Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums Performance Mods popping on decel with AI removed

Newbie here with a question about my 2003 TBA. I've always got popping on decel which doesnt bother me and my header pipes are goldish near the cylinders. The AI was removed and the air filter system is stock. The rear baffles were removed also. Is this just an indication of it running a little lean?

Ok Don before you get "flamed"...you should check out the search feature here and just type in the search field {pop deceleration} then sit back and get comfy you got some SEROIUS reading to do....check out most anything that Pat (Dinqua) has posted particularly his site and sticky threads...and just to get you started...Yes it possible you are to lean...but read this first...scroll down and find MY post regarding the Mikuni page...

Good luck and welcome!

Oh and the "Flaming" is probably inevitable but it's not done to hurt...just to "bust-em" a bit

pull your plugs and have a look at the color,white is lean,brownish grey to light brown is good and sooty or black ir rich. From what you describe you are probably just a little lean. Maybe an adjustment to the mixture screws would do it or maybe that and 1 shim on the needle. You haven't done much of a change to the way it breathes stock so probably not way off. As for popping you may also want to check the exhaust gaskets where the exhaust meets the head to make sure they are tight. and look fo any sign of dry rubber on the intake such as intake mounting rubbers and the vacume caps.

Some popping is to be expected on a high performance engine such as this. You can usually tune it away with an over rich idle mixture, but this will give you other problems. Along with loading up the sparkplugs when you are stuck in traffic or at a lot of redlights, the idle and transition circuits come back into play as a power enrichment system at speed, and tuning for no popping will cost you 5 to 10 MPH of top speed. For an example, mine would barely reach 105 tuned for no popping, but I've seen 115 with more to go when tuned for highest idle speed.

I will add to my last post in that some popping is wanted if the engine is tuned correctly with less restrictive pipes But no loud backfires.It should sort of rumble.