Episode 5: V-Twin Performance Industry: Truths, Myths, & Social Media Misrepresentations

In this episode, Jamie and Lucas dive into some of the biggest truths — and misconceptions — in the V-Twin performance industry.

After more than 25 years in the business at Fuel Moto, they’ve seen the evolution of motorcycle performance firsthand. From early internet forums and eBay messaging to today’s Facebook groups and social media influencers, the way riders get information has changed dramatically.

But with that shift has also come a lot of misinformation, bias, and inflated claims.

In this conversation they break down:

• How the V-Twin industry has evolved over the last 25 years
• The role social media plays in shaping rider opinions
• Why dyno charts and horsepower numbers can be misleading
• The truth about Auto-Tune and modern tuning tools
• Why firsthand experience matters more than repeated internet advice
• Common misconceptions about cams, injectors, and performance builds
• How shops and companies sometimes influence online conversations

They also share real insights from the thousands of bikes Fuel Moto works with every year through dyno tuning, remote tuning, and dealer support.

The goal of this episode is simple: help riders make informed decisions and understand how performance really works.

Whether you're new to Harley performance or deep into engine builds and tuning, this episode offers an honest look at the industry — without the hype.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome back to the Fuel Throttle Podcast, the show for riders who live and breathe performance. We're talking tech, donor results, and behind-the-scenes stories from the team here at Fuel Moto. Let's kick things off. Hello, Jamie here today, and I got Lucas again with me. Today we're going to talk on our podcast about uh the kind of a s overall subject of V-twin industry truths and misrepresentations. Uh some of the things we see day in, day out here at Fuel Moto and uh things we hear from customers, how the industry's changed, and kind of the direction we see things going and how it has been. Let's uh get into it. Uh things have changed a lot in the landscape over the last uh you know 25 years that we've been in business here. Obviously, before that it was very different because that was at the the infancy of the internet. We got started here in the early 2000s. I guess the most popular forms of communication, there was no Facebook or YouTube or anything yet. It was uh a lot of internet forums and things like that from the early to mid 90s. It first started out as message boards. Believe it or not, a form of communication that was really popular between e-com companies and customers and things in the infeccy was uh eBay. So it was a lot of eBay messaging back and forth, and we grew a pretty big base based on that. You know, Lucas, you were just a little guy in that, but you probably remember dad sitting there on a computer every night dealing with eBay and internet people. But over the years we've seen that shift from that to a lot of internet forums, then it turned to social media, and then now you kind of evolved into Facebook groups.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yeah, that's been largely what pretty much everything has changed into. Definitely changed the dynamic of who's the authority and who gets final say, and also kind of in some cases a extreme censorship and moderation, or even in some groups the the extreme opposite of the end.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

One thing that's really changed from back when it was internet forums, you know, internet forums traditionally had moderators and admins, and then they would have paid sponsors, which were generally businesses and companies. We've did that for a long time. We're involved in all that, we still are in some of it. The biggest thing I seen changes is very early when people got to bickering and fighting and telling mistruths and things, or they had moderators and admins that would straighten that stuff out, you know. But over the years, as social media had risen, the forums became not quite as popular. Some of these people actually were paid employees that were administrating these sites, and these guys were just volunteers. Pretty soon there was no none of that, and then fighting bickering and arguing kind of happened, and then now what we see on Facebook group a lot of that that's kind of back where we were in the very beginning of that. We're just talking about industry as a whole and how you gotta learn and involve with it.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Yeah, it's definitely for more personal gain now, because like you said, the forums were a business basically as as arbitrators or moderators, and now it's turned into the people that own it, generally are the people that have a vested interest, which I mean there there's all sorts of people for every industry and and reason they might have a group. I mean, there's there's plenty of different groups for all sorts of areas of even the Harley industry. But that brings up a really good point, and who actually owns these Facebook groups, a lot of them.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Some of these groups that people are participating in, they're owned by different companies. So what you see a lot of times behind the scenes is people are not able to share on free will. And that's really one of the things that I take up personally with it. It really bothers me that if you share one company's or one shop's dyno chart or product, they'll just delete it right off there. And that that's not free will, like it can't be like that.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

