Screaming Eagle Air Cleaner

Suffice it to say I did not like it and do not recommend this so called "upgrade". Waste of money.

Harley-Davidson Scripted Mufflers

I bought these mufflers when I was just begining to learn about the Sportster and the various possibilities of upgrading it. These mufflers are of good quality, but do little in the way of performance and provide almost no sound difference from stock. Here is a review I wrote for this product on Sportster.org.

Idle Speed Adjustment on a Harley-Davidson Sportster

Before you do this you may need to remove the plug covering the idle mixture screw. You can find the directions on how to do that here.

Here's my version of the idle mixture adjustment procedure. It may be slightly different than others, but I believe the idea is the same.

Procedure

1. warm up the bike to operating temperature. This is very important!
2. leave the bike running and turn the idle speed screw up so the engine idles fairly fast. It is not important how many RPM at this point, this is just to prepare for the next step.
3. turn the idle mixture screw in all the way until is seats (be gentle do not tighten the screw down. It is not a fastener, it is an adjustment needle, really). If the bike stalled while doing that go back to previous step and raise the idle speed a bit more. The idea here is to have the bike idling with the mixture screw turned all the way in.
4. now slowly turn the idle speed screw in until the engine just barely runs almost stalling. You can go to the point of stalling and back off slightly from that. Now you have your idle speed set in a pretty good place. Leave it be.
5. Shut off the engine and turn the idle mixture screw out about 3 or 4 turns out. Restart the engine. It should be running just fine now. Now turn the mixture screw in slowly while listening to the engine speed. As soon as you hear the speed change (slow down) ever so slightly stop and back off a quarter turn for colder weather and half a turn for warm weather. I tend to set it at somewhere in between and forget about it.
6. If you have a tachometer, check the idle speed against it. The specification is 1,050 RPM. It is really important to idle the bike around that speed as the oil pump does not produce enough flow to protect the engine at lower speeds.
7. Test ride and enjoy!

Note: I know I am omitting the part of finding the rich stumble, but the reality is that many times there will be no rich stumble and people will go increasing their pilot jets, which is wrong. You choose your pilot jet based on other things. Once the pilot jet is chosen you adjust the idle mixture as described above and all will be well.

Paying the "Harley-Davidson Tax"

For the uninitiated, paying the "Harley Tax" is the process of releasing significant horsepower and torque hidden in the factory tuned bike. The fact that Harleys come from the factory in the detuned state is so well known that the "Harley Tax" term has been coined to describe a fairly standard procedure to tune the new bike to an acceptable level of driveability and power. This process involves opening up the restricted air intake, restricted exhaust and tuning the carburetor (or fuel injection system) to compensate for the reduced restrictions to the engine.

In the case of my Sportster it took me a few rounds of trial and error to arrive at what I have right now, which is a well-tuned 883 that feels very good at all speeds.

