Definitely a great question and thread started by 800Screws, Seems like a collective nerve was struck as there have been 30+ great responses.

I currently own four FXRs (looking to flip one of them, now), however I don't consider myself a "collector". I enjoy searching and finding great deals on close-to-stock FXRs. I have no interest in owning any other H-D model, and I don't yet own any other brand of motorcycle, although I am looking for the right deal on a first-generation Kawi KLR 650.

For my first and main FXR, I went the route of first hopping-up the 80" Evo. Then after several years, I swapped in a S&S V111, mainly b/c I got a great deal from a buddy who became an S&S dealer.

Definitely not a purist, although I wish I had that discipline b/c I suppose it'd be lighter on my wallet. Not "old-school" b/c I didn't own my first FXR until 2008, but I would like to own a close-to-stock '82 FXRS shovelhead. As a 22-y-old in '89 during the rise of the EVO era, I financed a brand-new '88 leftover Softail Custom thanks to a bank loan that my mother (RIP) co-signed with me. In retrospect, I should have chosen an FXR. If only Al Gore had "invented" the internet several years earlier (LOL).

Therefore, I'm not exactly sure which "category" or "sub-category" of FXR owner I fall into or belong. I credit my affinity towards the FXR to a buddy / mentor - 18 years older - who I met shortly after buying that Softail. He owned an '86 FXRS-SP and turned @100K miles on it during a 3-week 9,000 mile tour we took in '92. I remember noticing more than a few times how comfortable that FXR looked.

As far as the twin-cam aspect, I do consider hopping up a 2002 EFI 88" twin-cam to a 95" and installing it into my 1993 FXRS Convertible. Maybe sometime in the near future...

To echo some previous posts, when installing a significantly more powerful motor, be it a twin-cam or Evo style, then other upgrades are required such as a performance clutch, better front- brakes, stronger starter, performance coil, etc. So, what starts out as a relatively "inexpensive" project inevitably skyrockets way over budget...:yikes:

As a general rule, I "upgrade" with aftermarket internals (pistons, cam, coil, trans, primary, front-end parts, etc.) b/c I believe there are higher quality performance options available compared to the overpriced MoCo parts. Conversely, the only accessories I put on the FXRs are either ob$olete FXR parts or parts from other H-D models, such as an FXDX front-end, '00+ fork sliders and '00+ generation or '08 touring model brakes, etc.

Looking forward to reading more responses to this great thread...

 

This has been my all time favorite thread on this forum....what an abundance of knowledge of our beloved FXR's has come to light here!!! I had never really questioned why I see so many TC/FXR conversions, now I understand.
I fall into the category of the guy who can't financially justify a major motor upgrade, so I'll just continue to ride my mildly modified FXR with a grin on my 66 year old bearded face.

 

I fall into the category of the guy who can't financially justify a major motor upgrade, so I'll just continue to ride my mildly modified FXR with a grin on my 66 year old bearded face.

This is pretty much me, too. Mild mod to the motor, (although I did stare in lust at JamesButler's 111 powered FXR last Summer) but still, every time I finish a ride, 20 minutes or all day, I find myself thinking "what a sweet running and riding bike this is". Big smile. I've had my FXR2 for 14 years. It's nobody's "ultimate FXR". But it's the one I made to suit me.

I'd love to get a second FXR, put a 111" in it along with brakes, suspension and a paint job that I've had in my head for years. Maybe one day. I just don't get tired of or bored with them.

 

I might be mistaken but within the past few years didn't S&S offer a 124" TC that bolted directly to the stock Evo 5-speed tranny? No relocating the oil pan or cutting the cross-member? IIRC, it's been a year or so since they stopped making it. Not sure why, other than maybe it wasn't a great seller?

 

I might be mistaken but within the past few years didn't S&S offer a 124" TC that bolted directly to the stock Evo 5-speed tranny? No relocating the oil pan or cutting the cross-member? IIRC, it's been a year or so since they stopped making it. Not sure why, other than it maybe it wasn't a great seller?

Long before anyone had a set of cases that bolted up, Motorway Engineering AKA Vulcanworks had a plate you could bolt to a TC engine and mount it in an EVO frame. That defeats one of the better parts of the TC conversion, the rigidity of the engine and transmission combination. IMO, I wouldn't put a TC in and bolt it to the stock tranny.

 

in my opinion the evo drivetrain is plenty rigid enough if you're running a delkron inner primary and torque arm on the right side. just my $.02

 

Springer some of the parts in the middle pic don't look to be harley. Shift forks, possibly the drum and shifter assy for sure. I think the harley techs speed is a good box, and seems to hold up well, even under substantial power increases..just update the shift assembly
Updating the rest is always a good idea...

 

Actually that is a complete stock 2005 transmission guts and parts. It had a couple hundred miles on it when the owner upgraded to a Baker 6 speed. All HD parts.

 

Was that running NOS?

