Need help with this noise I’m hearing. Since I installed my 2-1 cobra I get this sound that seem like metal on metal. it’s only on acceleration and sounds like the heat shields are loose, but I uninstalled everything and re installed and made sure everything was tight and still the same noise. I noticed we’re the rear brake bar and the bracket for the exhaust were close enough to chatter and placed a price of foam and taped around to prevent metal on metal and still same sound. I torqued all mounting bolts and looked at very spot were it will be possible to get some metal on metal chatter whether when the motor jumps from vibration and still have the same sound. The motor is fine I just can’t get rid of this annoying sound. I would record a sound but it only happens at 30+ while accelerating so to dangerous. This sound only came after the install of the full exam prior install had no noise.
Any thoughts on anything else I can check. The bike is fine and runs great just that annoying sound.
Any suggestions will be great.

 

Model & Year of motorcycle?

 

Can you remove the heat shield and try it out without it installed? At least that will tell you if its the heat shield or not. Also check the baffle it has one.

 

Heat shields, mufflers loose, tighten everything. You'll find it.

 

Make sure you didn't over tighten a heat shield and break the little bracket.

 

Loose tank bolts.

John

 

Thanks for all the response. I’ve re-tighten bracket bolts tank bolt 2 bolt from motor to pipes on both sides
Heat shield straps and still no luck. The sound seems to be coming from the right passenger peg area we’re the muffler is. I even removed the pass pegs. You all think it could be the chain adjustment which is on the left side maybe sound is vibrating to the right side?

 

Ahhh the joys of tracing out rattles and other strange noises.

I had a knock that was a worn primary drive pulley, some clangs that were worn out tank grommets, a few rattles that were probably my dental fillings, and just yesterday I noticed a new rattle that took me about five minutes to trace out. My home made phone mount.

Good luck, keep after it. Check, check, and check again. Let us know.

 

Try the gas cap. When I first got my bike, used, I had the same issue. Kept touching stuff as much as I safely could while riding. Finally the gas cap, and yay! To fix it I googled sportster gas cap rattling. They will show ya how to do it better than I can explain.

 

As mention in post 2, did you remove the heat shields and test ride?

Chasing rattles...can be trying.
Maybe take a rubber mallet and "hit" the bike's solid pieces, like the frame, engine, footpeg brackets etc. in an effort to find what is rattling?

Only solid lead is the rattle did not exist before your exhaust pipe install.
Not sure if a loose part would only rattle during acceleration (which leads to internal motor noise) as I would think it would rattle at idle and deacceleration also, so maybe not a solid lead.

Did you remove the gas tank, maybe something under the tank?
Maybe Murphy's Law with something unrelated to the exhaust install has became loose, use the manual and do a critical fastener torque check? (Gas Cap is a good example of Murphy's Law.)

Good luck.