Tweet
Well, I finally got around to cutting the stock mufflers off of my 1980 G. When I bought this bike in 2001 or so, there one good size hole on the right hand side muffler. At the time, I just patched the hole by riveting a sheet of aluminum over the hole with a liberal coating of RTV around the edges. This had all of the exhaust gases heading out the rear, but was not the prettiest thing in the world. I always intended to find a more palatable solution, but because this seemed to be working, it stayed like this for many years. The other day, I pulled the bike out and started her up and, in the cold, I noticed exhaust coming out from various places under the mufflers. Upon closer inspection, there were probably ten or so dime sized holes in the mufflers.
Being a typical frugal XS11 owner I wanted to spend the least amount of money possible. I had read the tech tip about the Harley fatboy mufflers and thought that this was probably a good place to start. However, with no pictures to go by, I was a little confused about to which mufflers the tip was referring. I poked around ebay and found plenty of fatboy mufflers, but there were many different styles, with different mounting brackets and some had crossover ports and some did not. I decided to do a search for fatboy mufflers here and came up with a number of posts that mentioned that people had used them before, but not much more details as to the correct mufflers to use. So I went to the local Harley dealer and they let me poke around through the very large pile of takeoffs sitting in the corner waiting to go into the dumpster. Get this, as I’m looking at this very large pile, the guy in the service department says “you should have come in last week, because we just threw out a couple pallets of mufflers.” This leads me to assume that there is no real shortage of basically brand new mufflers available to us. I really did not want to get the stock exhaust cut up and find that I had brought home the wrong kind of mufflers, so I grabbed a few sets that looked promising. Of the bunch, the following looked like possibilities:
’07 Softail - which basically had two welded on nuts as the mounting points. These looked the most promising as they were closest to the stock set up and if nothing else, they looked the most universal. These are what I ended up using.
They had a set of older softail mufflers from the early nineties that had two welded on mounting tabs on each muffler. I grabbed these because they looked to be the closest thing I could find to the description in the fatboy tech tip, but they did not really match up to the stock bracket at all so they must not be the right ones. All of the mufflers from around time the tech tip was probably written (00-06) had crossover ports that would have to be welded shut so I figured these were probably close.
I also had a set of touring mufflers at the house from a roadking that would look real neat, but these would have needed an extra length of pipe to get the wide parts to clear the foot peg brackets and because the mounting points are at the rear of the mufflers, would have needed a mounting point further back than anything on my bike. I still have these, because if I ever put the saddlebags back on, I think it would pretty easy to rig mounts that attach to the saddlebag frames and I think the extra length of the touring mufflers would be nice to get the exhaust gases to clear the bags. It also looks like you might lose the centerstand with the roadking mufflers because they are so wide.
I was a little nervous about taking off the exhaust flange nuts, because everytime I can remember doing it for the first time on other bikes that are close to thirty years old, at least one exhaust stud snaps off and a small job turns into a week long headache of drilling out the broken stud. Amazingly, all of the nuts came right off with a very small amount of effort. I ended up cutting the stock exhaust right in front of the crossover pipe just before the pipes started the muffler flare. The stubs that were left were just about the perfect fit for the 1 ¾ openings of the Harley pipes. It was a very tight fit, but with a little grease and a little pushing, they went right on. I put the headers back on and did a little measuring.
I decided to use the ’07 softail mufflers – Harley Model # 65842-07 because they tucked up real nice and did not require any exhaust adapters. The only thing that I needed to make was a small bracket to mate the rearmost bracket mount on the mufflers to the rubber mounted muffler hanger on the foot peg bracket. They terminate just behind the rear axle, but are slender enough that they do not interfere with removing the axle like in the stock setup. All in all, the whole thing could be done in less than an hour.
The results
The sound is roughly the same decibel level as the stockers with a slightly different tone. I’m not a real good judge, but they may be just a hair louder, but it’s close enough that I can’t really tell for sure. I think that they also look really good, good enough that if you were not familiar with XS11s, you would more than likely think they were stock. I did lose the crossover, but as far as seat of the pants performance goes, I can’t tell any difference at all.
