Your bike sucks. While you may strongly object to this statement, if made in an everyday conversation at your local hangout, it is never-the-less true for most motorcycles. In a conventional combustion, or naturally aspirated, engine, the mix of gasoline and air is sucked into the combustion chamber when the piston moves down and creates a vacuum in the chamber, delivering an ample amount of power upon ignition. If that is not enough, there are ways to increase the bang you get out of the – err – bang without going for a bigger motor or a different camshaft. By pressing the mix into the chamber, forcing the fodder down your engine's throat, so to speak, the resulting power-output increases. While there are several devices around that can achieve considerable results, the turbo-charger is still the most common and widely used.
The hay-day of turbocharged motorcycles were the late 1970s and early 1980s, when all big Japanese motorcycle manufacturers had a model in their lineup that came turbo-charged from the factory. Kawasaki launched the KZ1000 Z1-R Turbo in 1978 (now selling for 20 grand), followed by the Gpz 750 Turbo in the mid 1980s, which has a strong following until today. Honda put the pressure on with their CX500T which later received an increase in displacement to 650cc, changing the model name to CX650T. Yamaha introduced their contribution to the turbo-charged segment with the XJ650T and Suzuki entered the same arena with their X85. The increase in power of these bikes over their sucking siblings was impressive: Honda's turbo-charged CX500T put out a whooping 64 percent more horsepower than the basic CX500.
The reason mostly cited for the demise of the turbo-charged motorcycles, almost thirty years ago, is the turbo lag, a delay in the device's effectiveness that lies within the concept itself, as well as its suitability for the motor. A turbo is a compressor powered by a turbine, which is driven by the engine's exhaust gases. Essentially, a turbo consists of two parallel fans on a shared axle, one working as a turbine in the exhaust system of the engine, the other as the compressor in the intake. The pressure of the exhaust gasses propels the turbine which drives the compressor. Therefore, it takes some time to bring the turbo-charger up to speed until it builds boost and is fully effective, especially when accelerating from lower RPM. While early turbos did almost nothing at lower engine speeds, they kicked in rather brutally once a certain rpm was reached, making the bikes hard to handle in acceleration and no fun to ride in city traffic. Als,o increased pressure inside the engine caused by the force-feeding along with increased engine-heat were early problems.
Although the big manufacturers have since abandoned turbo-charged mass production, fitting a turbo on a bike as a custom feature is still in high demand. Seemingly, a bolt-on job after three decades of development and with several 'easy' options available today, it never-the-less requires a specialist to do it right. Nick Trask is one of the few customizers who has specialized in turbo-charging motorcycles and everything else fun on wheels. We caught up with Nick at his shop 'Trask Performance' in Phoenix, Arizona, to talk tech and what landed the New Zealand native in the middle of the American desert.
BN: Hey Nick, tell us little about yourself.
Nick: I am from New Zealand and I have been in the States for about ten years. I started Trask Performance about nine years ago. We began as a performance shop down the street and have slowly grown into a recognized performance center. We specialize in performance tuning and turbo charging system installations.
BN: What made you come to the States and not do something similar to what you are doing back in New Zealand or Australia?
Nick: I did a little bit in New Zealand and had a small shop there working on Harleys. but parts were really hard to get. Parts, tooling, information, everything was a week away. You just could not get anything, so you had to improvise to make stuff work and just figure it out somehow. It was simply not available over there like it is over here, where you simply go to a parts store, pick it off the shelf and put it on the bike. It was nothing like that. So I decided to come here. I was reading an ad in Easy Rider Magazine and it had a little voucher in it for a motorcycle school. Since I was a mechanic in New Zealand, I decided to come to the States and go to Harley school, get certified. So I came over to the school and wanted to do the performance class but I didn't realize you had to be here for a year to do the six week class. I had to stay for a year in order to take that class. The recruiter from the school didn't let me know that in advance. So I came here expecting to stay for six weeks and ended up staying for a year. That was a little different since I had never before been to the States. It is so much better here, its motorcycles everywhere, its a Harley Mecca. Never the less moving all I had here was hard to do because I didn't know a soul, absolutely nobody. When I stepped off the plane I didn't even know where to stay. But now that is all different, I know a lot of people here and the industry is small, everybody seems to know everybody. The company is growing and the name is recognized.
BN: How did you get into motorcycling in the first place?
Nick: I grew up with motorcycles and had motorcycles my whole life. My father had Harleys his whole life, so its kind of following what my father did. He also raced a lot of cars and so I always had that performance background. Growing up with it, you just like it. I wanted to do something with my life, something I liked. I did not want to do something only for money, I wanted to do it for the passion of it. I figured when you are good at it and you do the right thing, the money will come.
BN: How did you get started with turbos? It seems that normally guys start to tinker around with the bodywork, change other parts on the bike, rake the frame, extend the frame,… but you are doing turbos. Why?
Nick: Performance is always in style and it never goes out of style. You can performance-enhance anything with a motor in it. It is not like building a custom bike this year and it is out of style next year. I have always been into turbo charging. It seemed to me no one was really doing a decent kit, no one was doing it correctly, at least in the Harley market. So I decided to do it.
BN: What are the advantages of putting a turbo-charger on a Harley?
Nick: There are several advantages of a turbo charger over building a big motor. For once it is the most efficient way to generate power. The longevity of a turbo engine is better than a naturally aspirated engine that is making the same power. And you use the power when you need it. If it were not the way to go, they would not be putting them on almost 90 percent of the trucks on the market. It is just a very efficient way to generate power.
BN: The big Japanese manufacturers have, for a while, played around with the idea of building stock motorcycles that are turbo-charged resulting in several models. Some time in the late 1980s they abandoned it again. Why do yo think that was?
