My plug's grayer than tan, but a little extra fuel, to my knowledge, is better than being a little short on fuel.  When it was spitting out tan plugs, it was bogging in the throttle...and this is probably caused by my straight pipe...it's not some engineered-for-torque masterpiece that cost me two hundred bucks.  I welded a piece of scrap exhaust pipe from a car on there, welded on a bracket with two bolts to mount 'er up, and flat-blacked it in header paint.  It turns out, so I would have no way of knowing if anything is blackening, but I suspect if I stuck my finger up there, it'd come out pretty sooty.

I'm not knocking your way...your way is definitely right...get a proper exhaust and filter, jet it correctly after a few runs.  I'm with you.  My gas mileage hasn't changed since the re-jetting, so it can't be that awful, I guess.  

I'm just a good ol' boy, doing things the good ol' boy way.  If this was a beautiful Ducati or a forty-something Panhead, sure, I'd take some time and spend some money.  But the reality is that I drive a chopped up pile of ratrod, and it does just fine.

And the ten inch blue flame that roars out of that sucker at night between shifts is pretty badass lookin'.

I gotta lighten up my air cut valve spring...55 pilot didn't help jack.

Hell, Billy wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:11:

Well 1st tank driven very aggressive incl top-end run 46mpg. I'll try to drive more sane on my second tank but that'll be hard to do.

Stock 2000 Savage...except air filter.  85 on the flat. Still got a lil throttle but sounds like (and feels like) she has had enough........  I wanna push her a bit more but i like to ride more than i like to mechanic.