The Albrex Rocket III Turbo

Whether your bike weighs 700, 800 or 900 pounds is immaterial when you've got three cylinders and 2300 cc sitting in the engine bay. weight watchers becomes even less important when you can hit a turbocharger to energize that already-hefty displacement. At this point it might be more crucial to employ a two-handed iron grip, immovable shoulder sockets and a truly iron butt. It'll come in useful when a handful of throttle and a reinforced clutch send all that power to the gearbox and the jarring thrust flattens you into the single seat like a compressed Slinky.

Of course we're all well aware the stock Triumph Rocket III is already the largest-displacement production bike on the planet, and few riders would say that its stock output-140 hp at 5,750 rpm and 147 lb-ft of torque at 2,500 revs-makes for a wimpy ride.

We've heard rumors that Triumph's engineers actually toned down the force of the Rocket's three cylinders by backing off the injection mappings, though we'd bet most owners are more than happy with the stock performance numbers.

But for those who believe in excess there's Conrad Gruber. The 40-something Austrian has developed a following by specializing in helping bikers whose primary concern is bigger, better and faster. They come to him from all over the world, leaving their Ferraris and Lamborghinis at his workshop in the picturesque village of Wildschnau in the Austrian Alps. They return after a couple of months (depending on the complexity of the work) inevitably thrilled that their favorite toy now has at least 50 percent more power.

Gruber's Albrex shop is all about ful-filling the dreams of the young at heart, so naturally most of his customers also have one or more motorcycles in their garage. Many of them are musclebike devotees who went out and got a Rocket III when the new V-Max was nowhere in sight and the Suzuki B-King hadn't surfaced. And these are the guys who also want their Triumph's 240 rear tire to go up in smoke much more quickly-by adding some "real" power.

That's the backstory, anyway. And so it was that after a first ride on a Rocket III, one of Gruber's clients sent his British bike to beautiful Austria with a note reading, "Conrad, you've got to put a turbo on it to make sure that this bike gets some true power." The instructions were followed up with a nice budget allowance and six months of conversion time.

But it's not as simple as plugging in a kit from your local Pep Boys. A turbo conversion that can handle triple-digit Autobahn speeds without a problem requires plenty of professional engineering, much of it by hand. First, Gruber stripped the engine and examined the innards. Determining all was stout inside, he put it back together, painting the block black with a heatresistant enamel for a stealthily attractive look. The next step was to assemble a new manifold to feed the turbo with exhaust gases. Though he'd been down this path before, making the three manifold pipes equally long and as short as possible required a deft touch. Then he asked KKK to manufacture a special turbocharger for the 2.3L engine to quickly build up boost. It maxes out at 0.58 bar (8.4 psi), after which the pop-off valve vents excess with a honk.

According to Gruber the Rocket mill has a relatively low compression ratio of 8.7:1, which nicely complements a turbocharger. "The Rocket III motor seems to be made for this kind of power increase since it is massively built and has got lots of reserves inside."

Naturally just a turbo isn't enough, so in went two power-friendly intercoolers left and right on either side of the radiator. They're bulky, but Gruber is already planning a more attractive design. Because the triple cylinder mill seemed to have a stoutly engineered cooling system, the Albrex conversion didn't require modifications on the cooling circuits for water and oil.