I'm not one who particularly cares for loud bikes (I like the quiet stock exhaust on the XS), but if you want to make any serious power with a Harley, that's what it takes. But few HD owners select on the basis of power gains or losses, most just want the 'sound' or a style, so many don't even see any gain except in racket. Loud pipes by themselves don't offer anything (and sometimes hurt the low end), you need to open up the intake too and rejet. As far as setting the float height. Turn the carbs upside down and get yourself a nice micrometer. They aren't spendy at all. I bought one for maybe five bucks. Set the micrometer at the height you want all your floats. Then with the gaskets off, bend the tab in the middle up or down to set each height of the float. If they are wayyy outa wack. Push the high one down and pull the low one up gently so you don't snap the float. Then try to set each float (right and left) to the same consistent height using the tab in the middle and a tiny screw driver. You will know which way to bend after the first one. It goes relatively quickly after you get the hang of it. Then with a bread tie...pull of the paper and use the wire to bench sync the carbs. Put the bread tie wire in the butterfly and adjust the sync screw till you get a little bit of resistance on the wire and move to each carb repeating the process. The #3 carb is adjusted by the main idle screw either at the top on early carbs (78-79) or on the bottom on late model carbs (80-81). Once you have each butterfly set to the bread tie wire your carbs will be relatively in sync(It will run OK with them bench sync'd). You can either by a sync tool (I bought a SyncPro off ebay for about $70-80) OR you can take them to a shop and have them sync'd to the bike while they are on for about the same price. The tool can be used later so it is probably the best option. A lot of Guru's will tell you to do the leak test while the carbs are off to make sure you don't have to remove them again. And check the float height with a make-shift apparatus of tubes and T's. There are threads discussing and showing how to do each. Just search for checking float height while carbs are off. Both are done with the gas lines hooked up and don't take long although I did neither. The more important one however is the float height check. You want them all the same.
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