Went to Daytona for the weekend to look for exhaust and discuss the ThunderMax with the Zipper's folks. They had the new O2 setup there, new CVO ported heads and got bunches of info for the Thundermax. Very impressed with the knowledge of the installers and the guy on the computer doing the tuning. Never got his name, but he knows his stuff and his product....from the computer tech and ECM tech sides.
They did the install....which took all of 5 minutes. Let the ECM and software adjust to the bike and I was off. Super easy, but glad I was there to watch the pros.
How does it go?? Great. Nicer idle, much better exhaust note. Not to the point that it makes the exhaust louder, just one smooth note when cruising, not choppy pulses. Throttle response is better, especially at 2-2,200rpm where the motor seemed to fight you and complain that it would like it better at a higher rpm. But if you do try to accelerate at 2K, there is power there now. Wife even noticed from the back seat that the bike was running smoother.
Can't say too much about mileage. We ran the 4 hour trip on the interstate at 80, both there and back. Got 30mpg both ways when I usually get 42-44 on secondary roads.
Zipper's techs also talked to me about what pipes they see that work and don't work with our bikes.....from a dyno standpoint. A surprise was that they were seeing a Bassani header with Samson Rolled Ovals giving really good torque numbers. He explained that the performance would fall off above 5,000rpm, but that was because of the torquey pipe not going for freeflowing horsepower numbers.
The other pipe I had given little consideration to was Khrome Werks and the HP100+ mufflers. Apparently Zipper's has a cross-relationship with the owner of KW, they were just down a couple of booths and I went down to talk. Owner was a great guy. I always thought their baffle was pretty weird, but it's based on completely different strategy of using resonance. Now I need to find someone with a set of these that I can hear!!! [smiley=banana.gif] [smiley=huepfenjump3.gif]