It's one thing to have your own page as a business or a person or celebrity, whatever, and and have that be monitored and specific to you. But when you have a group that's under the guise of being a free space and a neutral zone that really is just, like I said, has vested interest.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Because I've been doing social media internet forum stuff for almost 25 years. I can really see that we have to evolve with with how this all stuff goes, but I see a lot of unferity in that. Some of these pages and people, I mean, my I personally have not seen things come up before with a question on a product or a service or something we that we're involved in. I'll try to sign up and jump on there and and they won't even let me join the page. Right. Yeah, that's the biggest thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:32

I mean, if you're you're a business or a person that's uh trying to promote their own stuff, I mean that's one thing, but it becomes a little bit of a gray area when it results in just actual misinformation about someone else's product. When they're not able to participate or give a say, it really just becomes misrepresentation button.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

I know some companies that have really been affected by that, like and they haven't been able to voice their part of the story just because it's one-sided. And and there's obviously the other side of that too. There's companies that have been very successful. And again, I would say we are very, very happy on how our social media stuff works and relationship with cultural stuff, but we have companies that come to us so we work with. It's not uncommon for one of our vendors or manufacturers and call up and say, Hey, how does this work? Why why is this place saying this? Well, we don't want to be in the middle of that drama stuff, but we understand how the companies get frustrated because they don't understand. They're like, Well, I'm trying to answer questions on this page, and these people just keep deleting what I say, and everything, well, it's because they don't want to even say it. As far as the information on those sites, there's a lot of good information. There's no doubt that's what brings people to social media because there's so much media overload, whether it's informational products, dyno charts, pictures, experiences, and truth be told, you meet a lot of cool people on social media. And for us, it's really good for business for sure, too. And it's all about participation. And one thing I've always said is from the very beginning, we've played the long game on a lot of different strategies. And if you put 100% accurate data out there, products you can stand behind, you're 100% honest, you don't embellish things, that is always gonna stand on its own, you know. And that's always been one of our attributes. And not everybody plays by that though. And especially over, I would say really since 2020, a lot of companies they'd say almost played dirty, but some of them did. But that's just I guess part of the industry evolving and how people communicate now.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Yeah, that was a time where a lot of pages got a lot bigger and people were inside and on social media.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

One of the biggest things that I see that is an issue and really a letdown for consumers in the end is companies or individuals, are they using first hand experience or are they using information, text, or copy that they've got from somebody else? Or are they just parroting or regurgitating something? That happens so much, so much. People talk about tuning down a charts exhaust system, then they'll say, You got to use this pipe or you got to use these injectors. That doesn't work. This doesn't work. I'm I mean, 95% of the time, they're not saying that because they've experienced that firsthand.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Right. Yeah, and that's a a unique upper hand that we have as as a relative authority in the industry is the fact that we have so many bikes that come through. We work with so many bikes weekly remotely, and we've just tested so many products.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

To give an idea, this week, how many people do you think that you helped assist remote tuning, including dealers?

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Yeah, and and I mean tune tuning alone is probably encompasses it can be over a hundred people a day, unique customers. And not everyone is gonna be physically modifying or editing a tune, but a significant portion of them are, and and a lot of the other ones are still just helping them with technical support and that sort of thing. So overall, unique tunes sent a week, it's well in the hundreds, if not over 500, right? Especially right now with bikes. Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

This is really a lot of those two are dealers and shops. Yep. And a lot of them people are shops that want assistance or support or help with tunes. This is all stuff that has to be learned. It isn't hereditary.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

You know, we all have to we had to learn it. We had to figure out we had to do it. It's difficult. You can tell some of the people you work with, and sometimes in the the demeanor and the manner with which they get in contact with you, or if you had you just have a mutual customer that's trying to get you guys together and and they're not in contact or responding. You can tell some of them have preconceived notions.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