 

ah well hmm , ah maybe just a little . cant find picture of where I blew both heads off another bike running nos

 

interesting reading for sure, so if you wanna play you gotta pay! a lot depending on how much power you want + the MoCo's bean counters continually cheap out better parts + designs for more profits for the shareholders!!! same reason for all the recalls these days, cheap outsourced parts + less experienced cheaper paid workers replacing the old pros, samo samo everywhere! if you want it right DIY or buy aftermarket aka S+S but bring a big checkbook!!! lucky are those who can!!

 

Man PW....I thought I was the grouchy fuker here....geeez. :redrolf:

 

Yeah, maybe I'm getting grouchy as I get up in years. Too much work put in I guess-and seen too many EZ way out excuses. Only way to explain it is, maybe you are any other skilled trade....you have been running those wires for 50 years, as per electricians spec....someone says, I blow those circuits all the time, they are no good, I run it that way but blow it up regularly....do it all the time, have done worse, or I have run all those lines you say works, my way, and they have blown, and every time I run those systems, they fail (even though those set ups have worked successfully for decades).
Yet amazingly, this craftsman, he never says who he is, his experience with other sets ups that have blown up, and never shows you his specific blown up set up, why he did it this way, or anything else.... BS-Yet it has been done for decades the same way successfully, and yet, he has blown it up your way, and made fail many of the previously successful systems that have worked-but not explained why your **** is no good, and why his **** is better....

I guess there are 3 ways to address it-
1.
Call them on it-
2.
Do nothing-let them spout the BS, laugh privately, and let them assume everyone believes the BS they post.

3.
The poster is actually as bad ass as he claims. He posts examples, his bike, his blown motor set ups, what shop he works for, etc, and walks the walk.
In example #3, I will eat crow, own it, and look forward to talking and sharing stories with a nasty HP maker who blows up big inch engines on a regular basis, and who actually answers how fast (with slips) he went on his GS1100-

 

Why did I ask....knowledge. Simple as that. I didn't know why and wanted to get educated on the subject

 

I, too, thought it was a simple and valid question for discussion. I found most of the responses to be informative.

 

I don't know FXR's very well enough but , after reading this whole topic, to me from my professional expertise from watching the news and being well taught. I believe this topic was tampered with by the Russians!

 

ive always enjoyed v-twin forum because people are nice and help when you have questions . for someone to come in and be a jerk was uncalled for , you noticed he questioned if either of use even owned fxr instead of putting in 2 second of work and looking at our previous post . he ask about my motor builder , I'm not stupid , that's the first thing you do , then you run them down , call them a hack , talk about how they don't have a multimillion dollar shop like some builder in california been thru that before . to me building bikes is fun , I build most of my own motors , when I need help I go to a friend that drag races Harleys but he drag races irionheads and shovels ( heck there a video on youtube of him racing a pan on 1/8 mile track ) why bring his name into it so he can be made fun of by a jerk . I use s&s parts , no I don't think big inch motors last , yes ive had several . I hated the 113 I got in 1997 , thing was a pos and needed constant work . I would much rather have a 96 inch motor that last more than 5k miles but I ride Harleys on the street . yes we race light to light or street races on Friday and Saturday nights but then we ride rest of week on same bike . the head and piston was off a S&S111 , yes nos was being used when it blew . I think pwmorris attitude was completely uncalled for , my point for showing picture was I would not run a big evo if I was building bike that I wanted to last or be dependable

 

Springer I thought the forks looked baker'ish lol..

I have never been fond of the TC, we'll harleys version of its own engine, it is such an expensive engine to make suitable for high performance it's more rational and reasonable to remove it and go S&S, it will last longer..
.
If a person just wanted 110 inches stock it would make sense to swap it out...but stock ain't me, never has been never will be..
The TC in evo frames even fxr frames is just a natural progression, remember all those strange engine combo's of the past?
Any engine by any maker or builder can be blown up,, I had one friend, who, after just finishing every build he did, would go out and try to blow it??? Wtf 50 years later he is still at it... I would build one, and push it to the limit of its design, hoping not to blow it, if it scattered, I did something wrong....
That blown head and piston looks to have broken or dropped a valve I've had both happen, once an aluminum spring retainer broke, dropping a valve, I saved 1 head, and the crankcase from that fiasco, a 20 buck part killed the whole engine,,,,, bummer. Only titanium and steel for me...

as a competitive racer/builder a person cannot tell the whole story of what is in his engine . It's like secret sauce, the special mix of spices in KFC chicken, if you tell it all next week you will be eating your recipe, by another chef,,, which brings me to,,, there is no innocent question, just for the knowledge only , in my world,, everyone is looking for an edge on everyone else..

