This weekend Laconia Bike Week kicked-off. As has been the case for the past few weeks the weather sucked yesterday. But today, it is gorgeous outside. I had a list of projects to do before I head off to bike week on Wednesday and they have been postponed. Today I finally got do to some work.
My bike comes stock with a HUGE air cleaner, lovingly referred to as “the football” and a “pair valve” (California emissions control device). The plan was to rip off the pair valve, replace the football with a hidden K&N air filter, re-jet and debaffle the exhaust pipes (since I have not made a decision on what style of new pipes I want). I realize this was ambitious, but I started over a month ago and figured I’d be done by now. The problem is that I still don’t have all the parts that I ordered! The one big thing I’m missing is the jet kit. But I couldn’t wait, so I started anyway!
Getting half-naked.
When you remove the pair valve and the football on the Volusia, it allows you an unobstructed view of the V-twin cylinders (or “jugs”) so some smarty-pants refers to them as having “Naked Jugs“. I began to set my jugs free today by removing the pair valve. Things went fairly smooth except for the front air breather, that’s a bitch.
Once that was done I figured since I can’t re-jet yet that there was no reason to replace the football. My bike runs lean anyway so the last thing I want to do is give it more air.
The top row of pictures is the pair value before and after I removed the casing. The second row is me tackling the “football.”
Voila! Naked jugs!
So now the bike is half-nekkid. I’m going to have to wait until I get back from bike week to re-jet and go au naturale.
Baffled that I haven’t debaffled before now.
I decided to do a partial debaffle of the exhaust pipes. There are 3 separate baffles in the Volusia. My goal was to remove the first one.
We picked up 2 hole saws to cut through the plates in the massive pipes. You cut out a doughnut and the baffle becomes unrestricted. Then put a dowel in the baffle and wiggle it around until the metal fatigues and breaks off.
Pull the baffle out: lather, rinse and repeat on the other pipe.
What a difference! The sound coming out of those pipes now is unbelievable!
So, as I mentioned before I will be at bike week from Wednesday to Sunday and will try to post updates while I’m there. I’ve been working on a special feature that uses a GPS that I put on the bike and Google maps so you can see me riding in real time. Look for the “Where am I” link under pages in the right hand column. When it’s there, that means I’m on the road! Check back soon and check often…