126 Turbo Road Toad

350 Hp 126" Turbo Orca Road Toad

Will You Ever Win...?

...Rhiannon..Stevie Nicks

The Foundation

Stock Harley Twin Cam cases, rods and pistons...not to mention ancillaries like electronics, fuel system, final drives, clutches etc. are not sophisticated enough or strong enough for 300-400 horsepower. We're going to show you what it takes to make a Killer 126" ORCA Road Toad...in this case based on our 2004 FLTRI. It all starts with the foundation of the S&S SA engine cases with a 4 3/8" bore.

We should note these 126 Orca engines fit right into our 2004 FLTRI but do not fit the 2007 and later Touring and 2006 and later Dyna chassis...Just in case you were wondering. If you want a bunch of inches then a SE 120R engine with its big valve heads might be an alternative. You'd still have to take it apart and have it professionally prepared for turbocharging. Crank and bearing preparation, head sealing, pistons, piston pin, and other issues have to be addressed. Figure on doubling the cost of the SE 120R engine for labor and parts.

Parts

This is $9,000.00 worth of parts from S&S. You might just notice that this is just a bunch of parts and not an assembled engine. We don't use all these parts and some of the items go to the shelf as they don't work with turbos. Some parts we use come from our 139" Bonneville Bullet which also has a 4 3/8" bore. Everything has to be proven. Figure about $15,000.00 when we finish with it.

For those of you who have more money than common sense...or if you are just like us and want to follow our ORCA Engine dictum of "Terror Nihilum" i.e. "Fear Nothing", these packages will be available.

Follow Carl Pelletier of Competition Motorcycles as he assembles a 126 ORCA Turbo Motor.

Crankshaft Preparation

The S&S crankshaft is a five piece pressed together assembly with pressed in plugs...This won't do for a turbo. You have to weld the structure and keep it true within .001" runout. Not an easy job.

Turbos are easier on cranks than are Nitro burning dragsters, but shock loading by dumping the clutch and banging the gears in race situation can cause the crank to shift with less than favorable consequences. If you are at all familiar with OEM Twin Cam crankshaft troubles you already get the message. Harley has piles of dead Twin Cam cranks.

Piston Preparation

We have custom CP turbo pistons with thicker domes and related ring packs for the higher turbo pressures. Alan at Xtreme Performance Coatings treats the skirts and places a ceramic heat barrier on the piston crown. Unlike S&S, Carl symmetrically cuts the skirts for front / rear piston clearance to preserve thrust face area. S&S cuts the face of only one piston.

Road Toad Orca Pistons

Cut symmetrically and balanced within 1 gram...these are ready for the next step. Piston pins are special heavy wall to prevent bending.

Cylinder Head Modifications

The S&S SA B2 cylinder heads get re-machined back to a static compression ratio of 9.6:1. With our specialized Turbo Camshafts the dynamic compression ratio is much lower. The 2.200" Inlet and 1.800" exhaust valves are retained. For extreme use like the 6 mile long course at Bonneville we use 1.800" 2400 degree Ferrea exhaust valves with thicker stems. For really high end horsepower like on our 139" ORCA Bonneville Bullett motor we have John O'Keefe at Branch O'Keefe do a turbo race porting job.

Full Turbo B2 Head Race Port...Branch O'Keefe

In a race situation and you need to move 500 hp worth of air @ 30 psi of boost this is what John O'Keefe will do to your S&S SA B2 heads. Not necessary for the Road Toad, as it's a street bike, but ever so necessary for Bonneville or racing. Branch O'Keefe Exhaust port shown at the right. The exhaust valves are upgraded to specially made Ferrea items. Full race preparation is $1,500.00 which involves turbo porting, different valves, guides and guide seals.

In addition, for race aplications, pistons will be modified to take PEEK piston skirt buttons. There is an additional cost for this.

S&S SA B2 Heads...RSR EFI Inlet Manifold

The 126 Orca Turbo can be set up for 360 to 500 hp ratings depending on the Turbo chosen and the boost level run. Stock Delphi type injectors simply will not cut it. We use specialized injectors up to 1600 ccm or 19.2 grams per second. Stock Harley Delphi injectors are 3.91, 4.35 or in the case of CVO injectors 4.89 grams per second. For the 360 hp 126" Road Toad we will be using two 1000cc injectors (12 grams per second). S&S SA B2 Oval Port Super D manifold modified for RSR Fuel Injection and RSR EFI 56mm throttle body.

No one said any of this is easy. The OEM in tank fuel pump must be changed as well as the fuel regulator. Neither was designed for 360 much less 500 hp.

Completed Engine

Here's the completed 126 Orca Turbo. The cylinder head is sealed with 600 psi nitrogen-filled Inconel rings. The crankshaft is balanced and welded. The Combustion chambers have been modified and cc'ed for turbo compression. Special 4 3/8" CP Turbo pistons with low friction skirt coatings and ceramic barrier crown coatings. Special Turbo camshafts. 56mm RB Racing Inlet Manifold set up for two 1000cc injectors. We don't dual plug these like we do our 139" Orca Bonneville engines as the stock FLTRI chassis doesn't allow access to a center chamber spark plug.

