New bits for Tallulah

Screen Pt. 2

You may recall me mentioning I have a new Tiger (T2) in my stable (is that the right word? Maybe enclosure would be better) which had a touring screen fitted. So last night I finally got around to fitting the touring screen to Tallulah.

I had great expectations of the ride to work in the morning of a quiet peaceful ride with no wind noise & no buffeting.

Tallulah with touring screen

Boy was I wrong! Turned out to be worse than the original screen in its unmodified state. Now, I don’t know whether it was because I left the spacers on the screws, raising the screen out from the fairing or whether it’s just bad. Either way, it had to go. I thought about fitting the spoiler to it but a trial fit with me sitting on the bike, resulted in the spoiler being in my direct line of sight. I couldn’t live with that, so I just put everything back as it was, i.e. the standard screen with the spoiler fitted.

The ride in to work the following morning was back to a fairly quiet & un-buffeted ride.

I have some time over the weekend, so I might try again, but this time fit the screen flush to the fairing. After all, it’s only 4 fixing screws so shouldn’t take too long, although I suspect I’ll probably stick to the existing set-up.

Attached to T2 when I got her was a TOR exhaust. For those not in the know, TOR stands for Triumph Off Road and like the name suggests it’s not technically for road use. It’s supposed to release a few more horses for the Tiger to chase down and adds a rather raspy sound from the 3-pot engine.

As I had some time last night and because it’s only two bolts, I also fitted the TOR exhaust to Tallulah. It already has the TOR map uploaded to the ECU as even with the standard exhaust, it seems to work better with that map. What I didn’t do was reset ECU. I should so maybe I’ll do that at the weekend.

To be honest, aside from the exhaust being a little louder and maybe, just maybe a little sharper throttle response, there’s not much difference in the real world of commuter riding.

The question is, of course, can I live with the drone of the exhaust note on longer journeys? Well, I have my Blue Tooth headset so I can listen to music or podcasts, or Satnav instructions, and I do wear ear plugs when I ride. And, above 70mph, all that noise appears to be whisked away from the rear of the bike leaving mostly wind noise around my head anyway. I think I’ll leave it on for now, but whether it becomes a permanent fixture remains to be seen.

Update (7 March 2020)

It turns out I can't live with the noise of the TOR exhaust. I took Tallulah out for a ride, not too far, probably only 70 miles, but the ride included twisties, urban and motorway riding.

Even with ear plugs in and my Bluetooth pumping out sounds, it's a little too much of a drone for my liking. So later, I'll be putting Tallulah's original exhaust back on.