I finally have started this project! As you may already know, I sold my Ducati Hypermotard in favor of this Triumph Daytona 675 which is serving dual purposes. It is going to be my track bike this year, but it is also going to be a test mule for some special kit parts designed by Bruce Meyers through our shop Commonwealth Motorcycles. I’ll be talking much more about these items later on, but the first up is a big bore kit! There is already much discussion going on over at the 675 forum if you’d like to get a head start. I’m open to other suggestions about parts that you would like to see as well. I’ve got a few other ideas of parts to carry and have made. The fist step is quite simple though. I just wanted to get an exhaust and take the build step by step; not jump into anything I don’t have all the parts for as I need this bike to be ready to ride at any time (in case a track opportunity pops up).

After much deliberation I ended up with a ZARD full system for my D675. I thought this was a good decision as I carry ZARD through my business, www.desmoworks.com (obviously), and love to have first hand experience with all the products I sell. I’ve already been asked by a few people why I didn’t choose the Arrow full system from Triumph. I thought that since we are using Arrow full systems on the AMA bikes that I already had the data needed on them and from dealing with Arrow for Ducati for the last year and a half I know how good they are to begin with. We are using the Stage 2 exhaust on the race bikes, but the Stage 1 is suggested unless the heads are being ported and other race kit parts are being installed. I am doing that, but I also wanted to test some parts that a customer is going to use and get some maps made for my customers and friends to use.

The ZARD system is very nicely made and fit to the bike with no modification or problems at all. It’s very precise and is quite light! Weighing it out piece by piece it saves an astonishing 13.6 lbs (over 6 kg!). You can see the nice welds in the image to the left. It probably would have been a much quicker uninstall/install if I would have taken the radiator off, but it didn’t really bother me that much so I went on and ignored it. The biggest savings were in the silencer. The stock silencer weighed in at 12.6 lbs while the ZARD titanium silencer was only 4.0 lbs. The next area was the collectors which saved 5.6 lbs, but there is a slight advantage to the ZARD system here as it has a short set of collectors. This does mean there is more mid-pipe which makes the ZARD mid-pipe 0.6 lbs heavier than the OEM Triumph piece. This system does utilize the O2 sensor, but not the exhaust valve (just FYI).

The next step was to download a new map as a starting point. Triumph offers several maps that are ready for download. I chose the Arrow full system map thinking it should be similar as the pipe design and diameters are not too far off. I downloaded the map and finished buttoning up the bike around 1:30am so I didn’t even bother with starting it up and testing it out as I was beat and still had other work to do.

When I came in to the shop the next morning I had to run up to Indianapolis and pick up a Ducati 848 that I had sold so I didn’t get back to the shop until 2pm. Then Eric showed up with his 2007 Honda CBR600RR that I had done a baseline on before he began modifications. I dynoed his bike a few times as he switched maps to see what was going to work best. After this I finally had some time to throw my bike on just to see where I was at now. So the first graph below is a comparison between my stock Daytona 675 (green) and the same bike, but with a ZARD full system and Arrow base map (blue) - it still has the stock air filter for the moment.

The second screen shot has the same bikes and colors representing them, but I added the Air/Fuel graph to show the current state of the bike. This is what you can expect for the cheapest option of getting the full system on the bike with a pre-made tune for the ECU - not buying a tuneboy or anything else like that. As you can see there is a dead spot in the lower-mid-range below 8K RPM. There is a fair amount of tuning to do on the injection to get this bike to where I want it, but that will be fun little project unto itself. That will be later this week at some point when I have some more free time. Until then feel free to check out the other photos of my project bike on my flickr photo page, or by clicking any of the images in this post.