Harley Dyno Tuning and Performance Center® with enclosed room for accurate Air Fuel Ratios.
The Only Harley-Davidson® Dealer Around With the Tools and Knowledge to Tune Your Harley-Davidson®!
We are trained on the following:
- TTS Mastertune (does void warranty) – Advanced Trained by Docs.
- Screamin Eagle Super Tuner –Trained by Harley-Davidson Factory Training.
- Power Commander Tuners (can void warranty) –Trained by Daniels Performance.
- 3 Dyno Tuners on Site with the latest education and tools, as well as the enclosed room for accurate measurements.
What is a Dynamometer?
A dynamometer in an enclosed room is essential to realizing the full potential of today's fuel-injected and carbureted motorcycles with performance modifications.
This is the only tool that can accurately calibrate fuel and ignition maps or diagnose run/drivability issues in a controlled environment.
Our experienced technicians are specially trained in Harley-Davidson® motorcycle dyno tuning with H-D® Super Tuners and Power Commanders, as Wilkins HD is a certified Dynojet tuning center. We also have knowledge of many other aftermarket performance mods.
Why is an Enclosed Dyno® Room Important?
The days of planting a Dyno® in the middle of a garage are over. Accurate Air Fuel Ratios are only gained when the Dyno® and the Air Flow are controlled. Bringing an entire garage full of air into your analysis with burnt gases hanging around the motorcycle throws off your computations and is pure laziness.
Wilkins Harley-Davidson® invested heavily into an enclosed Dyno® Room to control the airflow, and ensure your machine receives the very best results you are paying good money for.
The 250IX powersports chassis dynamometer provides the ultimate in powersports dyno tuning/testing capability. With 61-inch total drum width, an extra drum, and a sliding carriage, the 250IX can handle trikes and motorcycles.
Understanding Fuel and Ignition Requirements
The simplest way to look at the internal combustion engine and understand what is done to increase performance is to see it as an air pump. The more air it is capable of pumping at any given time, the more power it will make (expressed as volumetric efficiency or VE).
To get the most energy out of that air, it relies on accurate metering of fuel to that air (expressed as stoichiometric, an AFR of 14.7:1 is the theoretical ratio that results in the greatest release of available energy in gasoline). Real-world inefficiencies result in an air/fuel ratio (AFR) of 12.8:1 to 13.3:1, for best power and 14.5:1, for best mileage. Keeping the AFR around 13.8 under load, get the best of both worlds.
VE, AFR, and Harley-Davidson Tuning Requirements
These tuning requirements constantly vary as determined by the mechanical and dynamic properties of the motor. The main mechanical parts are typically engine size (volume), compression ratio/cylinder pressure (static, corrected and dynamic), cam timing/lift, port/valve flow capacity (cfm, including the induction system), exhaust, and NOS/super/turbocharging.
The exhaust system is the largest, single, variable influence on how the motor processes air, the shape of the VE graph, and tuning requirements. The dynamic parts are typically RPM, throttle position, and load (including wind, tire pressure, terrain, gearing and luggage).
Ignition requirements are dictated by engine design properties such as:
- Exhaust (how much heat is retained)
- Cam profiles
- Piston/combustion chamber shape
- Piston/head clearance (quench/squish)
- Cylinder pressures
- RPM limits
- Fuel quality
- Intended use
Carbureted Motorcycles
To adjust air/fuel ratios, we use various performance parts and kits. To install, we remove the carburetors to gain access to and replace pilot jets, main jets, emulsion tubes, and needles and make float height adjustments as required.
This procedure can require removing and replacing the carburetors many times until the correct ratios are accomplished. A dyno tune is the most efficient and accurate method, especially for tuning a Harley.
Fuel Injected Motorcycles
These have throttle bodies and fuel injectors driven by the ECU (engine control unit) and its programming or calibration. Input from a variety of sensors allows more accurate control as engine demands change and offsets to account for environmental changes.
Dyno Tuning Cost and Time
We offer Dyno® tuning by the hour to diagnose and correct fuel/ignition problems, optimize your motorcycle tune, and measure the effects of changes or modifications.
Investing in Dyno® tuning can help you unlock the full power of your performance of Harley-Davidson® upgrades, allowing you to get the most out of every dollar spent.
The cost to horsepower (HP) gain is routinely greater than any other modification and the dyno tune should be included in any performance package.
Most tuning can be done in a few hours or less but varies based on the number of tuning variables and how the bike responds to the changes.
At Wilkins Harley-Davidson, we keep all runs on file for future reference. For our racer friends, if asked, we will ensure confidentiality.
A baseline Dyno® run will provide you torque, horsepower, RPM, and AFR (when available) measurements at wide open throttle from a low RPM that allows clean acceleration to either redline or just after the horsepower curve arcs over. This can be valuable information to assess the health of your motorcycle or the effects of changes or modifications. Several runs are made to ensure heat soak and stability. The graphs can be printed in many forms for comparison to others.