Figure $15,000.00 as it sits. Carl Pelletier completed the assembly with our custom parts. Next up is the specialized turbocharger hardware, the advanced electronics and mil-spec wiring harness and sensors.

Injector Dynamics Injectors

Tony Palo at T1 Race Development is the guy you go to for the most accurate racing injectors. If you want 1000cc or 2000cc injectors to idle properly and be linear across the operating range these are the only game in town. They are relatively inexpensive for what they do and as you venture into more complex engine management systems with all sorts of offset tables, individual cylinder trims, and the like, then you better have an injector that comes with a pedigree and a flow chart.

Here we have the ID1000 Injector Dynamics 1000cc Injector flow chart for different voltages. In more advanced engine management systems you have voltage offset tables to insure your fuel flow remains constant at programmed values.

Here the same injectors have been reflowed with a Motec controller with the proper voltage offsets or corrections programmed in. We are using ID1000 injectors in our 126 Orca motor and in the Fall will be running ID2000 injectors in Mike Geokan's Bonneville Bullett. Tony supplies the correction factors so you do not have to run a battery of tests on a flow bench to figure this out. We see more Injector Dynamics injectors at Bonneville these days...in everything from Enzo Ferraris to motorcycles.

Turbo Exhaust Manifold

Life gets complicated when you have different engine deck heights and S&S SA B1 and S&S SA B2 cylinder heads on 126 and 113 Orca Motors....and when you have to make parts to fit FLT, Softail, Dyna and FXR Chassis. You get to deal with varying slip fit lengths, different engine and intercooler mounts, different plenum chambers and the list goes on and on. It does sort of help when you have S&S Supersport, S&S SA, OEM Evo and OEM Twin Cam engines as well as Softails, FXRs and FLTs in the shop. In the end you make specific items for the application and little can be used cross-platform.

Here a new set of fixtures has been made for the 126" SA B2 Twin Cam and 113" SA B1 Evo Orca motors. The 113 Evo is a taller engine and frame clearance issues get tight with a taller engine in an FXR. Prototypes are done in mild steel, tacked together, and then replicated in very expensive stainless steel with 2" tubing on 2" and 3" radii. CNC machined flanges and turbo venturis are specially made for the S&S SA B2 and S&S SA B1 cylinder heads. Fixtures are set up for dual O2 sensors and EGT probes.

Stainless Exhaust Manifold

After we prototype the exhaust manifold in mild steel and make our fixtures we duplicate the parts in stainless steel just like we did for Mike Geokan's Bonneville Bullett. You are looking at about $700.00 worth of precision 2" O.D. 16 gauge stainless steel to make two headers. Figure two to three days of fabrication and it gets pretty pricey. If you make the parts very accurately, purging the tubes with Argon as they are welded, then you will have parts that will not fail. We do not use the tubes for any support function, only as a conduit for the hot expanding exhaust gases...typically 1450 to 1625 Degrees F.

Added to the tubes are EGT ports, O2 sensor ports, and a port to measure exhaust backpressure for O2 corrections. Stainless holds the heat but the tubes will also be ceramic coated for additional heat retention.

Two sets of 126 Turbo exhaust manifolds being fabricated in stainless. Tubes are purged with Argon for final welding. The parts will "pull" or shrink so there is a sequence to be followed or the parts won't fit. They will be final prepped with the O2 ports, EGT ports, Pressure ports and then taken to Alan at Xtreme Performance Heat Coatings for a Black Ceramic finish. Good way to spend three days.

Pressure Compensation Port

On our 126 Orca the advanced electronics allow real-time, closed-loop, adjustments of the front and rear cylinder air/fuel mixtures under both vacuum and boost. The wideband sensors are placed on the pressure side of the exhaust near each exhaust port to monitor the front and rear cylinders. As the exhaust pressure rises the sensors will give false readings unless compensations are made. We add a pressure port that goes to a 0-5V 100psi pressure sensor so we can dial in the appropriate correction factors.

Ceramic Coating

After the stainless exhaust has been made it gets a Silver Ceramic Heat Barrier Coating from Xtreme Performance Heat Coatings. It looks like polished aluminum and will turn grayish @ 1450-1600 Deg F but won't burn off. Left alone, the stainless will turn gold, then brownish, then black. The stainless 16 gauge tubing holds the heat in very well...With the barrier coating even more so. Chrome heat shields are placed over the exhaust manifold.

Radial Mounted 4 Piston Calipers

The stock Harley brakes never gave us the feel we wanted so we decided to do something about it. We did a lot of 24 hour endurance racing in the 1970's and our bikes always had the best brakes....usually AP Lockheed with Brembo "Oro" iron rotors. With the 126 Orca Turbo we decided to fab up a set of radial mount 4 piston calipers that were of one-piece construction. No flexing and we get a solid lever with far better stopping power. Brakes are what we call "reverse horsepower". Since we'll have more that 300 hp on tap we needed 300 hp rated brakes. Besides, they look trick.

