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[Hoist!]

Yea, RedDevil you right, not much you can do about the front, unless you want an ugly pipe sticking out the front of your bike. I just threw out this new pipe I saw. My main point was look at what your getting when you look at new headers, verses your riding style and your planned mods. If your going to just add a high flow air cleaner, and mufflers, then I'd stick with the stock headers. It's like putting on a big bore kit with stock heads, you'll get some benefit, but not as much as stock jugs, with high performance heads.

The stock headers still leave you with tuning and heat issues. I was originally keeping mine and just doing the mufflers. My tuner talked me into the TD's. Best thing you can do is listen to your tuner and do what he suggests, if you trust him. My tuner's a personal friend and is a Certified PC Dyno-tune shop. I go by his advice. Your tuner is the one tuning it on the Dyno. He should know best. Hoist!

[Talon]

Well, I'll just post one more thing on the subject. I think it's a lot of personal preference, and what you have done to the motor, I'll still contend that on a fairly stock motor the cost of a head pipe verses the HP gain is about $150 per horse. I can spend that some where else. Below is a note from night rider, here I go again, with the night rider stuff!!!

You actually have called the best combination for most bikes. The OEM header pipes and slip-on mufflers is the most cost effective upgrade you can make to the bike. All OEM HD header systems are based on a Cross-over pipe. The cross-over pipes is a well known trick to improve the low/mid range performance of an exhaust system by improving the overall volume contained inside the exhaust system. The larger the volume of the exhaust system, the harder it is for the exhaust system to restrict flow and reduce power when the engine is under heavy load. For those naysayers that might indicate that x-overs hurt power, all you have to do is look under any American muscle car to look at the exhaust system. Corvette, Mustang and virtually every other performance vehicle uses cross-overs to improve power.
 
So the simple slip-on muffler is going to result in the best average power in the low/mid range which is where you spend your time actually riding the bike. This generally applies to engines making up to 1HP/ft.lb./CID.
 
There will a few who say that True Duals will make better HP. This may be a true statement is some conditions, but the torque and average power is generally not going to be up to par with the simpler upgrades. There are always those few who want bragging rights at the local watering hole. But these also tend to be the guys who throw money at their engines, then complain when the don't get the power they expected, but spend all their time telling you how to build an engine.
 
There are always circumstances and situations that you may want to use other exhaust systems. True 2-1 systems and 2-2 systems can have interesting scavenging characteristics that can improve power in certain rpm ranges. But you need to know what these ranges are, build an appropriate engine to optimize these ranges, carefully build an engine to the correct specs, the spend a lot of time on the dyno tuning the engine. These "superior" engines can benefit from other exhaust systems, but superior power also has a superior cost, it is all in the details.
 
Bottom line is there never will be a bottom line, people will always have different opinions on this stuff, that's why there are sites like this, so we can get different perspectives!   
 

[Midnight Rider]

Well, I'll just post one more thing on the subject. I think it's a lot of personal preference, and what you have done to the motor, I'll still contend that on a fairly stock motor the cost of a head pipe verses the HP gain is about $150 per horse. I can spend that some where else. Below is a note from night rider, here I go again, with the night rider stuff!!!

You actually have called the best combination for most bikes. The OEM header pipes and slip-on mufflers is the most cost effective upgrade you can make to the bike. All OEM HD header systems are based on a Cross-over pipe. The cross-over pipes is a well known trick to improve the low/mid range performance of an exhaust system by improving the overall volume contained inside the exhaust system. The larger the volume of the exhaust system, the harder it is for the exhaust system to restrict flow and reduce power when the engine is under heavy load. For those naysayers that might indicate that x-overs hurt power, all you have to do is look under any American muscle car to look at the exhaust system. Corvette, Mustang and virtually every other performance vehicle uses cross-overs to improve power.
 
So the simple slip-on muffler is going to result in the best average power in the low/mid range which is where you spend your time actually riding the bike. This generally applies to engines making up to 1HP/ft.lb./CID.
 
There will a few who say that True Duals will make better HP. This may be a true statement is some conditions, but the torque and average power is generally not going to be up to par with the simpler upgrades. There are always those few who want bragging rights at the local watering hole. But these also tend to be the guys who throw money at their engines, then complain when the don't get the power they expected, but spend all their time telling you how to build an engine.
 
There are always circumstances and situations that you may want to use other exhaust systems. True 2-1 systems and 2-2 systems can have interesting scavenging characteristics that can improve power in certain rpm ranges. But you need to know what these ranges are, build an appropriate engine to optimize these ranges, carefully build an engine to the correct specs, the spend a lot of time on the dyno tuning the engine. These "superior" engines can benefit from other exhaust systems, but superior power also has a superior cost, it is all in the details.
 
Bottom line is there never will be a bottom line, people will always have different opinions on this stuff, that's why there are sites like this, so we can get different perspectives!   
 

