Vance and Hines BIG RADIUS 2 into 1 for the Raider

[halgreenlee]

Just got the new catalog today. Part # is VAN-28501

http://image2.frappr.com/pix2/i/20080407/e/a/6/ea6c855828a0d8a687412ad83c05256c0_large.jpg

[Jimbo]

I installed these pipes on my bike the other day. The picture does not do them justice... they are pretty gnarly in real life. In the picture you can see the heat shield wrapping under the pipes. V&H added some tie wraps in the kit if you want to remove the wrapping. The two center tie wraps are reuseable but the two outside ones have to be cut. Pretty thougtful of V&H as I think it looks better without the heat shield. It was getting late by the time I had the pipes installed so I ran around in them for awhile without any changes to the fuel system. Sounded pretty good.

The next morning I installed the fuel-pak using their settings for the Raider. Now there is some decel popping sometimes when going off throttle in 1st or 2nd gear so there is some tweaking to do in the fuel-pak settings. They don't supply any hints on adjusting for that problem so I'll have to e-mail them or call to see if they have any ideas.

I plan to run a tank of gas with and without the fuel-pak to see what difference there may be in the mpg. With the stock pipes on I was getting 44 mpg in town only driving. This morning it only had about 580 miles on it.

[dmnpdfuzz]

How's the sound. The advertisement makes them sound as if they are quiet. Also, any noticable performance gains?

[Jimbo]

How's the sound. The advertisement makes them sound as if they are quiet. Also, any noticable performance gains?


Well, I don't have a decibel meter to check the sound level with but I had a VTX 1300 for four years with the V&H Bigshots for 2 and half years and Cobra Speedster Slashdowns the rest of the time. Those pipes sounded about the same to me as far as deep sounding and loudness goes. The Big Radius is quieter than those pipes, at idle and at cruising. However, they are definitely louder than the stock pipes. I think it's a good compromise between having a nasty looking bike that doesn't sound like a pussy and yet doesn't piss off the neighbors when I head to work at six in the morning.

Hard to say about the performance. Because the engine's not broken in yet I haven't been doing any wot stunts with it. I think that's where any performance gain would be noticed.

One thing I've found is that the idle is not perfectly smooth. I can hear it rise a little then drop a little in a consistent pattern while sitting at stop lights. Not much but enough to hear it. There are 18 adjustments on the Fuel Pak before it gets to the throttle adjustment so I think some tweaking in that section would fix that problem, if it is the Fuel Pak doing it. I won't know for sure until I disconnect it after I've run through this tank of gas.

I'll post any useful information on this pipe/fuel management combo that I find as I run it thru my testing phases.