when you add pods (question on the boots)

[Joe Nardy]

Yea, I'm grumpy about moding old classic bikes. Just about any modern bike will run rings around our GS bikes so why bother spending all the money and messing up the carburation just to add a few HP at the top end of the rev range? Pods need a header to take advantage of the increased air flow, so that adds another $300 to the cost. Just doesn't make sense unless your stock exhaust/air box is shot and you have no options left.

How about reduced weight (my Supertrapp stainless 4 into 1 is probably 20 pounds lighter than the stock system), great sounds (intake and exhaust), and nice looks to go with the horsepower gain? How about ease of maintenance? I can have my carbs off in about 10 minutes and the battery out in about 2 minutes. Try that with an airbox equipped GS.

I can only speak from personal experience but my '83 GS1100, which I bought new and has been through many combinations of intake/exhaust modifications, starts, idles, runs, and pulls better than it did the day I picked it up from the dealer.

Using the 'Just about any modern bike will run rings around our GS so why bother spending all the money......' logic, are you also opposed to suspension upgrades? You can spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade a GS suspension and still not even approach the handling of a newer bike. So it isn't worth the bother to make your particular bike more capable and fun to ride? Do you buy premium tires? What's the point? your bike will never corner as well as a new bike so you might as well run 20 year old Bridgestone Mag Mopus tires, right?

Of course, this is just my opinion................... which makes it different than presenting your opinion as fact. :-D

Thanks,
Joe

[Nessism]

Yeah, 2 HP will get you at least a second in the quarter-mile! :---)

Just doing some rough math: 500 pound motorcycle, 100 horsepower. Each horsepower has to move 5 pounds of motorcycle weight. Save 20 pounds of exhaust/airbox weight = 4 horsepower effective gain, before any actual horsepower gains from the pipe, PODs, and jet kit.

Thanks,
Joe

Hey Joe,

The topic of this thread is PODS. My assertion is that pods alone are only worth a couple of HP - I made no reference to power gains using pods/pipe/jetting.

Your math is interesting but off topic.

Regarding modding bikes, I'm a stock sort of guy for the most part. My 550E had a Yoshimura header on it when I got it but I dumped them for some stock pipes. Unfortunately, haven't been able to find a truly clean set of stock pipes so I recently bought some NOS Winning Performance slip-ons off ebay. Not to crazy about them but my current pipes are going to spring some leaks pretty soon and want to be prepared.

At any rate, I'm not strictly against modding, I just think it's silly to change things like the airbox when there is only minimal benefits.

Enjoy.