I'm new to the Harley world, i just purchesed my 03 883 a few weeks ago. Anyway i was told by the salesman that i should just drill out the baffles on the stock mufflers untill i put the VH's on. I thought this was a pretty shotty idea, but figured i had nothing to lose since the new pipes were going on soon anyway. So i drilled them out, sounded ok and didn't think anything about, went to a rally with no problems. A few days later im sitting at a light, blip the throttle, and it misses big time, like it tried to die. Thought that was strange so i headed back to the house. On the way i noticed that it was running rougher. I figured it would lean out a little with the loss of some back pressure but was just going to wait till the new pipes went on to get it re-jetted. Is it possible that it already caused any sort of damage by the lean condition, and is there anything i can do in the meantime while i'm waiting on the new pipes to prevent this

 

is there not anybody that has a suggestion or can offer up some advice...

 

Sorry nobody has gotten to this until now.

How many miles on the bike when you got it?

When you say you drilled the baffles out, do you mean they are completely gone? If so, and you are basically running a set of completely open pipes, you are running extremely lean. Did you damage something? Hard to say, but since the bike is rather lean to start with (thank you, EPA), you are at least at the edge of doing bad.

So this blip of the throttle at a light and resulting miss was the first indication of something wrong? Wasn't popping or spitting back through the carb before this? Didn't tend surge while trying to cruise at a steady rpm? If it wasn't doing any of this stuff, it's probably not lean enough to have caused any real damage.

Do you have any mechanical experience? If you pulled the plugs and looked at them would you be able to tell if they were running in a significantly lean condition? Do you have the capabilities of checking the timing? If you can do this sort of stuff, good. If not, good, too, but it's time to let a mech look at it.

 

The bike had around 11k when i got it, The baffles are not completly drilled out but they do have 2 1/2" holes, i had already pullled the plugs and there was no problem there, it doesn't surge and a steady rpm, you can tell at idle though there is just a slight miss

 

When you are out just riding around, does it miss bad enough to be noticable, do it all the tie, sometime, or ? Unless something actually broke, it is a bit strange it ran OK for a spell and then started acting up. Might check here for some CV carb info: http://www.nightrider.com/biketech/