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Air Boxes and Pods

  • Thread starter Thread starter rustysparksalot
  • Start date Start date
R

rustysparksalot

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After surmounting a few years of neglected maintenance, lack of tools, and just being scared of opening up some of the deeper recesses of carburetors, valves, and cylinders, I've gotten my GS 550 running close to well.

One key development in my quest was realizing that some PO had never jetted the carbs for the cool-looking (cheap) pods he'd put on instead of the airbox.

The bog(s) in the throttle was a mystery to my novice mind, but after opening a lot more of the bike up and looking at the internet, I had an incite. I wrapped the pods in duct tape, so that only about 20% of their intake was exposed, and when I took the bike out it was like a whole new machine, peppy, faster, fuel-efficienter, funner.

I just bought some stock air box parts from eBay to see if it gets better than this.

I still need an actual air filter, and I was thinking of getting this filter from K & N rather than the cage and the filter from somewhere like Boulevard, but I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about this. Is this K & N going to be worse for performance than the stock stuff from Boulevard? Will I continue to get bogging? The online chat rep told me this replaces "all OEM something" when I asked.

http://www.knfilters.com/search/product.aspx?prod=SU-5500

Search "air filter" on the forums and you get 500 threads. I looked at all of them and read a lot of the interesting ones. One thread I saw, for a bigger GS, maybe BikeCliff's Air Intake System Repair, says you still need the cage, but that's contrary to what the K & N rep told me.

I think the Boulevard Stock stuff is the cheaper route, but I'm open to suggestions.

I also wanted to try to encourage the more timid novice reading this to perform the recommended maintenance that may seem beyond his or her grasp.
 
Your bike will run richer with the airbox, so you'll have to go back to stock, or pretty close to stock jetting/needles/pilot valves.
 
If the bike was never rejetted with the pods, and your experiment seems to show that it wasn't, I think a stock airbox with a K&N is worth a try.
 
Same Problem For Me

Same Problem For Me

When I first test drove the bike it seemed a little doggish, and horrible gas mileage...The PO Told me he had "customized" the bike with new pods, I asked if he re-jetted the carbs and he said that he has done it at least 5 times because, he couldn't get it quite right...I asked him if he had the old air filter box, and he did...I took the carbs off and put it back to original jetting. Then I scraped off the old seals and installed new seals and the K&N Filter and cleaned the carbs really well...I will let you know, once I put it back together, how well it runs...
 
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