And that goes both directions for sure. Because we'll have one guy will call us or email rather, and and they'll say, Yeah, I want to do this, I want to do that, I'm excited to do this. And it'll be something, say, for example, that we've done day in, day out. Let's just use, for example, uh Woods 22XE cam with a 114 with our two into one or our two into one, two headpipe, and the two in the we are gonna be able to hit that so strong, and that thing will work. It's really flexible as far as exhaust and things in that. And that guy will be excited. We know we can get that combination to either him or his shop or whoever, and that thing is just gonna be a rock star. But then on the other side, we'll have a guy call up and say, Hey, I want this cam, that cam, because this or that, and I heard this, I heard, and he's already been instructed, we can hear it. The same goes to a dealer or shop calling us. You can tell a minute into the conversation or even by the email whether or not they really want to work with the stuff or not. Yeah, and bias is a big part of this. Right. If you're bringing your bike or buying parts and a shop's gonna install it that they don't want to, they're not gonna make it work right. Yep. They have to make it wanna work.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Yeah. At the end of the day, uh parts are parts and it either works or it doesn't. So there's no magic brand or or cam grind or anything. You know, there are a lot of things that work better, but I and CAM is actually a really good example because that's such a subjective topic. I mean, a cam isn't what makes a build.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Same with exhaust and all these other parts we have seen so many times where if a customer has a combination, say he takes to get it dyno-tuned, or he happens to take it to an indie shop or a dealer to have it installed. Some of these guys they're pretty vocal. They'll, you know, they're pretty passionate, we'll say. And if they start not wanting to do the products, there's a preconceived bias on that then. And I mean, we've we've seen every level of that from somebody just might have been upset because they bought from somebody else, which we understand the whole situation too. But other times they may be upset because they might have a partnership with one of these other companies, or some of these guys are moderators on Facebook because we're on the Facebook pages they're on. So many dynamics to that, and and you just gotta be aware of what you're working with and what you're doing. One of the biggest boundaries that I see with the Facebook groups, comments, and messaging is that it seems like there's a good portion of people that just have to be the smartest guy in the room. They will not take that this person figured it out first, this person knows how to do it, but I don't, or it's something they've learned that I haven't learned yet. They do not want that, they do not like that. You don't have to be the smartest guy in the room. You don't. The biggest thing is have an open mind, a willingness to learn. That's how we do it every day. You know, that's a big part of what we do here is trying to figure this stuff out and get data to customers uh so they don't have to do quite as much as what we would have to do. Uh, some examples we can go into is tuners and tuning.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

That's a big one. Yeah. And for as long as I've been here and as long as PowerVision has been out before I was here, we've been on an over decade run now of like our favorite buzzword is auto-tune. And it's a lot of a lot of tuners, big, big kind of hot, hot button issue. And that's a perfect example of something that's just completely misrepresented and misconstrued in media. I think to some degree it's by people that think it is conflicting with their business, when in reality, it's just an example of a tool that can be used by anyone, whether it be a dealer, customer, tuner, and anyone. So that's that's a good example of something that that's a conflict that's absolutely an example.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Um for those that don't know, uh, auto-tune uses the same logic, the same data as what you would in the dyno. In fact, a good portion of the dyno tuners traditionally and still do use auto tune. Right. They they don't want to tell you this when you show up. But a lot of these guys, I mean, there's people for 10, 12, 15 years, as long as it was out, used auto tune on the dyno. They used the same power vision box as the consumer did, put the thing in auto-tune mode and ran through the tune. Well, now you can do that all in software. It's the same logic, it's the same data. The dyno doesn't do the tuning for you. Right. It's the data you're using. So whether you use auto-tune or using the tune lab or tuning link within the dyno software, it's the same, the same data, the same stuff. And essentially how that works is as you run the bike on a dyno and build your histogram or run through your log, it looks at the measured air fuel ratio, and it also looks at because it has the tune in front of it and in the software, it looks at what the tune's delivering. And it's very easy. Once you finish the log up, it basically takes the delta, takes the difference between the measured air fuel ratio and the commanded, and splits out a correction to the VE table. So I mean that's simple auto-tune logic. There's several different softwares and tuning platforms that use various versions of the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Yep. This is traditional airflow model tuning. Every industry in in any capacity that's tuning VE models or even Math or any other 2D-based fueling logic as well, is going to be the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

