Re-jet 883 with short shots

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One of my riding buddies is putting V&H short shots on his sporty. I told him when I put short shots on my bike I re-jetted. He says it will run fine without re-jetting. I told hime it will run lean and he needs to re-jet. He is sticking with the ham can intake for now. Who is right here? does he or does he not need to re-jet?? :wonderlan

I even told that I re-jetted my bike while I still had the stock intake back when it was a 883.

[cantolina]

One of my riding buddies is putting V&H short shots on his sporty. I told him when I put short shots on my bike I re-jetted. He says it will run fine without re-jetting. I told hime it will run lean and he needs to re-jet. He is sticking with the ham can intake for now. Who is right here? does he or does he not need to re-jet?? :wonderlan

I even told that I re-jetted my bike while I still had the stock intake back when it was a 883.

Neither of you is right...:laugh:laugh

You don't rejet to tune a bike, you rejet (the pilot jet) so you have the proper range in which to tune the pilot circuit....

You didn't say what he had on before???

We can offer OPINIONS, or SUPPOSITIONS, but the BIKE will tell him what it needs...

I will offer my experience that if he moves from stock to short shots, he will likely need an adjustment to his mixture....whether or not that includes a new jet is entirely dependent on where he is in the current jet's range (ie; how many turns out he is) If he moved from one free-flowing exhaust to another without and airbox change, he will possibly need nothing at all in the way of a mixture change....

Simply changing an exhaust does very little to the actual airflow thru the engine....as supported by HD's own assertion that simply changing exhaust will not necessitate a remap on an EFI...similarly, an exhaust change will not dictate a radical change in mixture with a carb'd bike...

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:o LOL
I can't tell him I am wrong!!! lol :shhhh


He is running stock pipes now.

[cantolina]

:o LOL
I can't tell him I am wrong!!! lol :shhhh


He is running stock pipes now.

Fair enough...

Don't tell him you were wrong...you can hedge with the whole mixture aspect...

Always remember...the pilot jet is a COARSE adjustment...the mixture is the FINE adjustment..

Perhaps you NEEDED to rejet, because you needed a little richer mixture, but you were already 3.5 turns out, so you needed to change the jet... ;)

I think its perfectly fair to assert that a TUNE is in order...because it is...but no one can tell for certain how a particular bike will act...or react to any change...

Most of us who dispense advice here about tuning on this forum go against their own ideas of how this process should take place...WHY?

Because its a lot easier to simply get them in the ballpark, and let them experiment, than it is to truly explain HOW to tune a bike...people learn different ways....and quite honestly....if you don't get it from Jetting 101, or the many other stickies about tuning, you won't get it from reading, because it really IS all there....in one form or another....

If you read the stickies, you'll get LOTS of technical information...tips...tricks...and shortcuts...what you'll ALSO get, is an inflamed notion of what is ACTUALLY required to tune a STREET BIKE.

It is profoundly simple, if you understand the process, and why the process exists as it does...and if you hold onto a few simple notions....

1. Carb farts are GOOD. As House would say "that sounds like one of them 'symptom thingys' " :laugh If I get one once in a while, I know I'm not pig-rich....if it happens more often, I think about WHY its happening, and eliminate the possibilities...(weather, whether or not I've cleaned/oiled my A/C recently..any changes or possibility of an air leak or vacuum leak... [which, by the way is dictated MUCH more by riding conditions than anyones idea of a mileage mark...mileage marks exist to simplify maintenance for the idiot masses] )

2. Watch your MPG...this will tell you LOADS

3. "symptom thingys" ALWAYS have causes, and if you keep your mind open to the possibilities, you'll run less of a risk of missing something ridiculously simple.

4. Tuning is not rocket science, and like anything else you will ever do, the more you do it, the more experience you get...the more experiences you have, the more stupid shit you'll see...:laugh...the more stupid shit you see, the more you realize that sometimes its the simplest things that take you for the biggest ride...

Cut yourself some slack, is what I'm saying....

It would be PRUDENT of this fellow to retune his bike....HOWEVER...if there are no "symptom thingys", there IS no problem...

Too lean shows itself pretty effectively with excellent symptoms, likely because it does the most damage QUICKLY.....

Too rich is like heart disease...its a silent killer...and slow....but it has its OWN "symptom thingys" that are pretty easy to spot if you pay attention....

Enjoy learning, and never be afraid to be wrong....being wrong sometimes makes being right that much more fulfilling... :shhhh

We have a saying where I work right now....

"The one making the most mistakes is the one doing most of the work..."

And then there's MY favorite....just below in my sig....its Latin for the principle of Occam's Razor.

The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.

In other words, "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity"

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Thanks cantolina.
You make alot of sense. I guess the best bet would be to wait till he puts the pipes on and see how the bike runs.