How many times have you thought about changes to your bike and wondered if it would really help anything? Or hurt anything? Or be noticeable? Whatever? As you get more "opportunities to become familiar with the law of unintended consequences", you'll find yourself wondering like that more often. Maybe what we should do is try to identify some of those "opportunities" up front by doing a little research.
Say you have a chance to pick up a set of modified heads, and you wonder what the compression ratio would be with your cam and pistons. Or you're worried that your injectors are not gonna be right for that big stroker you're hot about. Could be that you just got your latest issue of Cool Bike and you don't know what size sprockets to get when you go to that chain-drive you saw on that cool flamed bagger with the gangsta bars and Chollo pipes and 21 inch wheels with spokes as thick as your middle finger? (Okay, I was being sarcastic on that last one there...).
For me, one way to deal with these questions is to create spreadsheets that do the often-complicated calculations for me, or compare a lot of values, or determine what the averages would be, or warn me when something might cause problems.
I've created a few of these, and thought I would share them with any of you who were interested. I'll email the individual Excel worksheet files as well as pdf copies of this and all others of the Street Power series of articles.
Things I Probably Need To Say:
All of these spreadsheets were tested for viruses and spyware at the time I sent them. To the best of my knowledge, all were safe. Even so, no one even remotely associated with this document is responsible for any problems or errors associated with download or use, whether that problem is on your computer, or on your motorcycle. It's a shame that we live in a world where people will sue for any imagined reason, but there ya go. In other words, we've all done our best, but if you choose to download or use any of these, it's your own responsibility.
All of these were created with my bike in mind. In most cases, that has no real impact on their use, but there are a couple instances where some of the comparison data is valid only for an Evo Touring bike. If you know anything about spreadsheet tools, you can figure out where that is and change the numbers appropriately. Also, I've protected all (most?) non-data-entry fields so they won't be changed accidentally. You can unprotect them as you choose. There is no password required.
I will not necessarily support these, however if you notice an error and tell me about it (at barrybasinger@yahoo.com), and time permits, I may update them.
NOTES!
READ THE SPREADSHEET TUNING AIDS PDF FILE DESCRIBING THESE UTILITIES BEFORE DOWNLOADING THEM.
TO DOWNLOAD AND USE THESE FILES, YOU MUST CLICK ON THE "DOWN" ARROW AT THE FAR RIGHT OF THE FILENAME LINE. CLICKING ON THE FILENAME ITSELF WILL ONLY OPEN AN IMAGE OF A WORKSHEET. (USEFUL IF YOU'RE CURIOUS...). Note that xlxm files cannot be opened as an image by clicking on the filename.
FILENAMES WITH AN "XLSM" EXTENSION CONTAIN VBA CODE, AND YOUR EXCEL INSTALL MUST BE SET UP TO ALLOW THIS.
I HAVE CREATED A SUBSET OF THE "MOTORCYCLE UTILITIES" SPREADSHEETS THAT DO NOT HAVE MACROS, EVEN THOUGH SOME OF THE MORE INTERESTING FUNCTIONS CANNOT BE INCLUDED IN THEM AS A RESULT. THESE ARE NAMED "NO_MACRO_UTILITIES". THESE CAN BE USED WITH MANY OF THE FREE SPREADSHEET PROGRAMS THAT ARE AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET. (I RECOMMEND KINGSOFT: DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE SUITE AT http://www.kingsoftstore.co.uk/download/index.html ).
NOTE REGARDING INDIVIDUAL SPREADSHEETS: Most of these are also included in the "Motorcycle Utilities download. I have updated several of them there, but may not have remembered to do so in the individual spreadsheets. Where they exist in both places, I recommend downloading Motorcycle Utilities instead of individual sheets for that reason.