The Suzuki units went off to K-Tech to have one of their piston kits fitted. They certainly look the part, and will no doubt easily out perform the OEM units. He’s looking forward to finishing the build and dialling-in some settings.

Here’s what Chris at K-Tech had to say on the kit –“We have fitted the SSK piston kits to your front forks, these are available to fit most front forks with cartridge damping systems.  The SSK piston kits are suitable for road and track day use giving enhanced compression and rebound damping efficiency over the original equipment for comfort and confidence to the rider.  The piston kits are supplied with new rebound flow control valves and needles which give a finer range of rebound adjustment over the standard items.   To compliment the piston kit we fitted our Compression Flow Control Valves, for track use we recommend the 1.5mm type, these give also give a finer range of compression adjustment over the original items.”

Slowly getting there…

K-Tech

01283 559000

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Organised by the local Rotary Club and Lions Club, this is a free event in aid of charities (like the Free Wheelers bikers who deliver urgent medical supplies 24×7). All the organisers ask for is that everyone divvies up for a £1.00 programme. However it sounds like even this tiny amount of support is hard to come by and they’re now struggling to fund the meet. So if it’s on again next year go and chuck a quid in the pot. You’ll never get better value anywhere else for a grand biking day out.

We arrived around noon to find the town already heaving with bikes. Everything’s there from cruisers and classics to streetfighters and the completely barking mad. Oddities abounded including a chopped scrambler complete with extended forks, knobblies and MX apehangers, a brace of feet-forward Quasars and a Ducati Monster sidecar outfit converted to be driven from the chair (and, judging by the ramp into its flat floor, by a wheelchair-restricted pilot at that).

Even given its outlandish appearance the High-Ball was a shrinking violet in such company. The stage 1 derestriction kit still leaves an exhaust note at tickover which won’t burst passers-by’s ear drums and the matt black finish can’t compete with acres of chrome and flamboyant metalflake. But the high bars give plenty of leverage to navigate round stationary traffic and the huge 1.7 litre v-twin managed the traffic snarls without grumbling. Only the pillion accommodation came in for criticism: the padding’s good for an hour, then the p-pad provides pain not pleasure.

Charley

Victory High-Ball: £10,995

Time on test: 5 months
Miles on test: 3,684

Modifications
Stage 1 X-Bow pipes      £1,225.00 (plus fitting)
Pillion seat      £150.00
Pillion rests      £301.80
RUNNING TOTAL      £1,676.80

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We opted for the X-Bow set up which comes complete with a high performance free-flow air filter; the necessary EFI map code is also part of the package. Apparently all Victory aftermarket pipes are currently being changed to meet US road-side noise test (SAEJ2825), so the old-style straight through exhausts are being phased out. Our X-Bow system will continue to be available.

All the pipes come in a choice of black or chrome, but we could only get hold of a shiny set up at time of ordering so chrome it had to be. Which was no great hardship because matt black pipes on cruisers are a bitch to keep clean and make a bike look cheap as far as I’m concerned. I like the highlight the flash of chrome brings to the right hand side of the bike.

After the exhaust was swapped we also sneakily carried out an unofficial mod, removing the right hand air box cover (which is a blank) and drilling it to increase airflow.

The new exhaust sounds great – not too intrusive at tickover or round town, but a decent basso profundo on the open road. Incidentally I’m intrigued by the difference in feel between the High-Ball and the Hammer we had last year which seemed more responsive, would rev more willingly and was smoother at higher revs. Our Hammer was fitted with a 2-into-1 free-flowing exhaust which according to Victory UK offers better performance than the X-Bow; they also reckon Victory’s Freedom engines benefit from higher mileage, loosening up around 4-5,000 miles. I don’t know how much of my reaction to the High-Ball is subjective having spent the week before I got it back hooning around on an MV Brutale with a rev range nearly three times that of the Victory’s; but it’ll be interesting to see how things develop as the miles pass. Certainly it’s not a problem as I’m unlikely to spend much time at the higher end of the High-Ball’s rev range (and neither will you, unless you fit lower bars); you can cruise at 70mph at a modest 2,500 rpm.

