At some time or other everyone thinks about tuning their bike, whether it's a hot piston and Leo Vince pipe on a 50cc stinkwheel or a full on race tune of their GSXR1000. It invariably ends in disaster of one form or another, and usually involves a rapid increase in oil consumption and strange rattles appearing.

Smaller bikes, noteably 400s and 600s can always use a bit of extra go, but modern stuff is tuned for a good mix of tractability and top end power, more and more towards the top end nowadays. Tuning for more outright power will reduce tractability and narrow the power band, not much use on the road.

Obviously different if you are looking to use the bike for racing where the odd quarter second a lap can make a big difference to race position and you are restricted to the size of engine you can use. Here you are looking to extract the maximum power from the motor, and you need a strong top end and good overrev. But as we're more roadracers than trackracers we won't go there.

Too often your well intentioned tuning ideas will wither on the garage floor with a pile of oily bits that don't seem to fit together any more and are always getting in the way.

For road use, benefit can be had by actually reducing top end power a bit to gain stronger mid range torque. A good top end gas flow and retarded cam timing can boost grunt, so by the time your mate on his top end tuned Gixer has found his power band you're long gone on a wave of seamless torque.

But fiddling about with timing dials and slotted cam wheels is not to everyone's taste.

'Course, you can just send the bike off to Terry's Tuning Services for a complete tune and rebuild. Apart from the fact that the thing will be away for weeks so you can't ride it, there's no guarantee that the job will be done properly and you can wind up with some stuttering, oil burning unreliable old shed that's just cost you two grand and added a big fat zero to the resale value. OK, it seems the likes of Tony Scott and his mates do a top service if you can wait that long. But what's the point for road use? Be a bloody sight cheaper to fit a short action throttle and actually use what you've already got ...

Tet decided one day that his VTR needed more go. This bike was always a bit short of revs - plenty of grunt but precious little after that.

So in went some 11.5:1 pistons, plus the necessary gas flowing of the heads. To cope with the extra power new main and conrod bearings were needed.

Once it was all back together he had to get the thing to fuel properly. So in went a dynojet kit and K&N filter, but that showed that the airbox couldn't deliver enough oxygen to feed the more demanding motor. And the exhaust system wouldn't allow the gasses out fast enough. So tapered headers and a full race system needed, plus a modified airbox. And bigger radiators for the extra cooling needed.

He could have persevered, but realised that even if he could get the motor fuelling properly, the frame and brakes wouldn't be up to the extra power. So he bought a GSXR750 - plenty of top end there ....

OK, what about fitting a bigger engine?

We tried this on an OW01. Peaky gruntless 750cc race motor out, torquey gruntfest 1000cc Exup lump in. Easy peasy.

Or not. Several hundred little brackets later, plus modded airbox, exup, exhaust system, carbs, etc. etc. etc., the motor ran fine. Loads of wallop from 300 rpm plus 125 horses should have been nirvana. But the weight distribution was all wrong with the bigger, heavier engine which now sat further forward in the frame. The thing never handled properly.

Tuning a modern litre bike for road use seems a bit daft - like your GSXR1000 isn't quick enough for you? You should call up Honda, Rossi needs a decent team mate. Just go and find a road with some bends, you're obviously spending far too much time on the M6.

Most home tuning is limited to a noisy can, K&N filter and a jet kit - or Power Commander in this injection fuelled age. Lots of claims of 20 more horses with dyno graphs to prove it. Just a bit odd then that matey on his bog-stock model seems just as quick. I remember putting my old 108 bhp Blade on a dyno and getting a very gratifying 127 bhp. And all for ten quid! Didn't have to change anything. That's tuning at its most civilised.