I put 1200 miles on an 09 155 RMK from Carl's Performance. We did 800 miles with the 30% race gas head and the rest with the 50% race gas head. Their kit as you know runs SLP twins, head compression kit, and some kind of block off (Carls can coach you on this), and then they put an SLP map for that setup into your existing CDI. The original plan was to port this motor as well but it ran so good that I decided to leave it alone and ride it. It runs awesome is way more sled then an SLP single with Carl's clutching in a similar sled configuration. (WAY MORE) Now I've also ridden this same exact package but with porting and while it is a bit more I'm not certain that for the full cost of all of it that I wouldn't opt for turbo now that they have those running so much better and more reliably. Porting is costly!
One of my friends has a spot on Dragon 800 with SLP single, full top and bottom porting by Jack Struthers, and these two sleds are very close to a heads up tie. (we also have at least 5 09 non ported standard customer package SLP single Carls sleds that go along regularly for comparisons) So it appears to be way more cost effective to get simple twins and put a little race gas in as opposed to single and porting.
Out of the hole the twin pipe 800 feels a little lazy especially if you are coming off of a really good running single pipe BUT the funny thing is when we drag race those exact same sleds the 800 twin is never EVER behind and the mid-range pull is OUTSTANDING. It also really likes the RPM's so if your tune is 8500-8600 it sings and will carry that on very very long pulls. Like I said a lot more sled then the single and it shows on deep long pulls if you are comparing like sleds, with similar weighted and skilled riders.
As far as a tuner is concerned I agree that in the hands of the right person a fuel controller can be theoretically useful. The problem is that none of them are really a fully looped EFI controller that is set it and forget it. You still have to manage fuel and it appears to me from experience that the variances are about 4000 feet in altitude before things change radically enough to warrant fuel adjustments. We managed ours with the amount of race gas that we applied to the system depending on altitude. Knowing that the testing had been done and the system was designed for 6000 - 8000 feet when I run at 4000 I add a % of additional race fuel and like wise when we rode at 8000 - 11,000 it ran better when we weaned it off . That is completely an at your own risk proposition but it worked well for me and the sled ran consistantly strong from 4000 in Oregon to 10,000 in Wyoming. Obviously you need to make some weight adjustments but the fuel delivery and timing seemed to be pretty close by controlling octane.
I'm waiting for them to get the controllers better dialed in for this system and the power commander V is very interesting but once again I have very limited experience with any of them. The ones that I experienced seem to be even more sensitive to alt and condition changes so there was alot more constant adjustments needed for high performance then our set it and forget it stuff from Carls. They have a closed loop for the bikes but the done deal for our environment is not released. The guys running the PC III that are qualified intelligent applicators are all very pleased with the results. I'm a huge EGT fan (being one of the foremost experts on Digatron data acquisition instruments it's easy to see the value...plus I know what I am doing and seeing so the data actually means information) there seems to be a natural tie in. I'll probably start experimenting with the PC V and a data logger with the twin pipes next year and see if there is more performance being left on the table. Designing fixed maps for the various applications is very very time consuming and I don't think near as much testing went into the twin setup as the single for all of the variations of altitude and air conditions on these 800s. Mine runs great and so do several others that I know of but that is right here in our backyard where the stuff was designed to run. That is personal speculation and I'm waiting for the year to roll around again so that I can see for myself with the data logger (which I shouldn't have been lazy so that I would know as I wasted all of last season for information)...then I'll know for certain.
