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question about pods

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So I'm thinking about switching to Pods instead of the airbox. but im looking for some pros and cons. ive heard that it changes the air mixture levels and you have to change some carb settings but i wasnt exactly sure. So looking for any info and place to buy the correct pods for my bike. thanks
 
SilentRaven said:
So I'm thinking about switching to Pods instead of the airbox. but im looking for some pros and cons. ive heard that it changes the air mixture levels and you have to change some carb settings but i wasnt exactly sure. So looking for any info and place to buy the correct pods for my bike. thanks
Click to expand...

Pro - Vastly easier access to the carbs and battery, looks much better (IMO), significantly more power if you also add an aftermarket exhaust.

Con - You have to rejet, which is not trivial and can be a source of significant headaches, especially if you have no experience with tuning.


Ah, I just looked and see your bike is a 450. I'm not certain if the carb and battery access is that bad on those; it is terrible on the 4 cylinder bikes. I concur with GS1150Pilot on the pods, only look at K&N or APE. They cost more and are worth every penny.


Mark
 
Uni foam pods are passable.

If you get two horsepower more with pods and an exhaust on a 450 you will be doing very well.
 
Nessism said:
If you get two horsepower more with pods and an exhaust on a 450 you will be doing very well.
Click to expand...

A +2hp gain on a bike with less than 50hp would be 4-5%, which is very worthwhile (IMO) and can be felt while riding. Whether OP thinks that is worth the trials and tribulations of rejetting is up to his personal value system.


Mark
 
I have UNI pods on my GS450 with Emgo shorty mufflers. The tuning isn't that hard especially with a twin, although I don't have it perfect yet and still change the needle/jets/screw settings every now and then to experiment. Do plug chops when you do it even if it `feels' good.

As far as power, I did it after tearing my bike down in the winter and hadn't ridden in 5 months so didn't really have a good frame of reference as to whether it felt stronger.

I love having the pods since I am constantly messing with my GS450 and I can take the carbs off (, open up and install jets if thats what I'm doing), and put them back on in a matter of several minutes. Compare that to when I first got the bike and pulled the carbs to clean them, it took me about 2 hours wrestling them on/off. Some people claim they can take the airbox off the bike through careful navigation but lots of others (including my self) have only been able to do it after moving either the engine or the rear wheel/fender.
 
I've never taken the carbs off an L, but there may be less room to move the air box back on one. On a T, I've never found it problematic. The OP has a T.

The air box on a T is pretty huge for the displacement and has the off strokes to return to ambient pressure. You can't expect as big an increase in flow as you would with some space limited air boxes. The pre 80 twins had a nice to work on air box which shared space with the battery; both too small IMO.

For a maybe 2hp at the power peak, I'd rather have real filtration instead.
 
No disrespect to anyone but it gives me a chuckle when people talk about how easy it is to service the carbs when they have pods. With a properly cleaned and rebuilt set of factory carbs w/airbox there is no reason to take them on and off other than ONE TIME to perform the rebuild. Factory jetting w/airbox is guaranteed to work flawlessly too so there is no monkey business you have to deal with. Install pods and you will be taking off those carbs again and again as you experiment with the jetting and get it sorted out.

Not to mention (John Park did already) that pods don't filter the air as well as the factory filter inside the airbox does either.
 
That said, mine runs better now that the carbs I installed have been jetted to match the pods and pipe. I think it definitely has better throttle response and seems to make more mid-range power than it had before the pods and carbs.
 
i have several GS1000's and not all have supple carb and airbox boots.
Sure takes a lot more time to remove and reinstall than the ones with pods.
 
these speed up changing/cleaning main jets, killer looks ;)
Easy to check float levels, too.
Rare stuff..

Pro-Bowl Four Bowl Set GS1000 GS750.jpg
 
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GS1150Pilot said:
That said, mine runs better now that the carbs I installed have been jetted to match the pods and pipe. I think it definitely has better throttle response and seems to make more mid-range power than it had before the pods and carbs.
Click to expand...

The big 4's show significant gains with pods and pipe over the stock airbox and exhaust, there should be no question on that at all. How the 450 twins respond is a different matter completely and not something I have ever seen really well detailed here.


Mark
 
mmattockx said:
The big 4's show significant gains with pods and pipe over the stock airbox and exhaust, there should be no question on that at all. How the 450 twins respond is a different matter completely and not something I have ever seen really well detailed here. Mark
Click to expand...

agreed, also on other comments on filtering and rejetting.
Some of my buddies played around with pods on the smaller twins and without exception returned to stock.
Not enough power gained, higher gas usage, and they run really well with standard setup.
 
