Wanting to upgrade the exhaust on my '14 Iron 883. I want to go with all black and was thinking about the V&H Short Shots (just like everyone else). I wanted some input on other blacked out options for a set? I appreciate all of your feedback!

 

I have the Vance and Hines 2-1. I think it looks good and sounds good as well. I havent seen anyone else with one either. Im not a fan of the short shots, but I think that is because in my opinion they are overplayed and used by what seems like 50% of sportster owners.

 

Vance and Hines also makes a nice 3 inch slip on in black
As with most V& H products they are loud.

 

Do it right the first time and get a 2-1 exhaust or just keep the stock headers with some slip-ons. The short shots are only good for looks and (not so pleasant in my opinion) noise.

 

I think the short shots are played out too.

Last year I put on the SE Street Performance slip-ons. Wasn't all that excited about the sound, but an article I read showed they dyno'd better than V&H. This summer after reading around the interwebs, I went with the Thunder Torque Inserts from DK. I removed my baffles and installed these.

The sound is definitely there now, and the performance seems to be the same if not a little bit more. I am pretty happy with them. I rode with two friends that each have V&H Short Shots, one with an 883 the other a 1200, and my Iron is louder.

Just my $0.2. Of course performance wise, 2 into 1 is the way to go.

 

Loud is in the ear of the listener.

Take a listen to my Sporty with some 2-1 exhaust that was made from our Exhaust Builders Kit.


Here's a pic of the pipes from the above video...they are wrapped, but if you wanted them all black, just don't wrap them.



Short Shots are popular for a reason, they look good to a lot of people and a lot like their sound. Downside is a bit of a loss of low and mid range power.

This is easily taken care of by adding Thunder Torque Inserts to them. Not only do the TTI's give a good bump in the low and mid range, they also deepen the tone of the exhaust a little. You can check them out HERE...there are some dyno charts also.

 

Thanks for all the good info guys! I'm leaning towards the V&H slip ons, wanted to see if I still need to put it on the dyno after the install? What's the least expensive way to get this done while doing it right?

 

Doing it "right"...there are many choices...and they vary in price depending on what you want to accomplish.

You do not "need" to do anything when installing slip-ons, IF you are happy with the performance of the bike.

It will run better if you spend around $100 on some XL-ViED-14's to richen up the mixture. See details on it HERE

It will run even better if you spend around $500 on a Power Vision Package with Auto-Tune. See details of it HERE

There are other tuners that are more than $100 & less than $500 that will provide improvement. You can see an overview of the popular ones at the following thread-

https://www.hdforums.com/forum/ignit...uning-etc.html

To be clear, you will not damage your bike if you do nothing other than add slip-ons...everything else listed above is only if you want a smoother, cooler, stronger running bike, AND if it's worth it to you to spend $ to accomplish it.