Congrats on the new bike. Good idea to replace the 15 year old tires. I wouldn't ride it around the block with those.

 

Thanks! I just dropped the wheels off at a bike dealer to have Michelins installed. You should have seen the brake fluid, is had turned green looked like swamp water. The original owner died of a heart attack 2 days after he purchased the bike and it sat in his garage for 10 years before his wife sold it, it only had 18 miles on it when it was purchased by the second owner.

 

I'm going to install the SS pipe to see if it stops the popping, if not, I'll shop around for a set of stock pipes.

 

I hope so! The second owner was indeed from that crowd. I'm not a big fan of loud bikes.

 

It still has the stock air filter, and has no tuner under the seat.

 

I’ve got a set of stock pipes from an ‘05 FXST with mufflers and heat shields kicking around in the shop, if you decide to go that route they are yours for the cost of the ride. I had planned to take them to a buddy for scrap, but if you can use them you can have them.

 

Thanks for the offer, I live in Kentucky, too far of a trip for an old fart like me. I pulled off the Bassani pipe and found that it was installed with out gaskets. I ordered new gaskets and retaining rings, maybe if I'm lucky it might just cure my problem.

 

I'm sure you're right but just in case; there was a member year, two, three or so and he thought there were no exhaust gaskets when he took off his pipe, he looked at it again and found that the old gaskets were packed in so tightly that it looked like they weren't there. He took a little pointy tool and removed them.

Cheers

 

I can second this, I nearly did it. The gaskets are some sort of layered metal so they look very uh, metallic. Plus they fit right into the seat there perfectly flush so they really do disappear. I used a pick as well. I also found that the tool for driving the neck bearings fits these gaskets perfectly and let me drive it in clean and square without deforming it in any way.

 

I didn't know that it had exhaust gaskets until I started watching Doc Harleys Youtube videos. I looked in each exhaust port with a flashlight for the gaskets, didn't find any I even looked around and under the bike thinking that maybe they fell out when I pulled off the pipe. I watched a video on how to make a tool to install the gaskets.