Randall Washington, aka "Randakk"
President and Chief Executive Rider
Chapel Hill, NC USA
Randakk's Supercharger Prototype for Honda GL1000Please read: DisclaimersAs I reported recently in the December, 2007 eNewsletter, the Supercharger Kit is on the road and performing very well. For a variety of business reasons, I have decided not to proceed to production.
I'm certainly not the first to put a supercharger on an early Wing. Other parties have done so dating back to the late '70s. My goal on this project was to build a better blown GL1000 than any I've seen on the road. Previous efforts that I've evaluated have limitations that I hoped to overcome. I believe I have been very successful from an engineering point of view. Special thanks to my good friend Lars Nielsen, aka "Octane" of Denmark for his invaluable assistance on this project. Lars is an internationally famous GL1000 enthusiast and prominent technical contributor to: Naked GoldWings Forum. Here's a video of Lars on his own Supercharged GL1000. Be sure to turn your speakers up! The video really captures the intoxicating whine of a blower. Also the fantastic rush to redline! My set-up works very well. I'm still making small "tweaks," but I'm very pleased with the performance and operation. It has actually exceeded my expectations so far. I'm looking forward to dyno tests to validate the substantial increase in performance. Now for the bad news. As a parallel effort, I've worked very hard on the business aspects of this project - struggling to get the manufacturing costs down to an affordable level so that I could sell this set-up as a comprehensive kit. Here's the result of that effort. If I were to commit to a minimum production run of 10 complete kits, the selling price (with a very thin margin) would be at least $5,700 per kit. Sadly, I realized that there is no market for this product at that price, so I decided not to proceed to production. The price is actually not that far out of line with what CC Products was charging for their kit back in the '70s (when you factor in inflation), but it's still an outrageous expenditure for an antique motorcycle. Even at such a price, I would not recover the R&D costs incurred so far. Worse, there would be a considerable risk of installation mistakes, cancelled orders and various other problems on the buyers' end, plus some level of warranty exposure on a complex install that I could not fully mitigate. Actually, only one failed installation out of 10 would put me considerably "upside down" on this project. So, with regrets - I will not be putting this into production. I will enjoy my creation and look forward to showing it at the upcoming Rally. I am very disappointed that I could not get the price down to "merely expensive." Thanks to everyone who provided assistance and moral support for this effort! |
