On our 2004 Harley-Davidson Road King sidecar rig, heat becomes a real issue. A couple of years ago we punched out the motor a bit and added high-compression heads at HB Hot Rods and Hogs. This mild build-up and the added weight of the sidecar makes for a hot running bike. Especially in the stuck-and-go traffic in southern California, you really feel the burn.
In previous articles you may have seen we installed an Ultra-Cool oil cooler, and Heatshield Products‘ Lava Wrap on the exhaust. Coming up we will share the installation of Love Juggs external fans. Today we continued with Heatshield Products and installed their Lava Shield Mat under the tank, and their HP Builders Kit on the wiring and fuel lines above the engine.
Take a look at our video of the installation on BlacktopTV
We started by draining the fuel in the tank. You might want to start with a near empty tank. We scrambled and found a clean bucket big enough to drain the gas in. Next we removed the dash and the saddle to raise the tank. On a 2004 Road King, the tank has a pressurized vent hose. We decided not to hassle with taking that off. We raised the tank and measured the surface area with a scrap piece of cardboard and traced the area to cut the Heatshield Products Lava Shield Mat. We cut it up into 5 pieces to make it a bit more manageable. The botttom sides each had a piece and the tunnel was formed in three pieces. The Lava Shield Mat was easy to cut and apply.
While Tony was holding up the tank, Billy got busy cleaning up those hard to reach areas on top of the motor and backbone. Also, we cut a length of sleeves from the Heatshield Products’ HP Builders Kit to cover the cross-over fuel line, the coil wires and the wiring going from the bottom of the tank. You could go crazy and cover all the wiring in the backbone, but we decided to keep the rubber sleeves that came stock with the wiring harness. We also installed a set of Pulstar spark plugs on the engine and covered them with a pair of Heatshield Products’ Lava Plug Boots.
After we were all done, Billy decided to change out the fluids. He got busy and jumped down on the floor to start draining his crank case and trans pan. We prefer to use the synthetic blends from AMSOIL. A big part of keeping his bike cool is using fresh oil that is specially formulated for V-Twin bikes. In-fact, we use AMSOIL on all of our vehicles from the Daily Driver Shop Trucks to the 2-stroke Harley Rapido.
Our main purpose was to keep the immediate wiring and fuel lines as cool as possible.