Upgrading your Harley.- Updated 01/2017.

UPGRADES

*Some sections updated- Jan 2017*

With the monsoons approaching/receding, the long zonal rides are upon us. It is time to get you bikes out of their hiding places and put on some miles or start thinking what you could do when you take them out after the rains.

A few riders on the last ride were asking me about the various upgrades and accessories available to us. I have broken this into four parts for this writing:

a.       Lights.

Upgrades on the main headlight is usually to the preferred Daymakers from HD. A direct fit, and a quick job. The light beam is very powerful and lights up the road pretty well. An added benefit to most of our daytime warriors is that it increases your visibility to oncoming traffic by a thousand times- and also makes you very easy to track, when you are in a group ride. There are afew riders who have complained about the dawn/dusk hours and the effectiveness of the same when its raining. Do not throw out your old headlight, if the rains bother you, then switch to the regular lights for 3/4 months of the year.
Additional Fog or Auxiliary lights are a boon in our kind of traffic allowing for more light to be ‘laid’ on the road making it safe to ride. These can be mounted along side the headlight or on the crashguard. Always make sure that you use these with a relay and get your wiring checked by someone at the workshop. This is the weakest link in the reliability of HDs.
Cheap Chinese made ones are available, and then there are some super gorgeous ones like the Clearwater Simple faults and shorts cause bikes to fail on highways- and your little effort towards saving money can result in a huge loss of riding opportunity and the cost of getting your bike shipped to a nearby service station.
HD engine management system is very smart and the new CANBUS detects the drop in wattage and equates that with a bulb being fused. Hence if a 15W signal light is replaced with a 3W LED light, the EMS could register that as a fault and keep prompting you to check an error code. Moany HD LED light fittings come equipped with a resistor and therefore work more on brightness and safety rather than trying to protect your battery.
The Fat Boys alternator system is 439W @ 13V,- and you can get upgrades to a 50 Amp alternator for about $600- so when adding lights, we find many bikers run short on juice to sound the horns and find the battery prematurely wearing out- many a times this is because of the load of the 55W from headlight, twin 60W (total 120W) Erica Clearwater fog lights etc that tax the electrical charging systems, while maybe a cheaper 36W+36W Krista would have helped.
Hence it is important to know some basics of your bike, or ask around till you get some reasoning behind your bikes limitations on upgrades.

b.      Exhausts

This is a tricky one. Choose an exhaust that you have heard on the same bike as what you own. Do not buy a particular exhaust because it sounds good on a Sportster. The Sportsters are the nicest sounding bikes, in my opinion but on the FatBoy, the same brand could sound just like distant thunder. So do not choose by name/style or recommendation. Choose because you heard it. Slip ons are changed at the far end of the header pipes, while ‘full system’ ones are ones that change from the exhaust port. Make sure that the full system pipes have Oxygen sensor ports drilled in, as if you have to do it, you could drill too close to the exhaust port and you could burn off the sensor filaments.
The usual suspects for an upgrade are V&H’s, Arlen Ness, Cobras to the more exotic SuperTrapp and Covingtons. The pride of Indias HD was a CFR on a Night Rod- which won any exhaust battle, hand down, till the police surrounded the owners house at 4AM on a Sunday- but that’s another story. Unless its radical change in exhausts, the slip on do not usually need a fuel management system.

c.       Air intakes
Stage 1 from SE is the best upgrade to a better breathing air filter element. Also, it comes with a very long life and only needs regular maintenance (as opposed to replacement for the OE air filter.) Various other more aggressive breathers are available like Heavy breather Screamin’ Eagle of HD, VO2/Drake/Duke from V&H, and the Big Sucker from Arlen Ness. These are the ones that protrude out into the oncoming air and feed the engine with more air, almost like ‘forced air induction.’