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Ive got 2 bikes that someone removed the air boxes before I bought them. My wifes' gs500e and my gs1100e. On the 500 I shimmed up the needle and added a larger main jets and it runs ok but I have no baseline to compare it to.

On my 1100, Ive swapped carbs now and using the BST36 "Slingshot" carbs, and tuned them using a wideband. Again, I have no baseline to compare the results to, but it was a little weak at lower rpms. So recently I bought some carb to air box boots for a Bandit 1200 (same carbs) off ebay for $20 which are rubber "velocity stacks", then I used a set of "RamAir" brand foam filters that slip over them. It now seems to run smoother at lower rpms and the throttle response seems much better.

Soooo... I would suggest if you go with "pods" that you find some airbox tubes for your carbs and use a filter over them (the RaimAirs are cheap on Ebay, but take a couple weeks to come in from Great Britain.). You get back your intake length and some of your bottom end back.
 
mmattockx said:
The big 4's show significant gains with pods and pipe over the stock airbox and exhaust, there should be no question on that at all. How the 450 twins respond is a different matter completely and not something I have ever seen really well detailed here.


Mark
Click to expand...

Well...I question the "significant gains" part. A lot of the pipes that are tuned for reasonable sound don't make that much power. There is something to be gained, but 5% would be doing well and that's up top, not in the midrange.
 
Nessism said:
Well...I question the "significant gains" part. A lot of the pipes that are tuned for reasonable sound don't make that much power. There is something to be gained, but 5% would be doing well and that's up top, not in the midrange.
Click to expand...

semantics :D
Pods, rejetting and good pipes are considered worthwhile by most when looking for extra oemph.
 
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I dunno, Ed. On my FZ1, the addition of a full header/exhaust, an Ivan's jet kit and pods added over 15 horsepower and a good bit of torque. Sure, most of that was peak power, but it made a big difference.
 
Especially amongst the more experienced members who have awesome bikes that they know a ton about, and have gone through to make sure everything is up to speed, the `keeping the stock settings will get you optimal results' makes total sense and allows you to talk about things like the maximal horsepower you will get out of making such a change. Yeah, the bottom line is that stock works.

Lots of people, however, are in the boat where they bought an old motorcycle that has been mutilated by the PO (the general assumption on GSR is that the PO was a scumbag and did everything possible to sabotage your bike, so there will almost certainly be some monkey business, as Ed put it.) and are interested in tinkering and want to have a cool old bike because, well, motorcycles are cool.

That's the situation I was in when I bought my bike. It was pretty rough and I was interested in learning about how everything worked. Never having to take the carbs off again isn't necessarily an appealing argument to somebody like me (and I think at least some others) since I'm constantly messing with things on my bike. And by this I don't mean that I'm taking them off my carbs to clean them because I didn't do it right the first time.

After being annoyed with the airbox when I did have to deal with it, and realizing after I got my bike up and running well that I wanted to customize it to a certain extent, I made the call to get rid of it. I think it looks better, makes doing all kinds of things specific to my motorcycle easier, and I didn't any performance differences were negligible (good OR bad).

I say if you want to put pods on and are willing to put the time into doing it correctly than go for it. Like everybody said, don't get cheapo emgo pods.
 
I echo Sam in that my bike came with good pods. My guess is the PO couldn't get it to run well with the old airbox so took a short cut and added pods and new main jets.

I like the look and ease of pulling the carbs so I'm sticking with the pods.
 
GS1150Pilot said:
I dunno, Ed. On my FZ1, the addition of a full header/exhaust, an Ivan's jet kit and pods added over 15 horsepower and a good bit of torque. Sure, most of that was peak power, but it made a big difference.
Click to expand...

Some bikes respond more than others. I've got a header test from Joe Minton that was published in Motorcyclist magazine back in the day and the gains on the GS1100E were minimal and most of the pipes actually lost power. This test was run with a header and airbox lid off. Adding pods may change the situation to some extent but I don't think the gains will be anywhere near 15 hp. On the KZ Rider site they have a Cycle magazine article where they tested a bunch of different headers on a KZ and that test showed bigger gains. Most of the pipes made more power on that bike - up to 11% or something like that. Most likely the stock KZ pipes were poor performers (unlike stock GS exhaust systems). That article said most of the pipes were overly loud though. Loud pipes suck.

https://kzrider.com/filebase/category/2-general
 
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