch. It looks an inch deep in the light, it's very thin and VERY light, and the fit was perfect. VERY worth the money if you want carbon fiber bits. A couple things I notice about the steering damper that I didn't like so much... When passing a Semi the wind now moves the bike over and inch or two. I'm sure this is because the damper slows the bikes reaction to the wind. I'd imagine that 40MPH crosswind gusts would be more of an issue with the damper. The other thing is that every once in a while when you jump on the brakes it'll oscilate just a tad. this is probably due to my own input starting it, but on my firebolt without a damper it never happens unles the road has a bit of camber and I'm hard on the brakes from upwards of 100MPH. Even then, it only does it just enough to make the rear tire sway back and forth 1/2" either way while it's skimming across the ground. Anyway... Just a few notes... Oh, one more... It used to be that in first if you whacked the throttle open with no prep (clutch, front end bounce, pulling on the bars) at about 3K it would pull the front off the ground about 5-7" for a few feet. Now it does that in second, and it'll just plain go as high as youd like in first. That just a race ECM, Race filter and Drummer on a stock bike with 2200 miles. Good job Kevin  . | ||
| Thansesxb9rs |
OK so where are the pics???? | ||
| Bads1 |
Whats a Drummer SS II ??? No such thing. Theres a SS which I have. | ||
| M1combat |
That's what it said on the install instructions and "maybe" on the muffler... Lemme go look hold on... | ||
| M1combat |
Yep... Says "SS II" on the rear end cap just under the outlet. | ||
| Bads1 |
Mine say's it to. But its just the SS though. Mine is just a 3 months old now. | ||
| M1combat |
Interesting... What was the SS then? I have an old prototype SS type pipe on mine that is the stock muffler at the front and then an SS rear... | ||
| Americanmadexb |
pics please!!!  | ||
| Kds1 |
Actually Opto has the only SS that was the first produced piece that I made...the SSII is the SS but the second version that I built..... Kevin www.kdfab.com | ||
| Bads1 |
Thanks Kevin,that what I thought. Hope ya had a Merry X-Mas. | ||
| Mesafirebolt |
Hey Kevin, how loud is that econo XB12 muffler compared to say a Race Kit? | ||
| Kds1 |
Mesa, probably 2 times as loud or at least 1 and a 1/2...it's loud.... Kevin www.kdfab.com | ||
| Captnemo |
Slightly away from topic: Kevin, on an XB12, does the servo allow a "quieter" exhaust note under low throttle and then a "less than quiet" exhaust note when the servo opens the butterfly ? It seems that the servo could be used for the best of both worlds. (Message edited by CaptNemo on December 28, 2006) | ||
| Kds1 |
Capt, I don't know if you could tell with the ear unless you were to know when the valve opened and closed while running...the exhaust enters the front of the can under normal operation anyway so its probably all the same... Kevin www.kdfab.com (Message edited by kds1 on December 29, 2006) |