While we were at it we also upgraded the 2004 forks to some chromed 2008 units. The 2004 forks only had damping in one leg...anything the MoCo can do to save a buck.

Traction Control

When you have 300-360 hp on tap it's a good idea to have full electronic control over traction. We've added front and rear wheel speed sensors to the Road Toad. Our advanced electronics ecu will monitor front and rear wheel speeds and can adjust boost, timing and fuel in real time. Important when wheelspin gets beyond certain parameters. Very useful at Bonneville where a torque-based strategy is useful to find traction and keeps speeds going upward where the conditions vary as you head down the salt. Front end FPGA keeps track of the angle based computations...way faster than "seat of pants".

Wheel Speed Sensor

When the rear wheel starts going way faster than the front wheel and we're losing traction and speed we can use algorithms to do something about it. Things learned on the Road Toad get transferred to the Bonneville Bullett.

Mil-Spec ECU Wiring

The Road Toad 126 Turbo is getting a complete Mil-Spec Wiring Harness to match its upgraded high end electronics. We have provided an overview of Motorsports wiring to show what goes into making a racing wiring harness.

On the Road Toad we'll be looking at: throttle position, manifold pressure, fuel pressure, engine oil pressure, turbo oil pressure, exhaust pressure, front and rear O2 sensors, inlet air temperature, charge temperature, front wheel speed, rear wheel speed, gps, tachometer/engine speed, voltage, egts front and rear cylinders, knock sensor, and several other temperature readings. It does get complicated.

Stainless Steel Braided Oil Lines

We cover our RB Racing Turbo braided stainless steel oil lines in high temperature shrink tubing. We know you just love to see braided stainless steel lines but they get dirty, scratch everything they rub up against and tend to eat everything they come in contact with. Black is what you get.

Electronics

We used our own RSR EFI to set the first record with the Bullett and many other records since the early 1990's but we felt we needed to have more adjustability, processing power, feed-back mechanisms, and complexity to go for 250+mph. We contacted Neel Vasavada at Apex Speed Technology who handles the engine managment and data acqusition for a wide variety of race teams, two and four wheeled, and the usual individual projects that come out of the woodwork.

He has many years experience in the highest levels of motorsport. He has been to Bonneville setting up electronics and data acquisition and has set records just like we have. In addition Neel has worked on Dan Gurney's Alligator motorcycle project both the single and the S&S Twin Cam V-Twin versions.

Neel and his crew are sort of a one stop shop that handles everything and since we're used to handling everything and don't like to rely on others, we've agreed to marry our expertise, split the efforts and get the Road Toad and the Bonneville Bullett set up for the new electronics. Anyone who has demonstrated expertise we'll listen to. It's only smart to do so. For us we have to devote the time to building special parts for both bikes as well as ramping up to handle the complexities of a new platform. That's where the 126 Orca Road Toad comes in.

We try to engineer things out in advance and we ride to test. That is our methodology. In the late 80's and early 90's we did over 5000 miles of road work on our turbo GSXR Suzukis and you could put a monkey on them and go 200 mph and they would not break. Harleys do not have Suzuki's engineering and are much more fragile but we fully intend to get 5000 hard miles on the 126 Road Toad with Neel's and our own expertise before the Bullett turns a wheel. We ride. The Road Toad will take a 3000 mile run early this Spring as part of the testing...up the middle of Nevada at warp drive. No trailers. No backup.

You have to learn...no pain, no progress.

The Cosworth Pectel SQ6 starts at about $4,000.00 and heads a bit North with options but is a better alternative than other higher end ecus as you don't have to spend additional funds for data logging and other "needed features" as they are already built in. We step up from our 40 pin ecu to this 88 pin unit. Neither unit uses all the I/O capability that exists. Cosworth electronics on Lamborghinis, Porsches, BMW's, drift cars, world rally cars, etc...and we come along with pushrods. It's all racing.

Speed Costs

In case you are wondering what all this go fast shit costs...Here's something to ponder. Used FLTRI $10,000.00. Turbo System $8,995.00 with advanced sensor package. Advanced Electronics, including traction control, data aqcquisition and Mil Spec wiring harness, plus tuning $12,500.00. Race prepared 126" S&S SA 126" Turbo engine $15,000.00. Then there's the race clutch, hydraulic master cylinder conversion, chain final drive, and all that installation labor.

Sort of a bargain compared to the days of "Master Builder Chopper Mania". You can actually ride one of these things anywhere...faster and for less money than the guy with the attitude and tatoos was charging. Speed and practicality never go out of fashion.

What we learn at Bonneville goes into our street turbos...And the things we develop to press the envelope in our Road Toad goes into our Bonneville racing like the Bonneville Bullett above. Expensive, but necessary.