Lemme first say i used the search and didnt find a situation just like mine so im starting a new thread.
I got a 99 dyna superglide with a screaming eagle air cleaner and something screaming eagle in the timing cover. when i first drove it home i didnt know what type of gas it took so i put 87 in which is when it started making a pop sound from the air cleaner and losing power for about a second. not knowing any better i drove till reserve and put in another tank of 87 and the popping increased and it began running real rough. after looking up the fuel type in the service manual i saw that it needed 91, so i syphoned out all but half a gallon of 87 and put in 93 because thats all they had. and as of right now its still popping and losing power and riding rough if i ride for under an hour or so. what can i do? heres a pic of the parts its got on it.

 

You could try a little bit of octane boost, I wouldn't start messing with any thing tuning wise until you have all of the 87 out of it.

 

Fuel is a good place to start, but won't cause a popping sound. 87 octane will ignite at a lower compression ratio. Roughly stated, as your piston is compressing the air/fuel mixture in the cylinder, 87 octane fuel will self-ignite before the piston reaches the top of its compression stroke (and before your spark plug has a chance to ignite the fuel at the right time). You will have a huge loss of power and will hear your engine make a "pinging" sound. Higher octane fuels won't ignite prematurely in high compression engines (like your H-D engine). 93 Octane is the default standard for modern H-D engines. That's step one. Step two is have your carburetor looked at. (and probably the source of your "popping" sound instead of "pinging" sound). It sounds like maybe you have the wrong size fuel jets in the carb. Getting the wrong air/fuel mixture ratio can lead to popping sounds and loss of power. Screaming Eagle air cleaners allow more air into the engine than stock air cleaners. With increased air volume, you need to inject an increased volume of fuel to keep the optimum air/fuel mixture. And you need to have increased exhaust flow volumes to match. It looks like you're still running stock mufflers. Intake air, fuel, and exhaust flow all need to be in balance. Sounds to me like the previous owner just slapped an SE air cleaner on the bike without touching the fuel or exhaust systems. Just my 2 cents. Cheers, J

 

"Poping and rough riding"
I thought maybe this was going to be about the Pope riding around in some sort of new adventure-Pope-mobile..

 

clean the carb! super easy! will fix the problem 100%... if not run sea foam though it.. that will clean out alot of the stuff in the carb

 

the first owner put on all these mods i dont know if he had it jetted correctly, he also had slipons put on as well. when i got the bike it had the SE air cleaner with the stock mufflers. the second owner (the guy i bought it from) said the first owner didnt like how loud it was and put the stock mufflers back on. the first thing i did was put the slipons back on (Y would anyone not want to hear that beautiful harley sound?!) so thats where i am now

yea i LOLed at that...pretty hard core!

Im running 3oz of sea foam each time i fill up. do i need to use more? how hard it is to clean the carb?

 

If your carbed apply a little choke, if the popping goes away your running lean.

 

carb is pretty easy to clean man, just pull it off, open up the lower bowl, pull your jet, blow them out and put it back in... (that is the fast way) if that does nto work you will hve to go a bit more into the cleaning but it should work just fine

 

guitar strings are good for cleaning carb jets if you happen to be around any

 

Not wanting to add insult to injury, but when you start the bike and you pull the enrichner out it has to be pushed back in after the engine starts warming up. It will not go back in by itself. If that's not the case, then the carb needs some TLC. If it pops back thru the carb starting off from a stop or pops thru the carb during shifts it's too lean. Search this site for the carb tuneup section and it will get you going.