i have a 03 soft tail deuce i am thinking about putting cams and a power commander and all the hop ups that go with it looking for advice and opinions

 

build it, theres lots of thread in the archives about this. 95 or 97'' get cams for where your looking for the hp/torque, headwork, bigger throttle body. its not hard just costs money, how fast do you want to go?

 

Huff it!!

 

i want to get out of my own way but don't want to kill myself road rice burners forever. this is my first Harley and its my baby i think if you work on your own bike it gives you more pride in your ride. i want to do a little at the time so my wife doesn't make me move in with it I'm looking for a starting point

 

you are on the right track. Does it have a Stg I breather kit and decent pipes? You can get a good kick if that hasn't been done. Cams will definitely make a difference, but picking out the right ones can be a daunting task. You should consider how you plan on riding and what you want--lotta 2-up riding or just you mostly, stump pulling low end torque, racing from stop light to stop light, little more umph through the whole band, do you want to tackle redoing your heads with depending on your cam selection etc? There are cams to suit the whole range of riding styles and you have to figure how you want. Then after that there will still be some pretty strong opinions on which ones are the best. Like HarleyCharlie says, there is a ton of advice on this forum, you just have to sort through it all.

 

Keeping under the radar (so the wife won't notice) is going to be the hard part. The rest is just money and time. Do you have an ultimate goal in mind? You can built toward that goal but doing over time can get more expensive if you have to undo and redo work.

 

i ride alone most of the time other than a quick ride to the pub with the old lady no racing but don't want to get off and push to keep up with the pack. everything is pretty much stock as far as the motor goes other than some chrome. my goal is to get as much horse power as i can with out taking a second mortgage on my house. i turned wrenches for years on cars so I'm capable to do the work. i know i need to change the pipes and intake so i thought i would do the internal stuff first. the pipes are vance and hines strate pipe the bike only has 1350 mile s on it so the motor should hold up to what i want to do and you are right a lot of choices for cams and i think that is going to be my hardest nut to crack. so info i can get is worth while

 

sounds like your pipes are done, make sure the previous owner didn't take the baffles out. If they are gone, get some. There are not quite as many baffle choices as there are cam choices but you need some back pressure. Straight pipes sound cool but will rob power. Get a breather kit, again a few choices but it should be done as well. If it's carbed, get the right jets for the intake/exhaust combo. If it is FI, well there is another choice between remap vs tuner--again a mind numbing task right there with choosing cams. If it were me, I'd make sure the pipes were squared away. It may already have a breather kit installed, if the previous owner did the pipes. Pull the breather cover and see if it has a round, usually K&N, filter and the backing plate matches the filter. If it's got an oval filter and there is still a rubber boot on the football, then its probably not changed. If so then you are probably good there. Ride it after you get that done and see what you think. If you are riding with other HD guys, most don't have much more than the pipes and breather done and they are not going to leave you behind. I wouldn't tackle the cams until that is done. After that, I would say get some mild cams--too much lift will require new valve springs at a minimum, but the heads are off so there is porting and polishing to be done while you are at it. All of that can easily turn into what you are trying to avoid. There is a widely accepted value on the lift, but I would be pulling it out of my *** to tell you off hand. Just like a car, there is a point of trading performance for long term reliabilty if you get carried away with a high performance cams and other stuff. You are in the Harley world now and its not all about speed anymore. If you friends are all riding big crotch rockets, your gonna need new friends.

 

i popped the football off it has an old round k&n air filter no baffles in the pipes but that's no big deal. so would it be better to get an air cleaner that is centered on the intake with a custom cover or is that just a fashion statement

 

I tried uploading a pic, but I don't seem to have any luck with those. If a pic shows up, that is the what a stage I breather looks like (cover removed). Anyway, sounds like the breather is squared away. The cover is cosmetic. The bike is gonna run like **** without the baffles. It is just that simple. You'll be wasting money on performance until you put some baffles back in it--well maybe not wasting, but certainly not getting all the bang for your buck. They aren't too expensive and you should be able to find some for your pipes. You can still get ones that will rattle windows blocks away, but these motors need some back pressure to perform well. Well the pic is there I just suck at photography.