Need some help figuring out what's going on with my bike.

2012 Seventy-two with cocktail shaker slip ons, mreed air cleaner, and xieds.

I put on the slip ons and rode all weekend, was looking to put on the mreed filter and was trying to figure out which xieds would work best. Decided to pull the plugs and see what they looked like and they were solid white. This was with about 300 miles on the bike. I decided to order the xieds from dk custom to bump the AFR to 13.8. When they showed up I installed them along with the mreed filter and have since put 150 miles on the bike. I decided to pull the plugs tonight after I got done riding and they look exactly the same, still solid white.

What do I need to do?

I just installed a oil temp dipstick and oil temp is about 220 after riding for about 2 hours. Here is a pic of the rear cylinders plug.

 

Yea that looks pretty damn white, when I replaced mine, my spark plugs were pinkish which is good I guess lol. I also noticed that the rear one is darker. I dont know how changing the spark plugs is suppose to change your AFR at all, that doesn't make sense to me. But it deff looks like your running lean. Did you notice that the bikes performance was better after you installed them? Because if you didn't, then they probably didn't do anything to you AFR. You might want to consider getting it tuned or mapped or whatever you call it with fuel injected bikes.... ALSO, check the spacing of the spark plug... For a 2004 sporstster xl1200 custom, its .038INS to .044ins (I think), check your manual.. Bend the mental "bridge" if you need to adjust it with very small amounts of pressure

 

I didn't change the plugs, these are still the stock plugs. I noticed the bike does seem to run better at cruising with the xieds. But with the plugs still looking that white I'm a bit worried about it hurting the motor.

 

If the throttle response seems delayed (when u quickly rev it) or your engine is hotter (more tickling/picking sounds coming from the metal when your done riding) or your getting very good mileage compared to before then your bike is running lean and you have to get your AFR higher. The only damage you'll get to your engine is that its running hotter

 

You have to remember that the Xieds are only changing your closed loop AFR cells. they are not doing anything to your afr when you are running in open loop.

 

Open loop is already rich, so it doesn't matter for the XiEDs.

Those plugs are fine. You can NOT tell the mixture by looking at the porcelain. This ain't the '70s anymore. Gasoline is much cleaner and so are the engines. If the porcelain were brown, you would be looking at very rich running conditions or serious oil consumption issues.

Also, specks or shiny material on the porcelain is an indicator of detonation, which is very bad.

The base ring is where you need to look, and yours looks fine. If it is very gray, then you're getting close to lean, and if it is fluffy and sooty then it's too rich. Yours is dark, but doesn't have deposits, which is exactly where you want it.

This website is a much better comparison of what a plug should look like. As you can see, yours is normal.

 

10% ethonal, oh yea waay cleaner than no additives.

 

Here is another link to a different spark plug chart. This one brakes it down event further. But, as Scuba10jdl said, it looks good to me. Yes a little lean but not in the bad zone.

http://www.dansmc.com/spark_plugs/sp...s_catalog.html

 

Actually, if you read some studies, up to 10% ethanol is helpful in cleaning the fuel system and engine. You ever seen an alcohol racer? It's clean as hell inside.

Also, modern fuel suppliers each have their own version of additives in gasoline that is effective at cleaning deposits and other engine gunk. So yes, modern gasoline is far and away much cleaner than it was 20+ years ago.

Be careful using that chart. It's outdated (like 30 years old) like I was talking about. It may work for my '86 Kawasaki, but you try and match your plugs on the Harley to that chart and you're going to end up with a messed up mixture.

 

I dont kn where you get this information from because I have read many mechanics say that most of the problems that occur are caused by ethonal.. Ethanol and alcohol are different, so im not sure what a alcohol racer has to do with anything