Sudden difference in exhaust sound

[ShirleySerious]

When I started my bike up this morning, and went to work, the exhaust sounded different. Now it has more of a growly, brash noise, and it seems there is less power. What could possibly cause this to happen?

[tconroy]

When I started my bike up this morning, and went to work, the exhaust sounded different. Now it has more of a growly, brash noise, and it seems there is less power. What could possibly cause this to happen?

do you have a flange leak or could the baffel have come loose. Check underneath and see if there is a leak somewhere.Does it idle good or speed up when its warmed?

[caberguy]

Check your plugs. You may well be running rich and fouling them out. That hapened to me a while back, lots of carbon on the plugs, cleaned them, leaned the mixture and I was good to go.

[bostrom155]

check the exhaust bolts too, I lost one and it felt like that

[ShirleySerious]

do you have a flange leak or could the baffel have come loose. Check underneath and see if there is a leak somewhere.Does it idle good or speed up when its warmed?

Sorry to sound like an idiot, but what are the flange and baffel? Once it's warmed, it idles fine, but seems like it has less power when accelerating.

And as for fouling the plugs, does it matter if the PO took out the stock air filter and put four separate filters right on the intakes? Also, I have used the choke a couple times, but that probably wouldn't foul the plugs, would it?

Is there a good place where I can find a service manual so I can fix all this?

[bostrom155]

Check the bolts holding the pipe to the head, i think the flange is the piece on the pipe where the screws go into the head, thier should be a spot on the pipe (usually under the bike) where the header meets the baffle, see if it's loose. it you don't have that set up, check the rear baffle the end of the pipe

[caberguy]

Yes, it matters that the PO put separate filters on (called pods), it should be (may have been) rejetted for this mod, and it would cause fuel mixture problems, but there are mixture adjustment screws on your carbs that might help if it has been rejetted.

Over using the choke can definitely foul out your plugs, but only if you left it open.

The Baffle refers to the sound dampening materials in your mufflers.

Pull the plugs and look at them, if they're black and sooty then you're probably running rich. Clean them, put them back and see if it runs better for awhile. (like I said this happened to me on my 750, it lost a lot of power and sounded really low and throaty... this might not be what's wrong but it'd be really easy to figure out if it was)

You can get manuals lots of places... google it.

[staschman]

Is this an aftermarket exhaust that has packing in it to dampen sound? If so, it could be some of it deteriorated and moved allowing more sound out. Might be time to repack it.