I started with what most Sportster owners have been doing for years. I installed a Screaming Eagle air cleaner and HD low restriction mufflers. Since I do not like loud exhaust, I bought street legal "scripted" mufflers (they have Harley-Davidson on the rear muffler in script). I also re-jetted the carburetor to match what common advice was. That common advice states: assume 160 main jet as stock and go to 165 for either intake upgrade or exhaust and go with 170 if upgrading both. I upgraded both, so I had a 170 main jet ready. When I opened up the carburetor I was amazed to find out that my stock main jet was 175! This was one of several differences between the '04 and newer bikes and '03 and older ones. In 2004 the (HD) motor company redesigned the Sportster quite significantly. The major design change was rubber mounting the engine, which necessitated redesigning the frame, exhaust and other parts. Along with the engine mount change, MoCo also changed some cosmetics, brakes, ignition, final drive ratios and more. I also found out that the jetting was changed. I was stumped, but went with the 170 main jet. The bike ran OK, but I could not see the amazing results I was expecting. It still felt anemic. I then tried replacing the stock needle with the N65C needle. That did not help. I then shimmed the N65C needle 0.020" and that helped a little, so I lived with it for a while. Then I learned another thing that changed with the rubber mount age of Sportster. Harley Davidson Screaming Eagle air cleaner that used to be one of the best values for improved intake air solutions in years passed has become a piece of junk. Instead of an oiled K&N filter and an aluminum backplate that used to be part of SE air cleaner we now get a crappy dry (non-oiled) filter that is prone to developing holes in the filter medium and a plastic backplate that warps. Price has not gone down, however. Once I noticed holes in my 3 month old SE filter, I went back to the dealership I bought it from and was told that the filter was out of the 90 day warranty, however they would, in good faith, replace the filter for me for free. I thought that was nice of them and at that point chalked the filter failure to statistical probability. A few months later the new filter succumbed to the same failure. This is when the after market vendors began to catch up to the rubber mount bikes and a few options other than SE became available. One of the options was Arlen Ness Big Sucker air cleaner. It cost less than the SE unit, but came without a cover, the cost of which brought the total cost to about the same as the SE. The Arlen Ness Big Sucker is a very high quality product, much more so than the SE. The backplate is cast aluminum and has built in breather ports. The filter itself is an oiled type filter just like K&N, though Arlen Ness insists it is NOT a K&N and was designed specially for them. After installing the Big Sucker I realized that on top of being a poor quality air filter, Screaming Eagle filter also was pretty restrictive. After changing from SE to Big Sucker it became clear that the bike ran way too lean as it was jetted for the SE. I had to jet up to 175 main, 45 pilot and keep that shim under the needle. The bike performed great! Finally it had good power and good driveability with no carb pops and smooth acceleration. I later went back to the stock needle from the N65C and also shimmed it 0.020". This change produced a gain in top speed performance. It seems that the needle for rubber mount Sportsters was yet another component that changed and for the better. This stock needle seems like a great fit for the bike once shimmed. This was the last time I adjusted the carburetor, besides adjusting the idle mixture and idle speed to correspond to the new tune. Some time later I decided to try and drill out my stock mufflers as many people have done, so I drilled a 1/2" hole in the baffle plate of each muffler and installed them on the bike instead of HD scripted ones. Another surprise. That stock exhaust with a drilled out baffle plate made the bike run better than the $200 pair of "performance" mufflers. Another HD gimmick, just like the SE air cleaner. So, I've been running the following setup since summer 2005:

Arlen Ness Big Sucker air cleaner

Stock exhaust with 1/2" holes in the baffle plates (almost as quiet as stock)

175 main jet (stock on my year and model Sportster)

45 pilot jet

Sometime in 2007 I switched the pilot jet to 44 and the bike runs just as well, so I have stayed with 44 pilot jet. The rest if the carb adjustment did not change.

Idle mixture and idle speed adjusted as per instructions outlined here.

I used my "seat of pants" to tune the bike, but recently (after about 20K miles) I had a chance to put it on a dyno and was pleasantly surprised to see that the bike was tuned very well. Not maxed out on the power and torque, but air to fuel ratio curve was very nice and smooth. Here are the graphs from the dyno.

Stainless steel braided brake lineStainless steel braided brake line

This part was necessary for me to replace my stock handlebar with a buckhorn bar. I bought this as three separate units: the length of line with generic fittings at each end and two banjo fittings that are appropriate for my make and model bike.  This is obviously not a Harley Davidson part.  I bought it at an independent customizing shop (MDO Modern Cycles) in Gaithersburg, MD.  These guys know what they are doing and have done this kind of thing once or twice, so I took their advice and got the three piece line.  This was good because I was not exactly sure how long the new line needed to be, so I got a few lengths and then returned the ones I did not use.  Awesome!  I needed to drain the old brake fluid and replace it with new stuff when I was done.  I highly recommend MityVac for the bleeding operation, but on the Sportster (or most other bike) it is not a big deal to do it the Bleeding brakes the old fashioned way. In fact that is exactly how I did it when I replaced my line as I did not yet own a MityVac.

Buckhorn Handlebars

I find buckhorn handlebars some of the most comfortable bars on a motorcycle. I seem to be in minority, though, but that's OK. In order for these bars to fit my bike I needed:

1. a longer brake line (I went with Stainless steel braided brake line)

2. about 12" extra of wiring for hand controls and front turn signals
Throttle cables were OK and clutch cable was OK, though strained and after about a year I replaced it with a +6" cable from J&P Cycles catalog.

Passenger Accommodations

my 2004 Sportster XL883 came set up as a solo bike from the factory. I had to have passenger accommodations, so I ordered the passenger foot pegs, passenger seat to be added to the stock solo seat and a sissy bar with backrest cushion.


Here are before and after pictures:

Before:










After: