in today's video i'm going to show you guys the top five mods for this bike right here the suzuki
boulevard m50. i have owned three of these over the years, put tens of thousands of miles on them,
and i'm gonna tell you the top five mods i do every time i buy a new one, because apparently
this bike is like a drug: every time i quit i just end up falling for it again.
first modification is called the uncle abe exhaust mod and yes i'm talking about modifying your
exhaust right from the get-go so you guys can just get that flamewar started in the comment section
"loud pipes don't do it blah blah blah" it's not about loud pipes hear me out. it's
for people who you don't necessarily want all of the noise of an aftermarket pipe but you just wish
you could let out a little bit more of that v-twin rumble. this is kind of a nice little gentle
in between. your mufflers were designed for two things one emissions and two noise reduction. let
me show you something to explain. theoretically this steel pipe should be able to go all the
way through until about down here right? but it doesn't. check this out. put the pipe in there
it can only get
about oof that's not even a foot. that's because there isn't one straight patches that goes through
there's a series of different chambers in here. the air comes through this way and then it can't
get through the next part until up here and it can't get through the next part until down here
and the reason why they do that is because this having to go like this it makes it quieter.
there's more channels in there where the sound can get locked into less noise coming out. so
what you're doing with this is you just put the tube in there i believe it's either half inch or
three eighths i can't remember look it up and you just hammer it you break that first wall you break
that second wall and then you stop. there's two. one two. very easy way of letting out a
little bit more v-twin rumble without being crazy and aggressive loud like after-market pipes are
or removing your baffles are. if you're thinking you want a little bit more noise
but you're not sure you want to spend the money just yet that is a great way of doing it. second
modification you should do has to do with your brakes. now suzuki gives us this really nice big
disc brake up front and that's great. the disc brake on the boulevard is actually the same
size as on the gsxr which is kind of cool except there's just one problem. the gsxr has two discs
the boulevard only has one. stopping power on this bike is not great. to make matters worse they give
you this antiquated drum brake on the rear. and then to further add insult to potential injury
you get rubber brake lines and why is that a bad thing? well rubber brake lines do not perform
consistently under pressure and they kind of deteriorate and they wear away. they're not
as good as this indian comes with a steel braided brake line it's going to give you maximum braking
force and maximum braking feel which is going to help you come to a better and more controlled stop
even and especially in the event of an emergency. side note: i make videos all about how to service
this bike subscribe to my channel if you want to see them. i have a video showing you guys how
to do an oil change. i have a video showing you guys how to bleed the brake fluid. i have a video
showing you guys how to change the shaft drive fluid. subscribe to my channel if you want to see
those. back to the video. now that we know we can come to a stop from a faster speed we should talk
about going faster all together. motorcycles in general and this suzuki is no exception,
they don't come tuned for performance they come tuned for emissions, and for fuel economy, and
that means you're not getting the best performance that you can, but there are still a few things
we can do. what air filter you choose can make a huge difference on performance. this from factory
uses a paper air filter there are other options i have a video i will link to over here on all the
different air filter types and which one might be best for you but if you were to switch to a more
free breathing air filter you'll be able to let a lot more air into the bike. then that has to go
somewhere right? so we go whoop over here. exhaust pipes also very restrictive we get rid of these we
put a more free-flowing set of exhaust pipes on there now we can breathe more air in, more
air out, but that makes a problem, do not do just this. see your motorcycles all internal combustion
engines really what's critical to them is your af ratio which is your air to fuel ratio. what you
want to do is manage how much fuel it's getting. so you get a fuel processor, cobra fi 2000,
you get a power commander on there, any kind of fuel processor on there and it's going to manage
how much fuel the bike should get relative to how much air it's getting at different rpms, that way
you're always getting maximum performance. now is doing the whole stage one kit and getting
rid of your mufflers and all that stuff going to make your m50 like a big performance machine? no
it's not there's no replacement for displacement right? more ccs more power, but it's not uncommon
to see people get an extra five horsepower, and five horsepower on a 45 horsepower motor,
that's over 10 increase right so that's that's decent. so if you do wish your bike had just a
little bit more punch to it stage one kit is a great mod for you. so now that you were super
smart and you upgraded your brakes first, and then you upgraded the bike's performance second, if you
really want to be faster on this thing, get rid of those! you see what that says right there irc.
these are the stock tires that come with the bike. awful tires! do you know what irc stands for?
irritating rolling crap. they are garbage. i don't care, i won't start the whole pirelli metzler
whatever debate, i don't care what you get. get rid of these ircs these are rolling death traps.
just get rid of the ircs. if you really want to be a fast rider around corners and really tear
[ __ ] up on this bike, get good tires. get a good premium name brand, not irc's. side note
if you just want to like fair weather rider, you know, just take it slow and like grandma drive
these things, if you're there like "my irc tires are fine!" grandma your irc tires are totally fine
rock them that's cool, but yeah if you want to be more aggressive with the bike: better tires. the
next mod you're going to want to do is replacing the stock h4 headlight with led and i'm not
talking about one of those crazy leds are like and just blind your oncoming traffic they're like ah
right i'm just talking about a bulb like 1800 lumens 1600 lumens is more than enough. you
don't have to go to like the 10,000 lumens that's craziness, people are gonna hate you, but at 1600
lumens you're gonna be anywhere from like two to three times brighter than the stock bulb,
without being enough to bother anybody else on the road, and it's going to have three major benefits
for you. the first one is because things are going to be brighter and more easier to identify,
your brain is going to have more time to react to what does it is it's seeing. it makes you
safer that way. the second way it helps you is it will make you be much more visible to
other traffic. i put an $18 bulb in pretty much all of my bikes. the likelihood of someone just
making a left turn in front of me is just like so much less because there's no excuse
of "i didn't see you coming!" and the third benefit of it is it uses about a third as much
power from your battery and your charging system as a regular incandescent bulb that comes stock
with the bike. so you get more light out of it but it uses less power. that's really good if
you want to do stuff like maybe adding heating grips, adding like a charger for your phone,
and you just want to make the least amount of extra wear on your charging system. it's a great
mod and definitely worth it. hope you guys found this video helpful if you did please hit the like
button. if you want to see more m50 content please hit subscribe and yeah if you have any questions
let me know down below. obviously there's other mods you can do like windscreen, saddlebags,
that sort of thing but these are the mods that i think are really sort of common to everybody,
not everybody's into touring, yada yada, all right thank you so much for watching, ride safe, peace