Big performance is hardly the first thing you think of when you think about cruisers. Even the so-called "performance cruisers" are hard-pressed to crack the 12-second barrier in the quarter-mile in their slow-revving, overweight, factory-tuned state, never mind standard cruisers, most of which have a difficult time outrunning the neighbor kid's poorly muffled Honda Civic. The horror
This doesn't necessarily need to be the case, however. Underneath all that chrome and candy paint there has to be some performance potential in these showboats, right? What would happen if you threw some serious power adders into the mix-a few pounds of turbo boost or a snoot full of nitrous oxide, for example? Could we find some "go" to match all that typical cruiser "show"?
It turns out that we're not the only ones asking this question. Exhibit A comes from drag-racing super-tuner George Bryce (of Star Racing and now G-Squared Motorsports fame), who is offering a bolt-on turbo kit for the Harley-Davidson V-Rod. Developed in conjunction with turbo legend Barry Henson at Velocity Racing in Davie, Florida, this kit is designed for reliable street use and is good for another 50 hp on top of the V-Rod's stock, 110-hp output. Exhibit B is my latest project bike, a nitrous-oxide-equipped Kawasaki Vulcan 2000. When Bryce called and offered a ride on his very own turbo V-Rod test mule at just about the same time I wrapped up my Vulcan, we immediately saw the opportunity for a serious heavyweight cruiser battle. Because Bryce sweetened the deal by offering to bring Chip Ellis, the rider of Bryce's G-Squared Motorsports NHRA Pro Stock Buell and one of the nation's fastest straight-liners, to ride both of the bikes to guarantee us the quickest, most consistent quarter-mile times, we just had to say yes. The Super Cruiser Shootout was on!
It's difficult to call this test a straight-up comparison, since the two base bikes are so different in design and intent. Kawasaki's Vulcan 2000 is a traditional (if hugely exaggerated) cruiser design, with a massive, 2053cc pushrod V-twin engine pumping out 95 rear-wheel hp and a healthy 120 ft.-lbs. of torque near the 5100-rpm redline. The V-Rod, on the other hand, is a much more up-to-date engine design, a high-revving, overhead-cam V-twin that makes 110 hp and 74 ft.-lbs. of torque at low-double-digit revs. The Vulcan is a monster in every way, especially weight, carrying over 800 pounds; the V-Rod, by comparison, is relatively svelte at just 620 pounds. So this is a complete apples and oranges story from the get-go, only further complicated by the different power mods on tap: nitrous versus turbocharging. Who planned this thing, anyway
Not to worry-if nothing else, the dragstrip is a great equalizer. It doesn't matter to a speed trap what country a bike comes from or how it makes its power-just how fast the bike gets from point A to point B, 1320 feet away, and we expected Ellis to answer this question definitively. So without missing a beat, we made plans to meet up with Bryce and company for a showdown at the new South Georgia Motorsports Park in Valdosta, Georgia. The plan was to bag a dyno run for both bikes, to establish how much power each motor made, and where it made it. The next step was a handoff to Ellis and the dragstrip, to see exactly how that power translated into forward acceleration. Finally, we would take both bikes out on the street to gather a real-world ride report, to see how each bike performed in more conventional riding circumstances. The game, as they say, was on.
The ContendersIt made sense to begin with the Vulcan, as this bike conforms more closely to the conventional cruiser archetype with a narrow-angle V-twin and full, classic-inspired bodywork. For a few short months following its release in 2004, the 2053cc (125 cubic inch) Vulcan 2000 was the largest-displacement production motorcycle on the planet, and one of the most powerful too, capable of producing 125 ft.-lbs. of torque, enough to turn mid-12-second quarter-mile times out of the box despite its 820-pound wet weight. This, of course, was just the starting point for us-those numbers were fine for a stocker, but we wanted a metric cruiser that could get absolutely medieval on other cruisers when it was necessary to the plot.
We started simply by opening up the motor on both ends, with a great-sounding Vance & Hines Power Shot exhaust system and a Thunder Manufacturing intake to help our Vulcan clear its throat. Thunder also supplied the fuel map for the Dynojet Power Commander ignition module that we used to keep the fuel properly metered-a very important concern in anticipation of our next mod, the "wet" nitrous oxide injection kit from Nitrous Express.