Mike, pics please! I had one of these and it was most excellent for touring and commuting.
How are the inner cases? Always good to look for cracking. Can be fiberglass reinforced easily by yourself for prevention... Pics on BWB in a VERY old posting by Al Lighton. All those shit roads in the UK can wreak havock on the stock cases.
Power can be cheaply had by replacing the stock ignition module with a Squawking Chicken one and selecting a better map. I got 10 RWHP extra from that and a better muffler and a K&N only.
The stock map is shit. IIRC I was up to 80 RWHP after that. But those other mods will definitely do better. OTOH, gas mileage was pretty good at 80 HP.
Congrats on coming back to the dark side.
MikeUK wrote:
Yes I understand your comments Maz.
My view is that currently the only X1's available look as though they have seen quite a lot of 'spannering' and Steve's S2 has only 5200 miles and is completely stock and 'unmolested' which for a 21 year old bike makes it fairly unique in my view.
I know there are a lot of differences between the 2 but the main 'seat of the pants' difference is that the X1 has about 20% more power... This can be sorted in a S2 by increasing the compression ratio (I don't think the X1's heads flow that much better so a mild head job will possibly make the S2 flow even better), installing mild upgrade cams (Andrews N4's ?) and a race pipe (APH) plus ignition module should sort it out nicely if I feel it's too slow.
None of this work is difficult and doesn't impact reliability so all in all I think I have made the right decision
As for touring yes I certainly plan to put a few miles on it - I've got my IoM tickets booked so a few laps of the Island will be fun (I took the RoadKing in 16 and did about 15 - 20 fairly fast laps on it
) and I'm planning a trip through the Alps with my son later on in the summer.. Not sure how much kit I will be able to fit in those panniers though
All the best.
Mike.