Jim G’s Breakout Stage 4 project
I bought my Breakout on Monday March 3rd (see my new member posting), and included in the deal a D&D Low Cat 2 into 1 exhaust, a performance intake, Super Tuner, and detailed dyno tune (a “Stage 1” package with a good dyno tune added). I rode the bike home that evening, and returned it Friday March 7th, after the D&D exhaust arrived, expecting that my dealer, Cowboy HD in Austin, Texas, would do the install over the next couple of workdays. I casually mentioned that “sometime down the road”, I would look at a Stage 4 racing kit.

On Saturday morning, Frank the Parts manager, called me and said the service and parts teams had been discussing my bike, realized that I could save a fair bit of money by not repeating some of the costs later on the Stage 4 install that would be duplicating costs incurred on the simple Stage 1 deal: the removal and re-installation of the exhaust system and intake system, the different HD Super Tuner tune for the Stage 4 versus the Stage 1, and the detailed dyno tune (4 hours by itself). Frank offered me a deal, giving me full credit for the Stage 1 package, and a great deal on the Stage 4 package.

Now the HD Screamin’ Eagle catalog shows the rear wheel dyno charts for the HD 103 engine, the HD 110 engine, and the HD 103 with Stage 4 kit, and the graphs are super interesting if you analyze them a bit. Specifically, I checked out for each:

Peak power: the maximum rear wheel horsepower produced, and the rpm it is produced at

Peak torque: The maximum rear wheel torque produced, and the rpm it is produced at

Area under the power curve: The number of “squares” on the dyno chart underneath the power curve, measured from lowest rpm that the engine was run at on the dyno (the lowest rpm possible for full throttle without lugging the engine) to the highest rpm it was run at (the rev limit). This is a very telling number, because it rewards an engine for broad power band (larger range of rpm that it will run in without lugging or over-revving), and also rewards the engine for the total amount of power produced versus merely the “peak” power, which might occur in only a narrow rpm band. In other words, an engine with more area under the curve is going to feel more powerful, in proportion to the number to squares counted. Note that when counting squares, you have to count from ZERO hp to the hp line on the chart, but the HD charts in the catalog do not go below 20 hp on the power vertical axis. So, you have to add the number of squares that should have been displayed. On the actual charts, that means adding 12 squares to the stock power curve, but 14 to the 110 and 103 with Stage 4 kit, since the 110 and the kitted 103both have wider rpm ranges than the stock 103.

Area under the torque curve: Same reasoning as on the power curve, but now measuring torque versus horsepower.

With that intro, the power and torque numbers on the 103 with Stage 4 kit are awesome compared to both the stock 103 and the 110:



As you can see, the Stage 4 kit makes 82% more peak power than the stock 103, and 42% higher peak torque. More importantly, it shows great broad rpm range flexibility, with area under the curve being 81% larger for power, and 72% larger for torque!
Even compared to the stock 110, the 103 Stage 4 kit is impressive, blowing the stock 110 away with 46% more peak power, 15% more peak torque, 45% more area under the power curve, and 37% more area under the torque curve!
Knowing this, I accepted Frank’s offer, after first just making sure I could handle the extra cashflow.
So, right now (photos taken last evening at Cowboy HD), my brand new Breakout looks like this:







I mentioned to Frank that I really like the “one machine, one man” concept when it comes to work being done on my bike. “Brian” had done the installation of the Turbine wheels, rear pulley, and rotors, and I asked that he also do the installation of the Stage 4 kit. Cowboy HD was happy to oblige, and so here is a photo of Brian, taken right at end of work shift Wednesday, just before he got on his own bike for the ride home:




Not only is Brian obviously a biker, but he is said to be the best tech in the shop. You can see that I am in good hands, and Brain will have the satisfaction of knowing that “he built it all”.

I should be able to pick up the bike as early as this weekend, if all the required parts arrive as scheduled (snow at the distribution center is really slowing down shipments, my service advisor tells me). I will then need to do a good break-in, using a deliberately “rich AFR” tune that Cowboy will install, and then return after the break-in, or simply during the 1000 mile service, to get the 4-hour dyno tune done, so that I end up with the best, sharpest tune.
For those who like to do armchair drag racing, I have performance modeling software I wrote a couple of decades ago, and it has proven to be really accurate. It says that, even without changing the final drive transmission pulley by at least 10% (which I really should do at some point), the bike, with 2 gallons of gas and a 175 lb SKILLED rider aboard, should run the quarter in the high tens (remember, the Breakout weighs about 700 pounds before adding the rider).
Should be a fun ride. J
Jim G

 

Cowboy Harley-Davidson finsihed its work on my Breakout as scheduled by Saturday 3-08, but really wet and slippery weather prevented me from picking it up (who wants to get a brand new high-power bike filthy AND risk a slideout? ). But the rain finally stopped and I was able to pick it up last evening!

Now it's running a break-in tune that is conservatively rich and not well matched to the D&D Low Cat exhaust (Low Cat versus Fat Cat because the wider frame of the Breakout and its low ride height both forced D&D to reroute and tilt up the exhaust a bit, to keep the exhaust away from the oil lines and away from the road). And, the Stage 4 Racing kit is a higher rpm type kit (peak torque at 4000 rpm, rev limit at 6200), and that makes it only marginally "usable" during a proper break-in. So, there was no way I could get a feel yet of what it is really going to be like with a proper tune and full use of its "real" rpm range.

But I can say already:

- When it gets started, everyone looks

- The appearance of the D&D exhaust versus the stock exhaust is way better than I even anticipated. It is the right look for the Breakout (I got home too late to take photos, but will soon as I can)

- The Low Cat exahust really nicely exposes more of the chrome Turbine wheel

- The idle definitely has a racy lope, which you can also clearly see in the idle rpm in the digital rpm display within the speedo unit

- The D&D Low Cat provides a sound level that is noticeably higher to the rider, but interestingly, my wife, who followed me home in the Mustang, swears she "couldn't really hear it", and she is really sensitive to loud noise because of her job in the cash register area of a grocery store) so apparently it is not obnoxious to nearby drivers. It MAY sound louder to the rider simply because it is a short system overall, with a side exit.

- The sound under moderate acceleration (up to 3500 rpm or so) is "exciting". Very "racy"

- The sound on rapid throttle blips for downshifting is just plain awesome. The nicest I have ever heard. Very, very "crisp", and intense enough that even an oblivious drone in any adjacent car would be startled. This is, no kidding, the best downshift-blip exhaust sound I have ever heard, and I have owned 39 bikes before this one! It appears to be the result of the engine's willingness to rev and the D&D exhaust system acoustics.

Now I just need to restrain myself for about 500 miles . . .

Jim G

 

Jim, any update on what you think of the Stage 4 kit six months down the track?

 

Pics!!!!!!!!!!! Dyno #'s!!!!!!!!!!!

Love the look of the breakouts

 

Yes. I posted a very long thread shortly after my breaking was completed and my HD dealer did its so-called dyno tune, and was pretty unhappy. However, I then was referred by djl on this forum to a great tuner, Mike Lozano, who made all the difference. See my later-yet posting at:

https://www.hdforums.com/forum/engin...er-can-do.html

Jim G

 

This is old stuff from Jim G. Do a search for his follow up posts on the Stage IV kit and, if you are considering one, you might change your mind.

 

i seen that this thread was older but someone revived it and i thought it may co-exist with his huge thread about tuning. I did read that as well, great read. i'm not considering stage IV kit, my sig states i had FM build my 96 and i'm pretty happy with that. If I lived on the east coast I would have went to Hillside.