The biggest difference that I did find was that the really obnoxious vibrations that have been present between 3000 and 3500 RPMs since I bought the bike are now gone. I guess the guts of the stock mufflers had come loose at some point and the harmonics at that RPM level really shook the sh*t out of everything. When you shake the stock mufflers that I cut off, you can hear a lot of stuff rattling around inside both of them. I now have to get used to riding in that RPM range again. I used to either shift prior to getting to 3000 or push through and keep the revs above this range. Now it pulls smoothly through to redline.
I do still notice a slight bit of popping on deceleration that has always been present but I had hoped was attributable to the holes in the stock mufflers. Some of this might be due to the fact that I reused the old exhaust gaskets when I put the headers back on. I have also heard that the lack of crossover can contribute to slight popping. It really is not noticeable unless I am using quite a bit of engine braking and even then it is still very subtle. I have not touched the jetting at all but plan to keep an eye on the plugs to make sure that nothing needs tweaking.
Oh yeah, the other small glitch that I ran into, was that the inside of the part that you step on to raise the bike onto the centerstand just barely grazes the outside of the left muffler when you put it up and down. Still very usable, but to avoid the possibility of scratching up the new muffler, I find that I have to slightly push the muffler towards the bike a bit while I raise or lower the center stand. I might be able to just bend the rear muffler brackets in a bit to hold the mufflers in a bit closer to the bike, but since I only use the centerstand for maintenance, it didn’t really seem worth the time. Even if they get a bit scratched, you can always get another set of mufflers for nothing, so not really a big deal. The only other place things were tight, was where the pivot bolt for the centerstand came out right in the same place as the muffler clamp. There was plenty of room to get the clamps on, but the muffler clamp bolts had to be on the bottom of the exhaust instead of being tucked up behind the exhaust as I would have wanted. You could probably just cut the exhaust pipes an inch shorter to move this junction forward to clear of the centerstand pivot bolt, but again not really that big of a deal to me.
So, the total cost came to around $1.45 for some stainless ¼” bolts and washers that attached the homemade bracket to the muffler. Not bad! I have seen quite a bit of the ’07-’08 softail mufflers on ebay ending at $20 with no bids, so even if you can’t get them free from a Harley dealer, the total outlay, with shipping, shouldn’t be more than $40 or so.
I took few pictures to get a visual, but my digital camera is not available right now, so I had to use the still mode on my camcorder and without a flash in my dimly lit garage, the pictures leave a bit to be desired. I plan to get some better pictures posted as soon as I have my camera handy and I can get the bike out in the sun.
Stock Mufflers Removed
'07 Harley Softail Mufflers - 65842-07 (Image swiped from ebay)
Side View
Rear View
Front View
Rear Side
Being a typical frugal XS11 owner I wanted to spend the least amount of money possible. I had read the tech tip about the Harley fatboy mufflers and thought that this was probably a good place to start. However, with no pictures to go by, I was a little confused about to which mufflers the tip was referring. I poked around ebay and found plenty of fatboy mufflers, but there were many different styles, with different mounting brackets and some had crossover ports and some did not. I decided to do a search for fatboy mufflers here and came up with a number of posts that mentioned that people had used them before, but not much more details as to the correct mufflers to use. So I went to the local Harley dealer and they let me poke around through the very large pile of takeoffs sitting in the corner waiting to go into the dumpster. Get this, as I’m looking at this very large pile, the guy in the service department says “you should have come in last week, because we just threw out a couple pallets of mufflers.” This leads me to assume that there is no real shortage of basically brand new mufflers available to us. I really did not want to get the stock exhaust cut up and find that I had brought home the wrong kind of mufflers, so I grabbed a few sets that looked promising. Of the bunch, the following looked like possibilities:
’07 Softail - which basically had two welded on nuts as the mounting points. These looked the most promising as they were closest to the stock set up and if nothing else, they looked the most universal. These are what I ended up using.
They had a set of older softail mufflers from the early nineties that had two welded on mounting tabs on each muffler. I grabbed these because they looked to be the closest thing I could find to the description in the fatboy tech tip, but they did not really match up to the stock bracket at all so they must not be the right ones. All of the mufflers from around time the tech tip was probably written (00-06) had crossover ports that would have to be welded shut so I figured these were probably close.
I also had a set of touring mufflers at the house from a roadking that would look real neat, but these would have needed an extra length of pipe to get the wide parts to clear the foot peg brackets and because the mounting points are at the rear of the mufflers, would have needed a mounting point further back than anything on my bike. I still have these, because if I ever put the saddlebags back on, I think it would pretty easy to rig mounts that attach to the saddlebag frames and I think the extra length of the touring mufflers would be nice to get the exhaust gases to clear the bags. It also looks like you might lose the centerstand with the roadking mufflers because they are so wide.
