my dyna seems to be a little sluggish lately. i changed the oil, cleaned the carb, cleaned the K&N, and dropped in some new plugs... no improvment. i used to be able to burn up my buddy on his old 750 suzuki, but now i can barely keep up with him... he can pull away from me a bit. i haven't gained wieght, and i haven't added any weight to the bike. very strange. the bike has about 15,000 on it, but i can't imagine its feeling slow becasue the engine is wearing. i noticed that it goes through some oil when out on the interstate. i rode it about a 1000 miles this summer before i took it to chicago from denver a couple weeks ago. in that 1st thousand miles, before the big trip, no oil usage. when i arrived in chicago after doing 85 mph for a 120 miles at a time, the oil was low, maybe a qt or so. same thing on the way back. is this a sign of anything? should i be worried? i tuned the thing up just before i left. did the clutch, primary, belt adjustments, etc.
should i be looking at some performance inprovments. the S&S 95 in. kit looks intrguing, but i am wondering if its something simple? any possibilities will be entertained.

thanks guys

 

Before you look at any performance inprovments, I would first try to find out why it is sluggish , like a compression test and possibly a leak down test.

 

Loss of power, and oil comsumption could be a sign of rings or valve seals being bad. I'm with TC on this. Get a compression check and make sure all the internals are alright.

Regards,

Bill

 

A compression test may not show you very much unless it is really hurting. A leak down test will however tell you what is going on. A engine can have bad valves and a compression test may show good compression. But a leak down test will tell you if you have bad rings, bad intake or exhast valves. As for seals that falls into the does it smoke a bit on start-up??? Guides themselves can leak also. One thing is if you have bad seals the valves can get crusty and cause them to not seat, so when you do a leak down test you will have air entering the breather system, and exiting into either the exhaust or intake. AS where if the rings are bad you will only hear it through the breather system. A leak down test is a great test to pin point problems. Also there many do the compression test incorrectly. You must have a battery charger hooked up and hold throttle wide open wheil performing test. If you have a EFI bike you need to ground sprak plugs or it will set a mis fire code. Pull both spark plugs to perform test. If you have low compression in on or both holes, you can add a small amount of oil if the compression come right up it is rings, if not you will have to look further. Again the reason I preferr a leak down over a comp test.

One thing that would help is some info on the engine What size, how many miles, what modifications if any where done. Year, make model as well, as there are some issues that are prone to happen to a certain model.

 

>>>>Also there many do the compression test incorrectly. You must have a battery charger hooked up and hold throttle wide open wheil performing test.

It's also a good idea to hold the slide up in a CV carb for accurate readings.