So obviously, there's a lot more tables and things in the overall realm of tuning, but on the fuel side, which is your first basic step to getting the vehicle tuned. We've had people that again, shops we know have gone on and rants about using auto-tune and telling consumers not to use it, this, that. Some of these shops we know firsthand use auto tune. They call us and we ask, they ask questions, and we do it and we help them. And there's nothing nothing wrong with that. They don't need to be ashamed of using auto tune because it's a great way to tune the bike on the dyno. And especially like even now, say on the Gen 2 Harleys, where they're more complex, using traditional tuning methods in a lot of respects is easier for dino tuners to work out because and it's a good way to segue into what they traditionally did into the new way of doing. And on that same note, a lot of tuners uh we're calling um tuning shops and such, essentially Gen 2 stuff came out, and I hate to even say it this way, but they're inability or in experience with product functionality. That's a big thing you see probably every day. Yeah, like how many shops do you get in contact with a week that with a Gen 2 bike that all PowerVision won't work on this or Thundermax won't, you can't do this.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Right. It's a commonality, and it's complicated to make a stock ECU, especially one like on the Gen 2 bikes, that's a lot more complex than anything we've ever seen from Harley before. Work with all sorts of parts that we're swapping out and changes. I mean, it it requires fine adjustment just because the first swing you take at something and and running it on the stock tune, it doesn't run right or it throws a code or something, that does not signal uh uh inability of the tuning device you're using.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

I mean, it right the days of just flashing a tune in and running it through on the dyno quick and making fuel adjustments and putting out the door, that's a little different with Gen 2. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

The platform alone, the hardware too, is is so new. I mean, there's only so many people in relative to Gen 1 and earlier stuff that are doing big boar kits and swapping cams, and now we have VVT in the mix and all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Well, one thing that I would say has given us a good advantage on that. Obviously, it's a huge advantage and a great relationship with Dinojet that we can be early adopters and and help develop a lot of the base maps and the back side of the tunes and what works and what doesn't, and get that figured out before it ever comes to a consumer or a tuning shop. I I can tell you for sure on this Harley stuff, what has helped a ton is a previous experience in car tuning in other ECUs. The Bosch and other stuff we tune with in other vehicles has really made a big difference, even compared to Indian. That really was helpful because we were doing uh motorcycle torque-based tuning since 2016. Those vehicles, the the Bosch M17s, and now the MG1s on those bikes that they had all torque-based fuel throttle control and stuff. So that really was a big, big part of learning some of the Harley stuff, even though it's different. You know, it was a lot of the same theories and things like that. And then same with cars and not to mention any turbo or nitrous stuff that we've done over the years. The more you tune, the more experience you get, the more you understand, you know, how you have to adapt and learn some of these other systems. That was just something we want to touch based on auto-tune. Don't be afraid to use it. It works really, really well. Yeah, and you always can go back to what you had before. We dyno tune every single day here so we know what the base maps look like when we start and when they finish. And we're not going to discourage anybody from dyno tuning a bike, but you certainly can. What we don't want to discourage people from taking a crack at it and learning. That's how you get familiar with it. And it really open your eyes if you could see how simple and while these bikes tune in with not too much effort. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

A lot of the hard stuff is already taken care of, especially for us when we're supplying people tunes. So the main thing is really just some relatively in many applications, rudimentary airflow and fuel tuning and spark tuning.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

So nothing hurts more than seeing a tuning shop or an individual discouraging somebody to do their own work or tune. They're not never gonna know unless they do it. Yep. And and you know, again, it comes back to what we talked about before bias. You know, obviously there's a reason why some of these tuning shops and companies sit there and go, you can't do this, none of this works, none of it works as well because they're gonna they're gonna down and tune your bike.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Right. You know, and now it's uh escalated to the point of shops claiming uh 20, 30 percent, 30, 40 percent gains before and after tuning it, right, with no part changes, and not to mention it being 20% over what the industry standard is for a given engine combination.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

