Pretty straight forward procedure. I did find that by drilling holes around the perimeter of the cat I was able to remove the material in one shot. I was amazed at the amount of restriction from the cat.

 

I'm real interested in this. Considering it myself. Any problems or performance issues? How much louder did it make your bike?

 

no performance issues or problems. and it did wake up the exhaust a little bit. it is still fairly quiet so i can run my radio with no issues, but it does have a decent bark when i hammer it.

for a small video of my bike with a nightstick (50 state legal) and no cat, look here:

http://home.earthlink.net/~skratches/nightstick.mpeg

 

Agreed

 

I'm confused, it appeared as if Thumper1 was the OP'er who performed the procedure and then skratch gave the follow-on response to a question, then Thumper1 agrees??

I'm no mechanic by any means but it would seem this procedure would require a tune because it had to open up the air flow by a significant amount. Regardless, I'm am amazed the damn thing could even run with that crap stuffed in there.

I have a couple questions, do all the new HD's come with cats now? What year did this start?

 

It's not significant, at stock power levels it really isn't hurting power output at all. Multiple people have posted dyno charts of before and after cat removal with the stock header, and the gains are within test to test variability (1-2hp). You'll pick up power with a correctly designed x-pipe or 2-1 header, though.

Edit: all touring bikes 2010 and later have the cat in the headpipe, 2009 had them for California markets only.

 

I was just confirming the results for CDA

 

Hey Thumper, Did you stick weld it back together? I think I want to do this too but I only have a stick welder available to me right now. I don't want to get into the mod and find out the welder is to hot for the job.

 

No biggie, thanks. How does this effect your warranty?

 

Mig welded the pipe, Ended up being on my lowest heat setting not to blow a hole in the pipe. Penetration was fine, used a mirror to check inside.

Really dont know, guess its no different than putting a complete aftermarket system on?