I was a little nervous about taking off the exhaust flange nuts, because everytime I can remember doing it for the first time on other bikes that are close to thirty years old, at least one exhaust stud snaps off and a small job turns into a week long headache of drilling out the broken stud. Amazingly, all of the nuts came right off with a very small amount of effort. I ended up cutting the stock exhaust right in front of the crossover pipe just before the pipes started the muffler flare. The stubs that were left were just about the perfect fit for the 1 ¾ openings of the Harley pipes. It was a very tight fit, but with a little grease and a little pushing, they went right on. I put the headers back on and did a little measuring.
I decided to use the ’07 softail mufflers – Harley Model # 65842-07 because they tucked up real nice and did not require any exhaust adapters. The only thing that I needed to make was a small bracket to mate the rearmost bracket mount on the mufflers to the rubber mounted muffler hanger on the foot peg bracket. They terminate just behind the rear axle, but are slender enough that they do not interfere with removing the axle like in the stock setup. All in all, the whole thing could be done in less than an hour.
The results
The sound is roughly the same decibel level as the stockers with a slightly different tone. I’m not a real good judge, but they may be just a hair louder, but it’s close enough that I can’t really tell for sure. I think that they also look really good, good enough that if you were not familiar with XS11s, you would more than likely think they were stock. I did lose the crossover, but as far as seat of the pants performance goes, I can’t tell any difference at all.
The biggest difference that I did find was that the really obnoxious vibrations that have been present between 3000 and 3500 RPMs since I bought the bike are now gone. I guess the guts of the stock mufflers had come loose at some point and the harmonics at that RPM level really shook the sh*t out of everything. When you shake the stock mufflers that I cut off, you can hear a lot of stuff rattling around inside both of them. I now have to get used to riding in that RPM range again. I used to either shift prior to getting to 3000 or push through and keep the revs above this range. Now it pulls smoothly through to redline.
I do still notice a slight bit of popping on deceleration that has always been present but I had hoped was attributable to the holes in the stock mufflers. Some of this might be due to the fact that I reused the old exhaust gaskets when I put the headers back on. I have also heard that the lack of crossover can contribute to slight popping. It really is not noticeable unless I am using quite a bit of engine braking and even then it is still very subtle. I have not touched the jetting at all but plan to keep an eye on the plugs to make sure that nothing needs tweaking.
Oh yeah, the other small glitch that I ran into, was that the inside of the part that you step on to raise the bike onto the centerstand just barely grazes the outside of the left muffler when you put it up and down. Still very usable, but to avoid the possibility of scratching up the new muffler, I find that I have to slightly push the muffler towards the bike a bit while I raise or lower the center stand. I might be able to just bend the rear muffler brackets in a bit to hold the mufflers in a bit closer to the bike, but since I only use the centerstand for maintenance, it didn’t really seem worth the time. Even if they get a bit scratched, you can always get another set of mufflers for nothing, so not really a big deal. The only other place things were tight, was where the pivot bolt for the centerstand came out right in the same place as the muffler clamp. There was plenty of room to get the clamps on, but the muffler clamp bolts had to be on the bottom of the exhaust instead of being tucked up behind the exhaust as I would have wanted. You could probably just cut the exhaust pipes an inch shorter to move this junction forward to clear of the centerstand pivot bolt, but again not really that big of a deal to me.
So, the total cost came to around $1.45 for some stainless ¼” bolts and washers that attached the homemade bracket to the muffler. Not bad! I have seen quite a bit of the ’07-’08 softail mufflers on ebay ending at $20 with no bids, so even if you can’t get them free from a Harley dealer, the total outlay, with shipping, shouldn’t be more than $40 or so.
I took few pictures to get a visual, but my digital camera is not available right now, so I had to use the still mode on my camcorder and without a flash in my dimly lit garage, the pictures leave a bit to be desired. I plan to get some better pictures posted as soon as I have my camera handy and I can get the bike out in the sun.
Stock Mufflers Removed
'07 Harley Softail Mufflers - 65842-07 (Image swiped from ebay)
Side View
Rear View
Front View
Rear Side
Comment