That really brings up the other topic we should probably talk about is inflated dyno charts and numbers that have really evolved over the elevated themselves over the last couple of years.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

It's actually pretty cool because a lot of customers have really followed along, especially in the M8 stuff, because Harleys have become so much more because of the performance bagger stuff and people are following along on the performance side and the performance sector is drone.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah, and not to mention they're easy to work on.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Yeah, and the dollar to horsepower, especially on M8s, is super good. I mean, for the price of what it takes to get the parts and even labor to do a cam and stuff in these bikes, it's huge gains. But we've also seen now we're getting close to 10 years of the M8, and there are there are only so many new cam grinds coming out. There's only so much to gain with a bulk.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

And a good share of them. We worked with companies developing their grinds. Yep. Yeah and testing them. So a lot of times before them cams come to market, companies send the cam to us. We test them, we develop a fuel map, uh Power Vision or Thunder Max base maps and get that sorted. So when the cam comes out, those companies have a foundation to build off of.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Yeah. And and now we've seen in relation to dyno charts what these bikes do. Many people, I mean, it's not just fuel model. There's obviously a huge repository of dyno charts you can find from many big, big shops across the country that tune these regularly. And in 10 years, there's only so much more you're going to gain out of the same engine with the same cams. And all of a sudden now you see a couple of shops being just particularly the same shops, making significantly more than that.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Big, big, big numbers. And I use a term all the time, common denominator. Yep. And you don't need to use our numbers, but you can use them as a baseline to go off of and go look across the internet. Call your dealer, talk to shops, call the manufacturers. That's probably the one of the best things. Yeah. Call the manufacturers of the camshafts and exhaust. Hey, what kind of numbers do you think I'd make with this, or where can I expect to be? And if you find numbers that are all of a sudden 10 or 15% higher, I'm even going to say not to use those numbers. Just understand they're higher than normal. There's reasons numbers are higher. Yeah. There's reasons if you have extremes on conditions, it can be higher or lower. We have a whole article on the fuel motor university that goes through that really well. And we'll do another podcast and talk about that specifically too. But if you find numbers that are way higher or way lower than what you normally find, you got to find the reason why. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

It's funny because now the extreme has shifted. And I think a lot of people are relatively apprehensive about it. But also there's nothing wrong. At the end of the day, you can run it, you can make whatever numbers you want on a dyno. It's not going to make the bike make more power than it actually does. So it doesn't matter if you run it on two different dynos back to back and it makes 15 more horsepower in one. Right. The bike is not any faster on that dyno than it is in the other.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

