Note: This information was forwarded to me by Dean Richards, of Kitchener, Ontario. At this time, the name of the Suzuki tuner he mentions below is not known. I have not heard of these things before, with the exception of some of the airbox stuff, which I figured out on my own. If anyone else knows of any these things, please contact me with details, experiences, or results. It's kind of long, but interesting and worth reading, I think. Some of the information seemed to be cut off in the file he sent me, so I hope the information below is still mostly correct.
Jim

Dean wrote:
     Ribbed hoses were created to turn the air left and right to aim up at the filter which continued to help ramair to be more effective. Smooth is fast and that's what we're looking for. Next thing was to duplicate what he saw on the custom F.I. systems, the throttle bodies were so short! This controls air entering the engine and with longer throttle bodies the air flow has to do a difficult 180 into the cylinder, due to the design of the lower style of intake on the TLS. He found that the closer to open free flowing air the flap in the throttle body was, the better the engine could breath! Throttle response was increased because the butterfly in the throttle body has lots of air, directly at hand if needed. So he cut down the bodies, half inch at first then one full inch, and cut & lowered airbox floor to match. Voila, with hand made slipons and a fuel box (custom stuff at the time but same as a dynojet box and slipons) he saw 130 hp on his first bike! He did a second bike and it got 134 hp. This is rear wheel dynojet hp. Pretty impressive from a stock engine that was never disassembled at all. He had other cool ideas of moving the battery up front on the engine (before he saw the first TLR's!) and building an aluminum fuel cell under the seat (before the RC51 came out) so he could gut the tank and make it all airbox. But he never tried these. The TLR came soon after and the full superbike effort started for 98 (and 99 in Canada). So he played with race kits and Yoshimura to build the 153 hp monsters for Crevier in AMA Superbike and Wilson in Canadian Superbike. I own a 99 TLS and he explained all this to me over the phone in the spring. And over the summer I've done many of these mods myself on my bike with very strong results.

     Ok, now boy's, if you ever wondered why it was difficult to extract added horsepower from a TL1000, (you see them spending thousands for 5 to 8-9 horsepower) then listen to what a Suzuki sponsored TLR superbike builder explained to me. While in Japan at several TL intros he found something very strange. He witnessed prototype TL engines with pre-production fuel injection systems on them which were much different than the systems that finally found their way on our bikes. (along with cool airboxes to match) The japanese bragged about huge horsepower numbers as they always do with a new model and how great this engine was. Indeed the engine is a huge success but when this superbike builder got the first big twin to play with in his shop (a TLS) he found that there must be more in there! His memory kept seeing the custom F.I. system he had seen in Japan and the huge airboxes on engines that weren't in frames. Out came the hacksaw and he saw some interesting results! He found that compared to the size of the engine internals the airbox is pitifully small. And what's up with all the plastic restriction in the airways?

     He, like many people find, began by removing the flapper valve assembly and grafted a small smooth plastic cover for the resulting hole. then he found that under the filter element the intake hole was only the size of 1 throttle body! Cut that out and smooth over the holes so the air passes through to the full airfilter instead of being directed to the filter top like in stock form.

     Then he cracked open the airbox at the seam and looked at the floor of the box while it's still on the bike. The secret here is to pretend your the air and you will see that the intake air smashes into itself before finding its way through the filter. Smoother and more resposive the engine becomes. With slipons and power commander 2 (stage 4 map) and filter, the bike gets awesome fuel mileage and runs on the highway with an eerie smooth V8 feel. Much different than before I cut the bodies down 1 inch. This mechanic told me that until you do these modifications, you won't see the true gains that full exhausts and other expensive tuning parts can give. 130-134hp puts a TLS right on line with the R1, 929, ZX9, and others (if you put it on a bit of a diet) which is very promising with very low cost mods. I've gotten my bike dynoed in stock form 112.5 and with slipons 113 (5 more in the midrange) but not with fuel box or cut mods. This winter I'll be hitting it full force with a custom airbox floor and some dyno time for sure (probably a full high system, M4 work best for TLS & R) 135 hp is the target. Honestly, my bike feels about 8 hp stronger and the smoothness is sweet (cruising at 120-130 kph on the highway I've seen 250 km to a tank, many times, no problem)

Dean Richards
Kitchener, Ontario

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