Nick: Turbo-charging is not mainstream. It is much harder for someone to wrap their head around just going out there and buy a turbo-charged motorcycle. It is now becoming more mainstream as the turbo-chargers improve and are being developed in different sizes so you can size the turbo to a specific size of engine.
You are no longer putting a turbo from a two-liter car on a one-liter motorcycle, which results in the turbo being way too big and coming on like a two-stroke. That's the negative characteristic of the early turbos. They were adapting automotive systems for motorcycles, which were coming on way late and were unpredictable. Here at Trask Performance we are using Garret, which is, from our experience, the best company to deal with. Ford, Chevy, Dodge, Caterpillar all use Garret turbos and they are dependable and you can rely on them.
BN: What are the myths connected to turbo-charged motorcycles? Are there any that are either actually true or totally wrong?
Nick: The main myth is the problem with the early systems, which is turbo lag. Every time we talk to a customer and they know anything about turbo-charging they will mention it. If you size the turbo correctly to the motor, it will boost from the bottom and you will receive a minimal lag. You have to give it just a little bit, but you almost can not feel the couple of hundred RPM for it to come on. As long as it comes on before the torque band.
What we do is size the turbo to come on quickly, starting to build boost at around 2500 RPM and it is building peak boost on a V-twin motor at 3000 to 3200 RPM. You are making peak boost at 3200 RPM and can hold it all the way up to redline. This makes the torque band a lot wider than with a naturally aspirated bike.
You are not going to have starter issues, battery issues, the fuel efficiency on a turbo-charged bike is almost as good as stock. If you are running a naturally aspirated bike next to a turbo-charged bike at the same speed of about 80 to 90 mph, you will get better fuel mileage out of the turbo-charged bike when it is tuned correctly than the other one, because it does not have to work as hard. This is also going to reduce some vibration because the turbo is doing a lot of the work. The motor is not going to work half as hard.
BN: Another aspect of turbo-charging is also the cooling of the engine because it might run hotter with the turbo. With a V-rod you would not have that problem because the engine is liquid cooled, but what about the air cooled engines?
Nick: What we typically do is run a cooler. I also always recommend to put an oil-cooler on the bike. You need that anyway. If it is an air-cooled motor and it has the stock camshaft in it, you need that oil-cooler on the bike. That is my opinion. A lot of guys say 'No, you don't need oil-coolers on bikes,' but especially out here in Arizona we definitely need them. We do all of our testing in Arizona which is one of the hottest spots in the country.
BN: So basically what you are saying is when it does not overheat in Arizona, you are safe everywhere else?
Nick: Oh yeah! It is a lot easier to sell them back east than it is to sell them right here because of the heat issue.
BN: What is the performance increase you actually get out of putting a turbo-charger on a Harley, or any other motorcycle?
Nick: It is in the range of a 60 to 70 percent increase. It depends on the engine combination and it will depend on how many pounds of boost you are running. All the kits are pre-set at eight pounds of boost because we design the systems for stock engines – or close to stock.
You put a mild camshaft in a turbo motor and it will relieve a little bit of heat, making the motor run cooler, and it is going to make more power. We still want to keep the duration down on it and hold the charge in the motor.
BN: Is a turbo-charger something for everybody or is it only for people who look for a specific performance characteristic?
Nick: A turbo-charger is an alternative to building a big motor. For a touring bike, for example, it is by far the best way to have a reliable touring bike because, when you are running down the road, you are not putting any more load on the motor. You roll the throttle on, load the motor, build the boost, you can accelerate to overtake anything. You keep the longevity up and you also keep the horsepower readily available, you have it sitting there when you need it. You are not wearing the motor out as much, cruising down the road as compared to a high-compression big camshaft motor. The latter is always getting beat up whether its idling or running down the road.
BN: What you do here at Trask Performance is not just taking the turbo-charger out of the box and bolting it on, right?
Nick: We have our service department which is well known for motor-tuning. Guys bring their bikes from Arizona and the surrounding states to get their bikes tuned. The turbo shop is next door, where we R&D our turbo-systems. We also build production kits for the off-road market, especially side-by-side and ATVs. We build systems for Harleys. We can pretty much put a system on all fuel injected Harleys. We even have carburetor kits, but they are not available off the shelf; we build those as we get orders.
Now, we are also getting into winter sports, the sleds, also building systems for them. We had so many guys asking for it, so we are building a system for them. We get the turbo in, we size the turbo to the engine. We build the system, we do R&D testing on it, we take it out for field testing, put it on a few units and have them run around to get feedback, change a few things and then we go into production on it.
BN: Do you also, at least occasionally, build bikes without a turbo?
Nick: We build custom bikes occasionally for good customers. We think we have a good eye for what looks cool. It also makes you stand out in the crowd. When we take a bike to an event with a turbo charger on it and it's a custom bike, it is going to stand out. It shows that you can make a turbo system look good as well as function.
We also build bikes for guys without turbo-chargers. It just proves that we know what we are doing and shows that we can do more than just bolt a turbo on a bike. It gives us the credibility we need and makes people recognize us from bikes that we have built.
BN: How much does it set you back to put a turbo-charger on a motorcycle? And why is it worth doing it?
Nick: It is about $5,000 to put a system on. It is a bolt-on. You can take it off and put it on your next bike. You are not going to lose the investment. If you compare this to building a motor up, it is inexpensive. And, since its a bolt-on, you don't need to go into the motor while still making the power a big-inch motor would make. It is more cost effective to put a turbo-charger on your bike than to go out and buy a big-inch motor. And you are not going to have the driveline problems and the styling problems which would come hand in hand with a high-compression big-inch motor.
Don't get me wrong: I like big motors, and we turbo-charge a lot of big motors too for the guys that want crazy power.
BN: Nick, thank you very much for your time!
– – C.S. Berg