And it's funny about the numbers. I remember back in 2010 when uh we worked with Bob Bob Wood. Bobby Wood, we developed the TW555. And that was the first year where Carly had the limited, the 103 limited. So we had a 103 limited here, and we put the 555 cam in, our jackpot headpipe, and a set of our jackpot mufflers. And I'll never forget, we made like 98 horsepower with that thing. And we posted it on social media and on some of the forums, and there was a handful of shops that flipped out. They could not believe it. There's no way you're almost 100 horsepower on 103 with a bolt-in cam and da da da da da da da da da da da da. And here we are 16 years later, and it's like a normal thing. Because we were the first to get that camshaft to market and showed what it did, it still is a great cam. We've had some cams, 103s do over 100 horsepower with some grands, not just wood stuff, but others that are out there. The dyno numbers thing is really something that you have to, again, look at common denominators. If your bike ended up low or your bike, for example, ended up high, it is what it is. It's just a number on a piece of paper. One other thing I really don't like that's coming out of this is we have customers that are they're shameful to share their dyno charts and information because, you know, oh, if I put that up on this Facebook group, I would get shredded because it made this much less. Then it goes into you should have done this camshaft or that exhaust don't work. And some of these are really good combinations and really nice stuff. And numbers that a few years ago would have been fancy. Fantastic. Right. Well, if you're using the same parts and the same things, that's not going to change. You got to look at what's changed. Some of the using parts that we helped maybe develop, some of the stuff that we've done behind the scenes long before came to market. And we don't know everything. We had a pretty good handle on how these engines tune and how they work and the kind of power they make. And not to mention some transparency to DinoJet and their actual numbers from the manufacturer that makes the Dyno. Yep. So we know how this all works. And on that same note, I have an idea how some of these shops that are maybe doing this, how they are manipulating their numbers, I would say a little bit. But I mean again, it's neither here nor there. More power to them if they want to do that. But if the number is higher than what it really is, they're just lying to themselves. And but that's the way they want to do that. That's fine. You just got to take those numbers though and go off the common denominator. For example, when we post a dyno chart for a given combination, we don't post a high flyer. I'll take an average. All of our charts that are on our site and the charts we give back to customers are an average of the final results. Yep. So in the end, when we do it, we know exactly what engine temp. We have monitors all over our room inside that monitor the temperatures and relative humidity and all that stuff. We make sure that is right. Make our final runs, do three, four runs, give the average one. Sometimes there'll be a little clutch slip or a tire jump that puts a little blip in the graph, or there's a little hook at the end where you bump the rev limiter. You take that off. You cut that off of there because that's that's again, you're only lying to yourself. I I see those charts all the time where it's got a blip at the end of the graph. Yeah, or a bounce in the middle that adds five, seven or sport or torque.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

You have to know how to read a dyno chart too. That definitely makes a big difference. Just an easy example that you see a hundred dyno charts of a week about take a good 114 with a decent bolt-in, torque cam, whatever, it makes 120 horsepower. It's not gonna matter whether, regardless of who tunes it or what shop it goes to, if they tuned it right, it's not gonna matter if they hand you a sheet if it made 120 on average, and for some reason one run made 130 or one run made 110. Maybe they were going for the high flyer number on one, and maybe the bike was pretty heat soaked on another. The bike's gonna run the same for you regardless after it's rolled off the dyno. So the numbers on the paper aren't what to live by. It's a great guide, especially like for us. We've built such a great repository of dyno charts because it gives people an idea of what to expect. And it's definitely a useful tool, especially when it comes to power delivery and building out your combination and giving you kind of a guide on what you like. But by all means, we're not saying to specifically zero in on a single dyno chart you find online, whether it's from us or anyone else, and and say, hey, I'm gonna copy this build. But then sometimes you get into the whole thing of mixing it with other ones and thinking that you're gonna make whatever high flyer be even better with a different part or a different pipe or cam, whatever. But yeah, injectors.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Right, yeah. Um, because a couple of the social media guys are really fixated on you have to put larger injectors, larger injectors. And we'll do a full podcast on injectors and all that. But yeah, uh, one very important thing about injectors is there's only one thing that can tell you what size injectors you want, and that's your engine. Yep. You can't look at a dyno chart unless there's something very wrong with it. You can't look at the dynamic side, oh, that needs bigger injectors.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Yeah, the only thing that could tell you that is if the dyno chart has much more data that 99% of people would never put on there, anyways. So you you need log data, you need to know how the bike is running.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

But the duty cycle, that injector, that's gonna tell you whether whether it's maxed or you have enough ceiling on the duty cycle, that's the only thing. And and obviously a bigger problem is if you put two large injectors in. That's a bigger problem in most cases than a too small, because too small injectors are gonna affect the upper right side of the upper high RPM of the curve. You're gonna route an injector where you're not gonna be running that that area very often in most cases. Yep. On the street and such. But if you put larger than necessary injectors, you're gonna have a pulse width at at low RPM. You know, it it once it drops under a certain pulse width, it's gonna go nonlinear and the injector's gonna fall off and and you're gonna have all kinds of issues there controlling that.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Right. So minimum pulse width is really just the same but opposite of what happens when you max duty cycle on an injector. When you have probably worse because you're not starting the bike or leaving stop signs. Right, right, exactly. Yeah, you're right. That's in extremely fine areas of the tune that require precision at really light throttle where you you want more resolution, you lose that extremely because uh, under a certain pulse width and an injector, it's like I said, it's just like when you max a duty cycle.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

