Well folks, I've done the deed and converted my '07 Sportster to a 1200. Because I wanted a simple and reliable upgrade I decided to do jugs and pistons and stick with the 883 heads. I want to post this info because there's not a whole lot of complete info on doing this conversion on post '07 Sporty's ie the fuel injected ones. And there's quite a bit of confusion on what you need to do exactly and what the options are.
The various shops that I spoke to about getting the conversion done gave me a wide range of quotes with different options every time. Quotes I got varied from around $2500 from the local Adelaide dealer to around $1200 from another shop. Various options that were given to me were:
1) Bore the 883 cases and replace pistons with Wisecos, no fuel option $1200 2) Bore 883 cases and fit SERT from dealer $2500 3) Bore 883 cases and fit Thundermax $2000 4) My option was to get the V-Twin Kit off ebay $570, get it fitted $615 and initially to re-flash the 883 EMC to 1200 with stage 1 $1185 - The 1200 ECM flash worked ok but I eventually went with the Thundermax auto-tune ECM for $860, so in total upgrade cost me around $2000 Another option would be to go with the Harley Screamin Eagle kit which comes complete with 1200 jugs, pistons and heads. I priced the kit from Zanotti's at about 1200 delivered to AU, then you would have to get it installed but this seemed like a pretty good option as it also comes with the Screamin Eagle Air Filter.
Probably the most confusing thing about doing the conversion on a '07 and up Sporty is finding out what the options are in terms of the fuel injection. This is what I found:
- Regardless of whether or not you have a fuel tuner on your 883 you will still need to flash your ECM to 1200 specs.
- If you have the V&H Fuelpak it won't work, even if you flash your 883 ECM to 1200 and set your Fuelpak to 1200 settings. V&H don't have a map as yet for the 883/1200 setup. I spoke to them and they said they will have one soon. With the Fuelpak I found it was best to remove it because the bike ran better with just the flashed 1200 Sporty ECM.
- I've heard of others successfully using a combination of 1200 Spory ECM and the PCIII, although the PCIII needs to be dyno tuned for the upgrade.
- The other option for fuel management is to go with the Thundermax with auto-tune as this replaces the 883 ECM and can be tuned for any setup. Main drawback with this is the $900 cost.
The engine kit I went with was the V-Twin Manufacturing 1200 Big Bore Kit for '04 and up Sporty's, kit comes with:
The kit I bought only came with head and base gaskets but you can buy kits off ebay with complete James top end gasket kits for a bit more. The kit comes in black with milled edge fins or silver with fins closely matching the look of the 883 heads. I decided to go for a mixture of black jugs with my silver 883 heads.
On inspection of the VTwin kit the castings and machining on the jugs looks pretty good. Overall I was pretty happy with the look of kit's quality. I got if fitter at KM Motorcycles in Adelaide and the guys there were pretty impressed with the look of it and even more impressed when I told them what I paid for it.
Biggest bummer of this whole story is that the work on my bike is done but I couldn't get down there today to pick it up so it'll be tomorrow morning now. I'll give you a first hand update as soon as I get one.
V-Twin Manufacturing 1200 replacement barrels
Wiseco 9.5:1 dish top pistons
A pic from the right side of the bike with the V-Twin kit fitted:
Picture of the left site with V-Twin kit installed:
Good work mate. It will be interesting to see how she compares to a stock 1200.
Enjoy
Spent a few hours at Scotty's place today trying out quite a few ECU configurations to get the bike running smoother. We had some interesting results. On initially riding the bike when I picked it up after getting the big bore installed I had the impression that it was running really rough but after riding it today it wasn't as bad as I first though. The bike in general idles fine with the 1200 stage 1 map, but there's just a bit of a back-fire or timing issue while accellerating and cruising. Power wise it definately pulls hard after the big bore so I rekon I deffinately acheived the power I was after. It was good also getting Scotty to take the bike for a ride to get his opinion of what the power felt like and he confirmed that the power was good. In trying to smooth out the ride of the bike we reverted back to the 883 Stage 1 ECU map to see what a difference it would make. It ran terrible with the 883 stage 1 map, so we definately confirmed that installing a big bore kit on an 2007 and up Sporty requires a re-map to 1200 ECU. We also tried different configurations of the V&H Fuelpak to see how much of a difference that would make, we tried setting the Fuelpak to an ad-hoc map which was half way between the 883 and 1200 setting from V&H but that didn't seem to work well. In the end we disabled the Fuelpak by setting all of the ranges to zero. From here I'm going to try a few different 1200 configurations of the Fuelpak to see if any of them will smooth the bike out. I'll keep people posted on the results. As things stand though the 883/1200 motor (1200 jugs and pistons with 883 head) seems to work the best with the 1200 stage 1 ECU map but still not great in terms of a smooth ride.
looking good mate who will be up front now
ull be happy as with the TM
had a look on my TM maps and there is only 2 maps for you , makes it easier 4 ya
map 390 is a 1200/ stock 45mm t/BODY/ KW HP MUFFLERS/ stock pistons but 1200heads, no radical timing , should do u just fine
map 358 is a total stock 883 that would probly be no good 4 ya
Sounds good, once it arrives I'm sure I'll have questions.