H-D® Street Tuner
The Screamin' Eagle® street performance tuner kit is designed to simplify the management of street-legal performance calibrations as EPA-compliant performance modifications are made. It easily allows the rider or technician to view and evaluate engine operating parameters.
You can upload the calibration that provides the best performance mix for your mufflers. The kit includes a vehicle communications interface module with onboard memory to record up to 15 minutes of run-time data and can store information on up to 27 variables that can be downloaded to your PC via an optional USB cable (sold separately).
The software gives you the ability to view the bike's air/fuel ratio, O2 sensor readings, engine speed and temperatures, RPM and vehicle speed, throttle position, spark advance, and much more. There is also online access to the latest factory calibrations, so you can load the most up-to-date parameters whenever you have your bike serviced.
The Screamin' Eagle® super tuner allows direct access to the ECU programs and their modification. We are creating custom calibrations for specific combinations (just like H-D® reflash cartridges). However, the super tuner does include many SE calibrations in the map files to select from. These can then be modified for a completely new file created if the combination does not match the items on your bike, which is often the case.
Super tuner provides a much higher level of tuning than any other device without replacing the ECU (the brain of the bike) itself. Each cylinder's fuel and ignition mapping is independently tuned, using three dimensions, resulting in a custom map that eliminates the possibility of one cylinder fighting or holding back the other. This results in a very smooth-running motorcycle without all the popping.
This also equals more horsepower with smooth linear drivability. In addition, warm-up enrichment, idle speeds, IAC steps, rev limits, AFR offsets, and injector sizing can be changed. To help in Harley-Davidson Dyno® tuning or diagnostics, Super Tuner also features a data mode to collect and review sensor inputs or other data. Both of these can only be tuned accurately by using our Dyno with real-time AFR monitoring.
If interested, we can custom-build a fuel injection map just for your bike!
Dynojet Power Visions®
Wilkins H-D® is a Power Vision Certified Tuning Center as of 2023. The Power Vision tuner for Harley models is able to hold multiple tunes at once, so roadside changes are a snap, and every Dynojet power vision tuner can also monitor and track your progress to really get your engine roaring.
With a Dynojet power vision tuner, you can immediately boost your ride’s efficiency and performance without adding or changing any hardware. If you don't want to purchase a Power Vision, we can just sell you a license and install it on your motorcycle,however, we may void your warranty.
TTS Mastertune®
Wilkins H-D® has been trained and passed Doc's Advanced EFI Dyno Tuning Class. With the advent of newer technologies like RDRS on motorcycles, you must constantly be investing in EFI training to be the very best. We have a great deal of experience in Harley tuning with the TTS Mastetune.
However, as Harley-Davidson's technology has become more robust, the TTS Master Tune has not kept up as much. Traction Control systems create some additional havoc with the TTS Master Tune software and while we have learned some tricks of the trade, it may not be the best software when you have traction control.
Fuel Mileage
As discussed above, we make horsepower by processing more air and adding the required fuel to maintain the correct AFR. One obvious result is that fuel mileage may suffer. Stock bikes getting 45 mpg are not unusual.
To meet emissions standards, stock bikes are set up very lean with tuning and heat management programs to keep them from melting down or detonating to death. One reason air cleaner and exhaust changes make such a difference is that tuning changes are also made either with jetting and ignition or EFI calibrations.
These changes also reduce fuel mileage. By tuning the bike to its utmost efficiency, you get the most power while sacrificing the least fuel economy.
The beauty of EFI bikes is that we can be very precise in the fuel and ignition mapping to optimize mileage when cruising, yet still have correct mapping for power when transitioning out of cruise. This is nearly impossible on carbureted bikes because its fuel delivery is signal based as a function of how the air is moving through the intake track. That airflow is dictated by the motor combination and will result in lower mileage than an EFI bike.
Overall an interesting phenomenon happens as you increase horsepower. With more power, it takes less throttle input to do the same work while cruising, so we get some compensation for losses with increased power. Because of the greater heat generated by big cubes or horsepower, it is not safe to lean these bikes down to a point that will match a stock bike's mpg.
In reality, we would not want to detune a bike on which we spent $2,500.00 to get 90hp down to 80hp, which would be one effect of a lean tune. One caveat is, when a high horsepower or big cubic inch bike is ridden aggressively, you will see mpg's as low as 20. The effect of all this is that nearly all well-tuned bikes (H-D® big twins), regardless of size or horsepower typically get 35-44 average mpg!
Regularly tuning a Harley-Davidson can bring you a variety of benefits stated above – from improved performance to long-term cost savings.
Power up your Harley-Davidson with tuning from our advanced trained team today! Want 100 Horsepower? Click the button below for more information!