When you're too low, now that injector is extremely hard to modulate to so much of this really is having the first hand data and knowing it versus somebody telling you, you know, right or regurgitating or reusing what somebody has. Well, even worse than that now is AI. That's probably the worst. You could say, what exhaust pipe or what size baffle should I use? They ask it into a search engine now, right? Like AI is just scraping data from wherever it knows. It doesn't really help.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Yeah, and it doesn't help too when all these same influencers or celebrity shops they have extremely good relevancy. And don't get me wrong, they have a lot of really good videos, even ones that directly compete with us. And that information is definitely influencing AI and search engines. That's spreading a lot. Someone talking on social media that reaches a couple hundred thousand people, that's a lot easier to share and to immediately send to your friends or send to a group or post on your page or comment. And some of them are not necessarily people that have been in the industry and they were working on Harley's and learned how to tune and what parts and everything to use after the fact. The industry dictated what they should use and and what they wanted to sell. So they have a vested interest in promoting that.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

And going back to not having to be the smartest guy in the room, I'm gonna violate that myself for a minute. But nothing is more comical to me than watching a video or seeing an internet post, or even somebody sending an email telling me or you how things are or staff here, when I can see it's something I wrote or you wrote, right, or something we talked about in a video a while back, or even other companies work with. I'm like, hey, I know who wrote that or said that phrase. Even when we're not necessarily people that said it or that know it, I'm there's like much of our data off our university site is copied and pasted, not on just forums and Facebook groups, but on other companies' websites. So much of that. Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Web data and product information. They scrape our sites and yeah, and and that's don't get me wrong. I mean, even about the AI thing, that's to our benefit sometimes too. There definitely is a significant amount of, like Jamie said, our information from our university page and a lot of our product information that it's probably biased towards us in terms of some of the pages that have a lot of traffic and seem to be well accepted. That information is scraped from our site too. So it's hard to separate it now. That's why AI is a very subjective topic. At the end of the day, I tell people regularly don't ask AI how to tune your bike. You're either going to work with someone that does it every day and trust their work or try and do it yourself with AI, although I haven't really seen the best results with that and across any of the things. Especially on the tuning signs.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Yeah. In closing, we wanted to do this podcast for the main reason of customers being able to purchase and make informed decisions on free will. Yep. That's what it comes down to. I mean, that is really the foundation when I started this company. That's how I did it. I wanted to do it, how I wanted to do it. And at the time, 20 some years ago, that was really different because we wanted to help people with fuel maps and be very readily available by email and by phone and help people with their purchases and put packages together. And actually, that's one of the very first things I did when I was at the Honda shop. I was putting packages together for VTX 1800s, all the Honda CBRs, RC51s. And then it went into let's do packages for R1s, GSXRs. I was always a big GSXR guy, of course, but that's really where this all started. And again, we can't thank everybody enough for all the great customers and years that we've had here. We really appreciate all the business and friendships we had over the years. And we would love to just give the advice don't be discouraged to do your own work, to do your own tuning, to share your experiences. Because that's what we're doing here. And that really created something that I really think was special over all the years.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

I mean, an honest and and neutral marketplace that we try and offer by all means is very evident in the fact that we have relationships with everyone. I mean it might look a certain way on social media to some people for sure. But if you come here and look at our inventory and what we stock and what we sell, we work with every brand, every shop. If you call here, if you buy, if you want us to sell, we are very, very neutral and open and just for everyone. There's enough work out there for everyone and enough people that need parts from every brand. And that's why we try to carry it all. Okay, we're gonna wrap up for today.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

And I thank everybody for joining and hit us up on the next episode. Thank you. If you like what you heard, be sure to leave a quick rating or share it with your riding buddies. Have a topic you want us to dig into next time? Send it our way at marketing at fuelmotousa.com and thank you for tuning in.