Talon...not disagreeing with anything this guy is saying, or with you, about the relative merits of the crossover design, or two into one.  However, and this is a big one in my book, there is no way to seperately tune the rear cylinder without true duals, and that's the cylinder that one needs to be most concerned about with regards to proper A/F mix, and temperature.  Just really no good way to get an accurate measurement there without a seperated pipe, IMO.

Also, a lot of sites, when talking about the most bang for the buck, are referencing 88" motors and not 103 or 110's.  Big difference in flow, and potential benefits of one system over the other.  Another thing to be mindful of, IMO, is thinking ahead about whether one might do a simple cam swap, like the Zippers or Freedom bolt in's for these motors, and what might work best with that potential set up.  Some pretty big numbers have come out of those two cams and not doing anything at all to the heads.  Like 115 - 119 ft lbs and 105 - 110 HP.

[RedDevil]

Yea, RedDevil you right, not much you can do about the front, unless you want an ugly pipe sticking out the front of your bike. I just threw out this new pipe I saw. My main point was look at what your getting when you look at new headers, verses your riding style and your planned mods. If your going to just add a high flow air cleaner, and mufflers, then I'd stick with the stock headers. It's like putting on a big bore kit with stock heads, you'll get some benefit, but not as much as stock jugs, with high performance heads.

Talon,
You're probably right about the cost/hp gains when putting on duals, but there's also something that you have to consider too...looks.  I went with the duals I did, for two main reasons.  I knew I would get good torque numbers that come on pretty early and also I really like the looks of true duals.  So for me it wasn't just performance.  If I looked at a dollar/performance, then the chrome starter over the stock starter, or chrome inner primary over stock, would make no sense at all.  But you don't buy those for performance, you buy those for looks.  Got to satisfy the OCD.    Everything we do to our bikes is for a purpose that is specifically for us.  Each to his/her own, I always say.  Take on board what's said and recommeded here and then at least you can make an informed decision on which way you want to go.  No flames intended towards you Talon, so please don't think I'm trying to do that.  Keep up the good posts.  Thanks.
Cheers ,
Red

[Talon]

I thought that was what I said??  It sound like a personal thing! Like I said there is no bottom line, people will debate certain issues forever and there's no right or wrong, that's how you get good information, by looking at what everyone has to say and making your own choice. What makes you happy is the correct decision, if you like it it's good!!! If it weren't for that there wouldn't be any sites like this everybody would be doing the same thing, that would be boring!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[VaEagle]

Some questions have been asked recently about pipe selection and I thought this might help with all the info and opinions in this thread.

[Muley]

Wow! What a thread. My bike is scheduled to arrive in a couple weeks, and I've been beating my head against the wall and the floor trying to make these same decisions. The dealer where I'm getting the bike is a small shop and doesn't have a DYNO, so I've visited every dealer within a 100 mile radius with  DYNO capability and talked with their DYNO folks. In doing that you can get as many different combinations and thoughts as you'll find in this thread. One guy says stay away from VH terrible warranty, another says we won't even sale RH because of warrant issues use the VH they are great.

So where does that leave me? Moving careful around the the wife, I won't even mention CVO, VH, RH, SERT while she's in the kitchen near the knives.

What I think I'll do this week is, A: VH Headers TD, B: Suppertrapp Slip Ons, C: SERT with a DYNO TUNE. My only question right now is, does the SERT have standard map that will work with these components until I get enough miles to do the DYNO, or wait until the 1,000 mile service and have it all done at once? Then wear out a set of tires and go from there.

[Talon]

I've thrown this out there several times, a comparison between stock head pipes with V&H slipons, and RH true duels. I agree that 2:1 is going to give you the best all around performance, if you don't care about the duel look. But for the range where most people run their baggers, the stock pipe out performs the true duels. As for looks, the true duels do look better. For people talking about heat, have the stock pipe ceramic coated. Thats my opinion.

[Texas 103]

Wow! What a thread. My bike is scheduled to arrive in a couple weeks, and I've been beating my head against the wall and the floor trying to make these same decisions. The dealer where I'm getting the bike is a small shop and doesn't have a DYNO, so I've visited every dealer within a 100 mile radius with  DYNO capability and talked with their DYNO folks. In doing that you can get as many different combinations and thoughts as you'll find in this thread. One guy says stay away from VH terrible warranty, another says we won't even sale RH because of warrant issues use the VH they are great.

So where does that leave me? Moving careful around the the wife, I won't even mention CVO, VH, RH, SERT while she's in the kitchen near the knives.

What I think I'll do this week is, A: VH Headers TD, B: Suppertrapp Slip Ons, C: SERT with a DYNO TUNE. My only question right now is, does the SERT have standard map that will work with these components until I get enough miles to do the DYNO, or wait until the 1,000 mile service and have it all done at once? Then wear out a set of tires and go from there.

I went to a Basanni Power Curve and Supertrapp Supermegs with 20 Discs, just the right sound...Really hits hard  between 2-4 k haven't dyno'd yet getting ready to install a 50MM T.B then Tune with DTT Twin Scan.  then will see what it makes in power. Will have them ceramic coated to deal with the heat issue on the power curve rear pipe . Overall love the sound and power>>> Greg