Bob over at Metric Thunder discusses this question on his blog. He gets questions like this all the time. Interestingly, he gets metric r...
Bob over at Metric Thunder discusses this question on his blog. He gets questions like this all the time. Interestingly, he gets metric riders wanting to know how to make their bike sound like a Harley.I guess you have to buy a Harley, to make it sound like a Harley.
If you're obsessed with finding right set up to make your metric bike sound like a Harley, then you'll probably save a lot of money just buying a Harley. This is because you could end up spending several thousand dollars trying to find the right set of pipes, slip on's, baffles, H/C pistons, ignition system, etc.
My first set of aftermarket pipes were a set of 3 inch Hard Kromes, the Staggered Equalizers. They were like $500.00. I also got an aftermarket air box at the same time, and had the whole thing tuned on a Dynometer. I paid something like $800.00 for the whole thing.
It turned out the pipes were really loud. For awhile I liked it because it was better than the nearly silent stock pipes. But after several months, it became really obnoxious, and I ended up hating the pipes.
They also spewed out a lot of "blatty" sound on deceleration. They had baffles in them, but with the pipes being 3 inches wide, the baffles really didn't do much to mute the sound.
I ended up buying the Vance & Hines Powershots. They're not quite as loud as the HKs, but sound much nicer. A little more rumble to them, and no "blatty" on decel. However, the chrome job on the V&H pipes sucks. With about a year of having these pipes, the chrome is peeling off.
If you don't ride often, and ride only to hit the bar, then you might appreciate loud pipes. If you do a lot of riding, you're going to find a mellower pipe much more enjoyable.
