ezone

Those joints are what I was talking about. The springs could compress as the pressure builds and the pipes try to push apart.




What kinakoes said.



Here's my current girlfriend:



^This loudass money sucking bitch needs another back tire real soon, might try a Michelin this time....




I got one of these sometime back....plugs in the laptop USB, comes in handy every once in a while and was a lot cheaper (and is really a lot less convenient) than your pic:



Tape it to a coathanger, bend it wherever you want it to go!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2C00TG7684

Chicken! LOL
All the cool kids do it!

kinakoes2

Metzeler makes some really great S/T and touring tires... Dunlops suck for mileage (they seem to square off in virtually one season sometimes, but their selling point is that you can find them almost anywhere). If you can find a Metzeler for that wheel size, I'd spend the slight premium to get them... even the S/T stuff wears like iron and handles really stable. Racing buddy had a '04 dresser and liked them a lot better than the Dunlops... think it's a ME880 or 888, can't remember...

And all modern H-Ds, like modern Ferraris or Porsches (they did consult in the engine design, after all ) require their owners accept a 'premium' maintenance budget. Much better than on a Shovelhead or Panhead... but still more money than a Wing.

kinakoes2

Well, first determine that it's indeed the case. Then, it's up to you to prove what's boogering up the cat is the same thing as the packing material they sent the part in.

Seems to me it'd be common sense to put a couple of bits of $0.001 tape over both ends of the cat/downpipe before shipping... and I'd think you'd hear about it if they were truly spacing not sealing the pipe from packing stuff, at least online... but we don't. So perhaps if you find that *is* the case, it's probably a new guy at the shop or someone got amnesia wanting to start their weekend.

If you didn't find any tape or foam plug seal over the open ends of the pipe when it got to you... that's a case you can make with MF to avoid future bronchitis with another desperate-for-SOME-power 7th-genner. But first shine a light through the substrate and make your case... may even be able to knock out some blockages with a straightened coat hanger* if you're lucky (ezone, is the substrate hella fragile, or is it more like stone?)... but you'll never get back that catalyzing surface, so the cat is less effective now... but it should flow better.


* do yourself a favor, and bend a little angle into the end of the long wire piece you're gonna poke into the cat, with a pair of pliers -- because if it falls in, it may not make it around the elbow at the engine side.

ezone

I'd say.....Surprisingly easy to damage, yet surprisingly hard to extract.

If you damage the substrate, you can expect P0420.
If you start poking holes in it, you may as well gut it or put a test pipe on it.

But figure out what the real problem is before you go doing that. If the supposed clog is at the muffler, poking holes in the cat would be a waste of time and money.

ezone

This.
Seem to need one rear every 8k if I ride sanely. And a set of rear pads at the same time. Need both again.

K. I'll look into it

I believe Porsche had a hand in the design of the VROD engine..... I haven't paid attention to who did the water cooled heads on the new touring bikes.

Mine is just 2 cylinders hacked off a radial airplane engine.

No doubt.

kinakoes2

Yeah, the VRSCs were clean-sheeted by Porsche, then vetted and modified in-house by H-D. They're really just VR1000 racebike motors punched out and detuned for street use. But the TC88s were also consulted on with Porsche, one change being the addition of piston-underside oil jets.

Re: Metzelers -- their much softer and sportier S/T compound Roadtec Z6 tires, on my light SV650 but with my fat a$$ 225 lbs on it (back then) and being ridden and commuted hard (with frequent *very* hard) on near-track damping settings... would last almost two full seasons, including around the Oly Peninsula and 1000 mi rides to St. Helens. Total endorsement by this s/t junkie.

kinakoes2

I didn't mean poke holes where there were none before... but clearing the straight-thru square passages of anything that might've melted there and blocked the honeycomb. As long as it's not as fragile as say, styrofoam or florist's foam... a straight wire probe could knock a passage clear safely, esp if the business end was sanded to knock down any sharp edges.

Looking at the broken substrate in the pic a few posts back... it looks like a coat hanger wire would easily fit through it, hence the advice. If it's done with care and not shadetree'd, it's a cheap, easy fix that wouldn't do any harm, plus greatly increasing flow (by the '1/2 radius = 16x flow resistance' rule, increasing effective ID by only 1/16 diameter would still double flow).

ezone

Not coat hanger size.
Think more like each square hole is maybe 1mm.

ezone

kinakoes2

^Ah, gotcha -- yeah that's a no-go for a coat hanger...

Ah well. Hopefully the muffler is the culprit.

Seems like if that was the case though... just unbolting the joint after the resonator and letting it leak (maybe wedging a bit of wet wood to open it) should produce some improvement? Wouldn't take but a few hundred feet of running to figure out if it ran better or not, no danger of exhaust heating up anything but wet scrap wood.

ezone

I think he's scurred of getting arrested on a noise ordinance, or thinks his HOA would eject him straight out the hood.

kinakoes2

^Not trivial matters, esp the HOA part (know some WA friends who've lived in Gestapo-ish conditions a la 'can only display US flag x by y size in this location' and 'exterior color is too gaudy, repaint it [was bluish grey]').

Thaik, if it's available to you, maybe find a big mall and a spot waaay away from the structure in the furthest parking spots? I used to work on my bike in this fashion in the early '90s when my Army post used to cordon off our lot for MSF training, or event equipment storage. As long as you're not drawing attention to yourself or making a big mess (and the golf cart/whoopee-light Ranger commandos aren't ******), seems the most convenient solution. Plus food and drink is nearby if you need a break.

ezone

My little sister and her family live in one of those yuppie HOA areas where the houses all look exactly the same, with neatly manicured yards and Saturday AM synchronized mowing rituals....probably wearing helmets on the riding mowers.

I always get the feeling they cringe when this dirtbag rides the bike to visit. "When are you leaving?"