Don't forget to think about rain (if you ride in rain). If your filter is out where it could get wet (and trust me, a cone filter will get wet under the seat) it will suck in water. Little bits of water aren't horrible, they'll throw off your jetting for that ride but they'll get burned off in the engine making it inefficient but nothing too bad.

Unless you're like me and ride through a massive rainstorm into a puddle you thought was shallow but was really >6" deep. The combination of submerged tailpipe and massive influx of water into the carb killed my bike. Took a whole lot of starter fluid and new oil to get her going again.

As for smoothing out the air flow into the carb you can do a few things. One is a sufficiently long tube. Others are all ways of stabilizing or manipulating the air flow to be more fluid (for lack of a better word). There is something called a turbulator that fits between your engine and your carb (wrong side, i know, but this is just for show and tell) that adds a spin to the air to make it flow better. There are also "carb wings" which force the air to flow straight, and I *think* there was a post on here a while back about using straws (drinking straws!) in a honeycomb-like structure to accomplish the same thing.

Unfortunately I don't know if any (or all) of those intake addons have sound theory behind them, but if you've got an interest you can look them up. Might be snake oil, might be good improvements. who knows.

PVC is a great and cheap way of making intake "plumbing." cheap, air tight, comes in a number of fittings, has rubber counterparts that seal well, etc.

Keep in mind the goal of an air intake system is to provide a constant, consistent, smooth flow of air to your carb/engine. This means you don't want to have it affected by how you are moving. RAM air is great if you run at the same speed all the time, but we don't, and you don't want to be taking air from too close to your engine because as you sit that air will be hotter throwing off your jetting.

Lots of stuff to consider. Let us know what you end up doing or finding out.

I would be careful using PVC. To turn my carb out 90 degrees I used a PVC 90 and it actually melted coming out of the manifold. If you do use PVC, I'd recommend schedule 80 CPVC. Eventually, I just had my brother fab something out of steel.

Routy wrote on 08/16/12 at 16:04:25:




I mounted the battery on the shelf underneath i think its for california models. but anyways the battery slid out enough and some how the positive terminal shorted out against my swing arm! i though i had fried my electrical system on the bike but thank god thats not the case! anyways i got ahold of the ballistic customer service and they were AWESOME ive got a new battery on its i way for FREE.99    Ill be more carefull on the installation this time around and secure it with more then a couple zipties!  

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 08/20/12 at 06:50:41:




I'll check google right now about desgins and such!