c.      Fuel Management Systems

Once you have altered the exhaust profile (mostly making your exhaust a freer flowing one) and given your bike more air than it could handle with its basic ECU, the air intake and exhaust sensors start to keep correcting this imbalance that is beyond their parameters to handle. So what?
SEPST from HD is the factory choice for FMS. The SEPST comes with a orange coloured interface that gets mated to ONE HD. One specific bike, not the owner. So when you sell that bike, you give the SEPST away. Given that its an authorized product, it is used to flash the ECM with no moving parts to ‘hang around under the seat.’ The drawback is not this- the drawback is if you mix components like a V&H exhaust with a Heavy Breather, you are essentially out of depth and you will need a Dyno to tune in your bike. This mix and match is very possible and finding a Dynamometer with a SEPST trained tech will be impossible. Which means you are jammed. Call your workshop advisor for pricing on this item. If not the service center tech geek, you need to be like this ‘tech head’ mariner from Pune who could really work wonders with the SEPST. Incidentally the SEPST was declared illegal and HD paid a whopping million dollar fine and no longer can you see the SEPST on their website- atleast I could not locate it.
With the SEPST attached and in recording mode, you will need to run the bike with throttle position from 0-100, and thru ever gear, which means that in 6th you could touch about 160- which is why the Dynamomter was needed in the first place. OR you can take a few riding lessons on how to ride with it atached and then ride your bike and ride it to whatever your speed on the highways is. Then return and use that SEPST software to flash the new curve onto your ECU.
FP3 from Vance and Hines is a very popular upgrade, relatively cheap, easy to install, and with a huge database of products to mix and match.  This takes the map from a table that will come with your FP3, or if you have some eclectic mix of parts, then you email them, and in about 72-96 hours V&H will email you the new maps, which again- can be done by yourself.
Power Commander would be the more advanced version of a piggy backed system that alters the ECU output and based on preset maps that you key in, the bike runs. A lot of people are happy- globally with this PC-V, which is the current version on sale.In case of any engine issues, or for instant comparison you can just unplug it in literally 5 minutes and get your bike into stock condition again.
Power Vision – is possibly the most vaunted of the lot. It takes your maps from the dealer, and flashes the ECM with its new maps. There are many plus points to this like recording your ridng data and almost everyone who is tech’ interested in fiddling with the bike would have this. IF flashing your ECM worries you, then this is not for you. If you are going to be upgrading your bike on completion of warranty and the likes, then you should probably plonk in the dollars and get this.
*UPDATE- Jan 2017*

There are two HOGs now in western India, one in Mumbai and one in Nashik who offer the PV Tuners service. You buy the licence off the internet and approach them and they flash the 'tune up map' appropriate for your bikes set up (engine, air intake and exhaust) from PV onto your ECU and probably charge you a little extra as labour.
Now one step further in this would be to remove the narrow band O2 sensors and put in wide band sensors and run the bike while recording data (recorder available with the Tuners) and then use their software to 'iron out' the algorithm and flash it on your system and then refit your old sensors back. This again would entitle you to run your bike at all speeds while the recorder does its work. This 'whole treatment' would be the most ideal, but it does entitle some cost to offset the wide band sensors offered by the tuner/s.

What happens if you don’t do this FMS. The ‘out of syllabus’ oxygen intake (due to volumetric increase in breathing capacity) and ‘freer than before’ exhaust will cause your bike to start running lean and will cause ‘blueing’ of your exhaust headers. This is the first sign that all is not well in your bike. You will continue to ride it hot till one fine day you will burn your exhaust valve.

The article was written some time ago- and could be seasonally-challenged. I write this from various inputs- printed material and fellow riders mainly. I could be off the mark and would welcome questions or corrective feedback, if there are new tech developments on the FP3- like the now easier interface, and the super pricing as well as the portability (meaning you could sell it to another bike in your category and not be bound like with the SEPST or the PV), I could be blissfully unaware.

Also remember, when you do your homework- HD often does have warnings on its online and paperback P&A catalogs of what parts are necessary to be purchased with some parts.A small example would be you would need to buy rear foot pegs with the rear seat for a Sportster, and likewise a SEPST or an EMS would be recommended or made mandatory with certain air intakes and/or exhausts. Likewise you would be surprised that Sportsters need not have (though its a 'good have') an SEPST with upgrades to its exhaust system with a SE Shorty Mufflers, but just upgrading the air cleaner would need an ECM calibration.

Check under 'Description'- 

http://www.harley-davidson.com/store/se-stage-1-sportster-air-cleaner-kit-pa-18-2978207--1
http://www.harley-davidson.com/store/se-shorty-dual-slip-on-mufflers-pa-06-8050307--1

Questions are always welcome, and so are shortcomings.