Sorry about another head pipe thread.

However after several hours of searching my efforts were to no avail.

Will decanting the stock head pipe reduce enough heat to noticeably increase comfort for the passenger and is there a significant increase in the amount of noise that will be produced by doing so?

This is for our 2012 UC that my wife is uncomfortable with the heat on her leg.



Thanks so much,

Jake

 

Along with a proper tune? Yes, it will reduce felt heat off the exhaust. The cat is basically a huge heat sink. Has to be to work.

 

HELL YEAH! Lol. Assuming you mean "de-catting"?

 

Jake, is your bike stock? A lean running engine will generate excess heat at the catalytic converter. Sometimes just tuning your bike to run a bit richer will reduce the heat. Are you feeling feeling the heat from the headers when riding? Does your bike have an oil cooler installed?

 

Yes it will run a bit cooler. Much more noticeably cooler if you put a tuner on the bike. Even greater heat reductions if you wrap the pipe with fiberglass wrap under the heat shields.

 

It does in the area of the CAT. It does not reduce the engine heat. CAT works by getting very hot, that heat radiates to the surrounding area. No way on earth the engine runs cooler by removing the CAT. Once again it will reduce felt heat in the area. No adding a little fuel does not make a real world difference just makes you think it does.

 

A heat sink. That makes sense. You would have thought that they would have placed it somewhere else that would have prevented this issue.

Decanting means "emptying".

Yes the bike is stock now, however I have the components to do a stage one upgrade. That is why I'm asking these questions to find out if this would be a good time to do this. Yes there is a lot of heat coming from the head pipe. I am not sure if it has an oil cooler. I will check to see if it does.

Wrapping the head pipe is another great idea. Maybe wrapping the pipe and adding the a oil cooler would reduce the heat enough to remedy the issue.

Thank you all very much for your help. I didn't want to make this bike any louder than I had to as we use this bike for touring. Mostly at highway speeds.

 

Yes, removing the cat will make your bike quite a bit louder and raspier.
No, it will not decrease the amount of heat felt while riding down the road.
It may, decrease the amount of heat felt while in stop and go traffic but only in the area directly above the cat.
Richening up the mixture makes the cat run hotter, the cat reacts to unburned hydrocarbons in the exhaust.
If the bike is running lean, there will normally not be a lot of unburned fuel in the exhaust, as the mixture is richened
the cat will start to run hotter and could even start to glow red.
I removed the cat on my 2016 Road KIng and there was more noise, no more power, no less heat and maybe it didn't quite run as well.
There is a stock head pipe with a cat back on my bike now.

 

You can decat the header and install a FP3 along with your stage one and your bike will run cooler and better at minimal cost. It will not outperform a bike with headers and stage one and a dyno tune, but it will run good at minimal costs.

 

Thank you for this answer. That was my biggest concern.

I have purchased a set of SE slip-ons, SS breather system and a power vision. My goal is just to get the most out of the bike as with everything that we use for touring we're pushing the 1800lb range. Hopefully that will do the job.