continuation of above response:
I'm glad now, since I saw a full bike photo with the Power Duals, and I don't really like the looks of them as well as the D&D's. The D&D pipes are significantly more money, especially if you are going to add the ghost pipe to the left side. I paid $781 for the 2 into 1 and another $305 for the ghost pipe. The Power Duals are $519.95 list and the Fullsac baffles will cost you anywhere from $120 to $140, depending on where they have to be shipped to.
Again, I really liked the Fullsac's and the bike ran well, but not as well as it does now. But, keep in mind that I still had half of the catalytic converter in the header pipe when I was running the Fullsac's. So, I don't know if I gained performance from the pipes or just the lack of having any catalytic converter in the way anymore.
If I were starting over again fresh, what route would I take, knowing everything that I know now? I would have taken my stock header pipes to my friend and removed the cats completely, and put the Fullsac's baffles in, and I would have been very pleased with my bike. I wouldn't have known whether the D&D would perform better or not, and I probably wouldn't have given it another thought. When I drilled the cat out, I thought that was all there was. I found out later that I only got half of it, and all the posts finally got to me and I wasn't sure what to do, and I couldn't live with it, thinking that 5" of catalytic converter may be preventing a big bunch of extra power, so I had to make some change.
Another thing to consider is tuning the bike. It doesn't matter what exhaust system or anything else you do to your bike...it won't run well if it's not tuned properly. I swapped bikes for a few miles with a friend of mine, that also has a SE Ultra. He has the same pipes as me, an upgraded cam, ported heads, and some other things, and his bike ran like crap. I knew within 30 seconds or less that his bike couldn't hang with mine. He needs it tuned and I've been bugging him every day to get in touch with the shop and have them do it right. I started from a dead stop on a long uphill stretch and flew through the gears to just over 100 mph and then realized I still had 6th gear left to go. On his bike, I seriously doubt that he would be able make that stretch and exceed 70 mph. His bike just starts bogging down once it hits 60 mph. All I am saying is that you really need to get it dyno tuned by someone that knows what they are doing.
One more thing that makes my comparison of partial cat removal and Fullsac's vs D&D Fat Cats is this. When I drilled the cat and installed the Fullsac's, I had the shop put a base map in the bike to run until I had 1000 miles and the full dyno. The base map likely didn't have the bike running at peak performance with the mods already done, so performance wise, I'm really comparing apples and oranges. I had the Fullsac's with just a base map, and now I have the D&D's with a full dyno tune. Maybe the full tune would have given me the same performance with the Fullsac's.
The one thing that I did rule out as far as exhausts go was a true dual system. For performance, from best to worst, you have 2 into 1, then 2 into 1 into 2 (like the stock sytem), and then in last place are the true duals. I just can't see spending extra money to put a system on that performs worse than stock.
Well, you probably didn't expect this long of an answer, but don't worry...I type quite well. I don't know if I gave you enough to make any concrete decisions, but probably enough to allow you to make your own judgement call. It's much cheaper to alter the stock headers and get the Fullsac's and that may very well give you the perfect balance of sound, money, and performance. At the opposite end, you can put a lot of money into D&D's and surely end up loud, expensive, and performing probably the best. You may just want to go on looks alone, or sound, or money, but in the end I don't think you will find a real seat of the pants difference no matter what system you choose. They will all do the trick. It still boils down to personal preferences. Hope I helped...and welcome to the forum. Hope to see some posts showing what you end up doing.
Dave
Author
Topic: fulsac exhaust (Read 9919 times)