this bike will never be "fast."  If you want to go "fast," buy a kawasaki ZX14R.  or a triumph oh gawd darn, their 2300 cc cruiser, and istall a turbo (or is it a super) charger kit.  That kit comes with a tombstone.

We can definitly make them faster, but they'll never be "fast."  Quick yes.  "fast," no.

But I agree.  I want to be faster and quicker.

Aw heck, I was just quotin' "Talledega Nights".  Getting this bike to 50 horse would be plenty for me, really just wantin' to work on something and there's no cheaper bike to speed up than the one your ridin'.  Unless of course you break it trying to "improve it".  Which I'm prone to...  Oh well gotta scratch the itch.

Nothin' wrong with good natured ribbing, these'll never touch sport bikes, maybe sports cars though...  And that 50 horse number comes in about the same place as the breakin' stuff.  I was plannin' on the carb, cam, port, polish, 97mm 10:1, shot peened rod, exhaust built to the motor flow (found a few calculators for lengths), open intake and uh..  i've been workin' on a fiveish horse nitrous shot...  hence the rod...  and the breaking..  I don't know though, a mild shot on 105 with an oil cooler (what are those two oil plug bolts for?) might be ok.. still only about 50 horse total....

Oh and just cause everyone's not tryin' to ride off on Erma don't mean she aint a hot rod.  

shot peening the connecting rod, strengthens the rod quite a bit, it's sorta like sandblasting with really big sand (theres a few different media). it hammer forges the rod creating little dimples all over this compresses any imperfections on the surface lessening the posibility of a split forming, and the concave shape of the dimples increases strength all in all, transfering the stress over a larger surface area....  at least i think this is right..

some more:

Okay, I stole this vrom the V*1100 forum.  An ORK is an oil filter relocation kit, which folks like to put on their stars b/c, in stock form, you have to remove the exhaust pipe to change the oil filter.  Anyway, the main point is that the stock oil pump doesn't have enough power to get oil to the cams w/ extra volume:

"Here ya go,...My opinion on ORK's... This opinion is based on seeing, touching and holding damaged cams in my own hands. Also, since I seem to be the only guy producing a oil pressure gauge/kit for the 1100 and have tested the pressure to the heads with and without the ORK's installed.

<<I don't use them on any of my bikes and wouldn't. Flat out every kit I've tested to date lower the bikes oil pressure flow to the heads. They can cause dry start up and that's no matter what size oil lines are run.
 The fact is you are just as likely to damage your stock cams with a oil re-lo kit installed as you could damage a performance cam. I've seen it first hand many of times when the stock cores were sent back to us that had been damaged from oil starvation from these kits. There's no difference between the stock cam and a performance cam that requires them to get or need any more or less oil than stock cam does.
 Anyone that say's that they've run one of these kits and have'nt had a problem,... I have to ask, have you pulled your cams and had them checked???? >>

With the installation of performance cams you are again changing airflow thru the engine by changing the lift and duration you alter the opening and closing of the valves. A valve spring installation would help performance as well but, they are not necessary for the 420 lift. The concern with lift, is spring bind, we felt the 420 lift was the maximum safe lift before the risk of spring bind. This was just not our opinion it was the cam manufactures opinion as well. We sent our heads out to our cam company as well as RD-Spring to have these cams and valve spring kits built to spec. They are the only cams build for the V-star on the market. The cams offered from WebCam are and were designed for the Yamaha TT-500 dirt bike not the V-Star. We also felt that the WebCam 440 lift cams required valve springs and higher compression for them to perform properly.

To date we have not had one cam failure due to our product,...There have been a few failures due to human error with the installation and timing of the cams. Our cams are basically designed after cams used for the Virago and have 20 year proven track record behind them.

Hope you come on board...
Thanks
Shane"

Link to thread

link to shane's site,sscustomcycle

Vroom, more displacement will give you more torque, especially at lower (relatively) rpms.  This assumes we are talking about the same intake and exhaust flow...

As rpms build the cylinder will fill less efficiently.  In our case, others on this site have asserted that a stock Savage will build HP thru 6000+ rpms.  Let's take 6000 rpms as a HP peak for the ease of calculation.  A 10% increase in displacement (that's huge and would make the Savage 717 ccs) would mean that at 6000 rpms, our engine requires 10% more flow than it did before.  That's no big deal until you reach the upper limits of the design flow capability.  However, the increased displacement should still allow you to gain a little more HP.  In any case, you should see more HP and torque across the rpm band range.  You are correct that low rpm torque will have the most dramatic improvement.

With the Savage engine, a 97mm piston will give you 694.5 cc's.  (Up from 652 cc's)  Not quite a 10% increase.

Now if we shortened the stroke a little bit, that would change the character of the engine.  97mm bore with a 88mm stroke, that would prolly give a 8000rpm limit with the crankshaft well balanced and lighter internals..  mm...  of course, it would have that high rpm spike then, no smooth linear power anymore!  well... i guess the savage isn't exactl linear... kind of reverse of a small 4....