Greetings. I just bought a 2015 Road King and have a question regarding buying an air intake (BTW, I am a rookie). I don't want to go through an entire Stage One mod because I don't want my bike to be too loud (my job requires me to protect my hearing). I thought about buying an air intake filter for the looks more than to increase my bike's performance. Do I need to buy also the tuner and take it to a mechanic for installation? If I don't buy aftermarket pipes, do I need to adjust the mixture? I wouldn't mind increasing the noise just a bit, but it is not my primary objective. Thanks.

 

welcome to the forums

starting with the 2014 the air cleaner was redesigned and flows "15%" more then the previous.

for your requirements the stock air cleaner will work just fine- really.

the reason we change the air cleaner is to allow more flow into the motor, the older a/c was a limiting factor as is the catalytic convertor in the header pipes...so many of us remove the obstructions to flow to realize a power gain of 7 to 10 horsepower...better than 10%.

you would see little net flow change with the cat in the header, so no practical reason to change

one thing about the big honkin' air cleaner is that it is hiding some ugly wiring and plugs on the throttle body ( as you look at it, the 8 o'clock position)

it also muffles sound- the air rushing into an unmuffled intake is all high frequency information...hello tinnitus

so I suggest you ride on and enjoy the bike the way it is- keep it warranty-compliant and you'll be worry free.

read up on some threads and learn from others experiences +/-...you'll come out ahead.

if you do want to try out a "stage 1", with dB's in mind...I'd suggest that you stay with the stock air cleaner.
Get a header without a cat ( either Aftermarket or a decatted stock header ebay-$150 )
And look at supertrapp disk system mufflers, these use an external stacked disk system which allows high flow yet is marginally louder than stock.
The gasses are forced through passages between the disks expressly designed to break up and cancel sound waves.
this approach may give you that 10% power boost without adding alot of noise.


Mike

 

You won't need a tuner if you are just swapping the a/c. Welcome to the forums.

 

Welcome to the forums from Red Banks, Ms.

You may want to consider going with a free flowing Air Cleaner like the Outlaw 587 or the 636v, these air cleaners do not allow all the hot, dry, dirty, oily air back in. Below is pictures of before and after routing externally. And even if you find a different air cleaner that you like better you can still route externally by using a Hose Style Set Up.

If you plan on just changing the Air Cleaner then you will not need a tuner. However if you change the exhaust and the Air Cleaner then you will need some type of Fuel Management. A good amount of people do get a tuner even with just changing the Air Cleaner because the harley's come from the factory lean. Devin and Kevin (DK) use the Power Vision. It is delivered to you with a Custom Map, for Your Bike, already installed in it. You can plug it in, load the new tune into your bike, unplug it, and be riding with the New Tune in 5 minutes. So you would not have to take it to a mechanic for the install.

Also Below is a overview on EFI options. Hope this helps you out
https://www.hdforums.com/forum/ignit...uning-etc.html





Kelsey

 

All,

Thank you so much for your inputs, and the warm welcome. I will be reading as many posts as time permits (can't wait to stop being a rookie). It looks like I will also need a "mechanical dictionary" in order to fully understand the lingo

Greatly appreciated!
Rick

 

wow this is really interesting, thanks for sharing this.

 

May be interesting but I have seen plenty of torn down engines that had internally vented stage 1 A/C's and they didn't look like that. They looked more like the second pic.

 

yeah but YOU don;t have a product to sell do you !


hopefully most riders can tell a sales pitch from opinion



Mike