Rider input has a lot to do with what a bike will do.. You guys are bad mouthing Harley, thinking that the Savage can take one in the twistys, think about one word, "Buell"... I like the little Savage for around town puddle jumping, love the lowend torque, but highway? Anything over 55 is going to wear you out in about 30 minutes..

Buell was Buell before hurley bought it.   S&S had more to do with pre-hurley buell engines than hurley did before hurley bough the marque.  

Hurley has now scrapped the marque and all the existing bikes so now there IS no Buell the marque and Buell the man has a no-compete contract clause that still has 5 years left until the Buell the man's bikes can live again (under a different name, of course).

Hurley is left with the 1200 cc Sportster as their hot bike now.   Both Lancer and MMRanch have tried Sportsters during Dragon time, the relatively low power relatively heavy 883 wasn't fast enough and the 1200 cc didn't do curves well enough to beat a Savage.

Retread, you simply know not of what you speak when you say hurleys can beat a Savage in the mountains.   T'ain't so.   We beat repeatedly and wore out & broke the 1200 cc Sportster that MMRanch rode to the last dragon run.

Open highway yes (if MM could get out of second into third gear he could pull away from a Savage), but on curvy mountain roads, no not a chance to do so.   He'd break his rear tire free in second gear trying and have to shut it down.  

Mrod has never ridden against us, but it has even greater weight and more brutally acting acceleration which plays against it in the fast mountain twisties.  We have never even seen an Mrod ridden fast up in the mountains, ever.  100+ hp Mrod would likely smoke itself in second gear and spit you right off the mountain trying to go fast up there.

Thanks Verslagen. Will this piston work? 97mm, I think it should. It says 3.00mm oversize and I think I got it confused with the bore tolerance .002 to.003. .002 being the right one.
http://lukesracing.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?

Also will this mikuni work? Just bolt straight on with no conversion kit or anything? Were these not like $300-350 a couple years ago. I remember Lancer had the kits for this and cam for a great deal but I missed out. There is a mikuni chart if you scroll down.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mikuni-Carburetor-Cpt-38mm-Spgt-Vm38-9-Round-Slide-Vm...


Anything I can do or get for the cam chain setup and where to look? Thanks again for everyone's help.  I will post some pics of my build so far tomorrow. I still have to set up a photobucket account.

If you haven't found it already, you should check out this guy's build....

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1264727267/0

teabowl13 wrote on 03/07/12 at 08:04:46:


wow....that is a very talented guy.

if you want more info on the mikuni tm or keihin fcr pumper carbs there is a ton of info over at  thumper talk on the dr suzuki site. there is even info on efi setups for your 650 4t single.
http://www.thumpertalk.com/forum/25-dr/ just use the search function.

I have to add also, that no matter what the TOP speed, I've always enjoyed riding the most on twisty back roads going 55-60 or so MPH.
I rode a 2000 Kawi ZRX1100 (Eddie Lawson Replica) for 7 years and loved it, but I never reved it anywhere near its redline. Sure I ran it up to 100mph once or twice, just to say I did it, but that's about it.

I've really been thinking about that in terms of my Savage build; and where the real strength of this engine lies is in the torque; low and middle range power. That's the whole reason I wanted to build my bike out of a Savage in the first place! Sure, I'm going to do a few simple upgrades to my Roadster, but if I really wanted a crotch-rocket, I'D GO BUY ONE!!