You’ll also spot the other addition in the pic, a pillion pad and footrests. I have an aversion to solo seats on cruisers as they often make the back of the bike look unfinished. More importantly I now have somewhere to lash luggage to and park the occasional passenger.

But the price of such aural and posterior pleasure is high. The pipes are £1,225, the pillion seat £150 and the pillion rests a staggering £301.80. Plus you need to factor in the dealer fitting time (certainly for the exhaust) of approximately 2 hours for the stage 1 set up and 45 minutes to an hour for the pillion kit. You need to bear this in mind when looking at any American cruiser: aftermarket parts, either factory or unofficial, are pricey.

Charley

Victory High-Ball: £10,995
Time on test: 3 months
Miles on test: 2,349

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It’s a tall reach from the depths of the low seat to the tops of the bars, of which more anon. But first, a short history lesson.

It’s been well chronicled that, when GIs first came back home to the good ol’ US of A after WW2, a number of them missed the action and thrills of warfare and couldn’t handle peacetime and 9-5 jobs. Some of them got their kicks from riding bikes and drifted into forming loose-knit gangs. To make their oily old Harleys and Indians perform better (especially in the face of an import onslaught from the likes of Triumph offering smaller, but lighter and faster parallel twins), people started shedding weight from the big American v-twins by, for instance, cutting down – or “bobbing” – the voluminous mudguards and junking the heavy factory silencers, seats and lights in favour of lighter alternatives. Ultimately the act of shedding excess weight was carried to the extreme, by which time it became known as “chopping”, and married to further stylish – for the time – changes to bars, seats and silencers for sky-scraping apehangers, backrests and upswept exhaust systems.

Why is this relevant to Fast Bikes? Well, if you think about it this was the Yanks’ version of our very own café racers, the 1950’s precursors to today’s race replicas. It was an alternative approach to going fast in a country where distances could be huge, unlike in the UK. Bobbers don’t have to be for grey beards. The fun for us is seeing if we can maximise the performance within the High-Ball’s existing design parameters.

Although the bike harks back to those early, pre-chopper customs, the back ’guard hasn’t been bobbed and the headlight is Victory’s usual gargantuan bucket. But the standout feature is the Bad Ass apehanger handle bars. And yes, for those who don’t know they’re so-called as you hang from ’em like an ape. I was hugely amused at last November’s NEC Show watching people sitting on the High-Ball on Victory’s stand and listening to them come out with all the usual clap trap about high bars: “Won’t the blood run out of your arms?”, “It can’t handle” etc etc. The problem with many factory customs is that the bars are positioned in line with the forks, meaning your hands end up just above your lap and you get blown off the back at anything above 60 em-pee-aitch. The High-Ball is set up properly with the apes vertical; you have to lean forward and stretch for them. At speed your torso is supported on a cushion of air and it’s surprisingly comfy provided your bike is also equipped with forward footrests far enough away to brace your legs onto. Obviously ultra-high speed runs become, ahem, “interesting” and handling isn’t in Ducati territory, but neither do your arms pull out of their sockets at the legal limit not do you crash in the first mile.

Instead something else happens, which only occurs when riding a high-barred bike. Your whole demeanour and attitude starts to change, and horns grow out of your head … it’s a bit like how you felt when you put on your first black leather jacket. Bad boys don’t ride Hondas.

What the High-Ball needs to complete its outlaw image is a rorty exhaust. The stock cans conform to EU killjoy standards so the bike snuffles rather than roars. Hopefully we can do something about this in the very near future.

Charley

Victory High-Ball: £10,995
Time on test: 2 months
Miles on test: 1,947

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It managed to hit an incredible 192.92bhp at peak stock (mapped PCV), and 196.33bhp at peak with Akrapovic fitted (and PCV mapped). Make sure you get the next issue for the full story – on sale 02.06.10 – but you can also see the bike on the dyno by visiting Moby’s YouTube page.

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