Starting the mods on the '02 Savage I bought last Friday, and while reading what all of you have done nearer sea level is valuable, I live at 6,000 plus feet, and except for an occasional foray to Colorado, seldom ride where a motorcycle gets enough oxygen for sea level jetting.  This bike was bought for the former owner's wife, who rode it all of 300 miles in four years.  Either she rode it in the wrong gear with the choke on all the time, or the bike is really running rich for some reason, since the plug looks like the inside of the chimney on my wood stove.  
Problems I identified were the clamp on the intake boot between the carb and engine was loose and leaking, he had to buy a new battery to get it started, the air screw was set wrong, and the tires are weather-checked original equipment.
The question is - who has jetted one of these babies at elevation?  More than that, are the usual mods appropriate at 6,000 feet?  I have a Supertrapp arriving today, and a Raptor petcock and a new air filter somewhere in a UPS truck.  The carb is clean and in pieces on the table.  Given how much fun it is to shoehorn the carb off and back onto this bike, I'd like to do it as few times as possible.  So, is it a waste of time at this elevation to do the spacer mod?  With motocross and enduro bikes, I always had to raise the needle clip to lean the mid-range and lean the main jet to get them to run right, sometimes two spaces up on the needle and two main jet sizes smaller.  At elevation is the spacer mod and richer main jet going the wrong way, or will the Supertrapp and filter lean it enough  to compensate?  Looking at the spark plug has me a touch concerned, although lugging hell out of the bike in the wrong gear may have contributed to that.  Anyone got experience or an educated opinion on jetting a Savage at altitude?  I didn't see it on the site.

I'm across the state line from you and live at about 4500' so I too am cautious about re-jetting to sea level recommendations.

I am not a high-performance, get the last drop of potential out of it type of guy, but I won't allow for laziness either.

The previous owner of my bike chopped and hacked away at all the cosmetics of the bike but didn't touch the mechanics as far as I could tell other than changing out the air box to a different style air filter. When I got it, the first things I did were pull the plug off the air-mix screw and make some adjustments and hang a Dyna muff off the back. These two changes made enough difference to me to call it good.

I'm probably not much help, but just wanted to say what I've done at my elevation and I'm pleased with the results.  

Most we hear from the nose bleed crowd is the stock jetting is fine.

stock is 145 main jet.

Your reference to going 2 sizes smaller to get your dirt bike right is about right then, as I had to go 2 sizes bigger to plow thru this dense air down here.  

All these bikes are different. What I found that works may not work for you but it sounds as if you know what you're doing.
Here is how it went for me...
Bike with stock everything I was getting some mid range surging, poof at shutdown. Air mix was out about 2 turns

Installed after market open pipe (Dyna Power brand) with slight baffles. Still surging so I bought a #4 nylon spacer at ACE to replace the stock spacer. Fixed that...but still backfired on shutdown (louder probably becuz of the pipe)

Installed K&N drop in air filter. Top end seemed weak (don't know...it just felt that way) so I replaced the main with a 150 from Lancer's kit. That seemed to help (a little). Air screw still at between 2 to 2 1/2 depending on if I fiddled with it.

To try and get rid of the backfire I went with a 52.5 w/ bleed holes (I didn't want to go too big on the pilot). That pretty much did it for me. I sometimes ride up to 9500 ft and then I definately know I'm running rich so having the air mix screw where it is (2 1/2 turns out) allows me to screw it in and lean it up a bit when I'm climbing...
Hope that helps,

No clearance problems with the Pirelli. I'm light (145) but I've ridden 2-up with no problems also. It had the saddlebag brackets on it but I took them off (had no saddlebags!).
I think the bolts could possibly rub if you were using the brackets...

You may want to replace the crummy screws on the carb while you have it apart. I bought stainless allen head screws at ACE. It sure does help if you need to go back in there and change the spacer or jets.

That's kinda weird...seems like you wouldn't be running rich with a pilot that size!

I brought the bike home on a trailer, since it was cold and windy, so I don't have much riding experience to go on.  It was boggy coming off the bottom, and revved more slowly than I expected.  I wonder if the lady riding it had to keep it choked to keep idling, since the air screw was only about a turn out, idled it too much, or didn't shut the choke off while riding.  
No use speculating, I'm just going to add the Supertrapp and air filter, clean the carb thoroughly, replace the spark plug, adjust the valves, replace the stock pilot jet, leave the stock main, and reduce the needle spacer to half and see what happens.

HJH wrote on 03/11/11 at 08:26:32:



HJH,

I know this is late, but let my tell you about my experiences with altitude and my Savage (see my signature block for the specifics on my bike).

I bought the bike used when I lived in Houston.  It was a year old and only had about 60 miles on it.  It ran lean in Houston with a fair amount of after-firing.  I removed the  white space altogether (a mistake, I now know) and ended up too rich.  So, I popped the white spacer back in there and learned to live with the after-firing.

Fast forward a few years.  I moved to Colorado Springs (my house is at 6500' MSL).  The bike runs great here with the stock jetting and the OEM, unmodified white spacer installed.  Note that I'm running the OEM air filter and exhaust.  All I've done since I move here is to fiddle with the pilot screw some to tame down the pop on shutdown.....I've got THAT down to an intermittent fart.

No complaints!  I'm getting over 56 mpg in purely urban riding conditions, winter or summer.  Starts and runs great (it only needs half-"choke" for a cold start, and only for about the first minute)!

IHTH!