 

Any engine by any maker or builder can be blown up,, I had one friend, who, after just finishing every build he did, would go out and try to blow it??? Wtf 50 years later he is still at it... I would build one, and push it to the limit of its design, hoping not to blow it, if it scattered, I did something wrong....
That blown head and piston looks to have broken or dropped a valve I've had both happen, once an aluminum spring retainer broke, dropping a valve, I saved 1 head, and the crankcase from that fiasco, a 20 buck part killed the whole engine,,,,, bummer. Only titanium and steel for me...

it dropped a valve . motor was not trashed just head jug and piston . split case put new bearing in it , retrued wheels and went thru oil pump .
ive been riding Harleys since 1985 started with a 1976 irionhead and have been riding Harleys ever since , yes ive had other brand bikes too but always had atleast 1 Harley if not 3 or 4 , ive been riding dirt bikes since I was 5 years old so ive seen my share of blown motors over the years from almost every brand of bike

 

Here is the FL case with modified oil pan thats going into my FXR
(Thx again Turboprop)-
My existing 5 speed trans will be transplanted into this case-fresh bearings, etc. Bolts right up to my TC motor with Evo mount.
Oilspout has been modified to clear XL starter motor-

 

Oh, now you've done it. Look at that oil spout, I can hear the bar stool crowd now.

 

Yeah, definitely "******* Engineering"! :roflback:
Maybe on final assembly I'll go with the stock spout and spacer...we'll see-but ya gotta admit...no one has a spout like that!

 

Back to TC vs Evo- I am so old I believe an 80" engine is plenty big enough for any motorcycle. When the TC first came out anyone could see it was beefier in some areas than an Evo and the cases were engineered for much bigger bores than an Evo. The two cams meant the pushrods weren't angled as severely as all previous Big Twins (but when was that really a problem?) and having the oil pan under the tranny meant...... What was the advantage of that again? As far as the stronger engine/tranny interface, yeah that was nice for the much weaker Dyna frame, but the FXR frame is strong enough that it doesn't flex- not with anything less than race-level stresses, anyway.
Then people started actually putting some miles on the TC and found the heads were choked so much that they didn't flow nearly as well as an Evo, all the better to sell a bunch of 95" kits, which didn't really work that well because the heads were choked so much! The cam chains were sloppy compared to the gear-driven cam that came before, and the balancer in the softails chewed itself up putting undesirable additives into the engine oil. But what most people noticed right away, and what Harley was aware of but was unable to fix prior to the new engine's introduction, was that the TC ran way hotter than the Evo. I recall reading on one board how a guy with a new TC was showing temps up to 300 degrees on his oil tank thermometer!
That right there is the biggest reason not to replace a cool-running Evo (my oil tank rarely shows more than 200 degrees) with a boiling hot TC next to your legs. I know a guy with an '05 bagger who won't ride it if it's much above 80 degrees.
Newer problems with the TC are they stopped using the bullet-proof tapered Timken crank bearings after '02 and adopted huge tolerances resulting in lots of sloppy, and sometimes scissored cranks, and they went to the six-speed tranny starting in '06(?), which, once again, sounded better on paper, but on the street was so loud they had to put a compensator on the rear wheel to quiet the clatter!
Not that the Evo didn't have problems of its own- lifters, base gaskets, inner cam bearing (which the TC also had) but they were not as serious as the inherent flaws of the TC.
If you've read what the factory says about the new Milwaukee 8 and have any ability to read between the lines you can see that the factory was fully aware of the Twin Cam's many weaknesses and went all out to try to design an engine the equal of the Evo, only bigger.
Replacing the reliable, cool-running Evo with the TC is bad enough, but it's made worse by cutting up a factory frame to make it fit!
Nope. Evo only for me. And I hope the Milwaukee 8 turns out well, but any modern engine (computer-controlled, fuel injection and fuel pump, radiator and water pump, twin plugs whose removal requires the removal of the gas tank, etc.) will always be too complicated and expensive to work on for me.

 

I'm gonna go ahead and be the first to "second" this :cheers:

 

Pretty cool Paul.
Wilks I'll 3rd that pretty well summed up...
most of the local 113's after running the roads all day on a smoking hot day won't pass 200 degrees on the oil temp...
A TC can be made reliable and run cooler it just coats a bunch...

 

Like how this guy did a right side dyna mid control, would probably be nice even for a evo.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/142326462479?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

 

Figured post some pics here before listing disappears.

 

For those that have done the TC, is there any more room between the rear rocker cover bolts and the frame, than the Evo?

 

From the pics I've seen, no.

Phoning through cyberspace

 

That's messed up, did notice different pan on the bike. Odd listing the bike was listed twice, other one ended yesterday.

So you were in the test phase? One question on the touring pan's. What's the difference between evo and TC pans? Will Joe's pan work on the early model tranny that bolt up to a evo like Paul showed a page back?

 

I built the pan in Paul's earlier post and a couple others just like it. I sent one of them to Joe for him to use for design purposes. The pan that Joe shows on his website can certainly be used in an Evo application as it has a boss that is dimpled but undrilled for where the feed line would go. The return line would connect to the unused port on the front of the case and the vent line would connect to the port on the later style oil spout. So, yes, Joe's pan can certainly be used with an Evo (and shovel) along with a FL style transmission with a belly oil pan.

 

I've been curious about this as well. Contemplating an S&S EVO style motor for my '94, but would really like to use a touring trans to get that hot oil down low and give more space for the exhaust at the rear cylinder.

 

Thanks for that info, have a evo FL and TC FL 5 speed tranny. Am thinking of using the evo tranny first with a later option to install a TC. Knowing now that the pan would work with either is a big plus, thanks again.