I just imported a 2011 Forty-Eight from Seattle to BC. This is my first H-D so I didn't ask all the right questions before making the purchase. The previous owner installed the SE Heavy Breather and Thunderheader pipe. 2700 miles. The ride home was fine, occasional popping in decel, great power accelerating, the idling did seem weak at times. With no bolt-on tuner (PCV, FuelPak, etc...) I am concerned that the 2700 miles could have run the engine too hot. Should I just buy a PCV, download the data from the ECM and see if it was tuned properly? Am I being overly concerned? Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated!

 

It sounds from the popping you describe that your bike has not been properly setup. You have a lot of options, but they depend on if you want to do this yourself, or get your bike tuned by a local shop. If you want to do it yourself, spend some time reading recent posts on here to get an idea of what you will be getting into. If you want support from a local shop talk to them first. There is no point taking advice on here from someone thousands of miles away (I live in the UK!) and finding no local shops will touch your bike because you have a tuner they have no experience of or refuse to recommend.

 

popping on decel indicates a rich mixture. You should pull your plugs and check them to see if they are brown or black. If they are brown thats good, if they are black, then your bike is running rich, probably from not being tuned for your heavy breather.

 

Good advice here. Just to add to Emperor's post, if the plugs are white, you're lean. Not saying you ARE lean, but it would suck for you to pull plugs, see them white, and have no clue what that means.

 

The popping probably means it is lean.

 

I am confused here. Does the popping indicate lean or rich??

 

I recommend getting it tuned on a dyno, or buy a self-tuner. You can diagnose with sparkplug color, but if you want to make it run perfect, under all conditions, and get optimum mileage and know you didn't leave 5-10rwhp on the table, a tuner is the way to go.

I disagree.

 

Decel popping is usually caused by a lean mixture.

 

the factory sets injected bikes to run lean = better fuel economy. a sucker and pipes will starve the bike for fuel- imo this means it needs to be set richer.
my fav (and its on my bike) is the tfi techlusion tuner. i can set several characteristics - even more adjustments than a carb has. after installing that bad boy, my bike's running temp is much cooler. i rarely see 200 degrees now, and used to be there every time i rode. more important than that, this bike runs better than perfect- if you twist your wrist you are outta here! the way it should be.

check it out here:
http://www.dobeckperformance.com/TFI/TFItechnology.asp


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Decel popping is caused by unburnt fuel burning in the exhaust. This can happen when you are so lean that the exhaust gases are so hot that they will burn the least little bit of fuel in the exhaust. It can also happen if you are NOT too lean and just happen to have the "correct AFR" in the exhaust chamber.

Since most people don't like decel popping (I happen to like it) they richen up their AFR far more than it needs to be for optimum performance. This will make the AFR in the exhaust chamber too rich to burn, resulting in no decel popping, just a lot of unburnt fuel going out the end of the pipe.

With the free flowing exhaust and air cleaner you have, you can put some X14iED's on your bike for $100. It will run better and cooler. That little slow speed stumble you have will be gone.