This is the completion of the stage-one upgrade for my Scout. In my last post I covered how I had upgraded the exhaust. The last piece of that puzzle is to replace the intake with a performance air intake. Well, I finally opened the box and was a little underwhelmed to see that it’s just an intake. The plastic piece that holds the air filter, with the air filter attached. From the outside, the only difference one can see is that the new air filter is red instead of white. That means speed, right guys?
Well, when you look inside the intake, you notice the old one has a throat that sort of directs air toward the bottom of the air filter. The inside of the performance intake has no throat. It’s wide open. So I guess that just means it can suck in as much air as it wants. I’m pretty sure I could have taken the filter off and used a box knife to cut out that throat with very little issue. I paid over a hundred bucks for this shit? Rolleyes.
Anyway, what I found when installing this is that the rubber grommets that wrap around the bottom and front of the intake are very tricky to get on. The instructions say to install it. Thanks, guys. Well, that involves pressing it down (and to the left to slip it under the frame bar on the left) while you’re pressing forward. It just doesn’t work like that. You have to slip a knife or a screwdriver inside the front grommet and ring it around just to get the front one to fully insert. It was definitely the most difficult – or at least time-consuming – part of the job.
Then you’ve got the bottom one to deal with. There’s another rubber mouth on the bottom of the intake that wraps round the aluminum manifold beneath it. That one is a little easier to manage if you take the air filter off. Then you can push the mouth over the aluminum from the inside, working your way around until the whole thing finally seats nicely in place. After I got all this done and put the bike back together, I was ready to hear it roar. And roar it does.
It sounds wonderful. I can’t really define the difference in sound between the before and after of installing the intake. But it’s there. It’s a little crisper. A little tighter, maybe. Like things are working together better. Maybe it’s my imagination. But it somehow feels a little different. What also feels different is when you get out on the road at 50 miles per hour to open her up, and your rear brakes are completely gone.
So apparently, during installation of my pipes the other night, my rear brake reservoir had drained. This is odd because I didn’t see any spots of brake fluid on the garage floor. I had removed my highway bar on that side, which involves taking the foot peg off to get to it. I had reattached the foot peg with one screw, but it hadn’t really been hanging upside-down. I guess maybe twisting it and turning it had loosened the banjo bolt a little or something. Either way, that sumbitch was dry. Thank God I know how to engine brake and use my front brake. I was able to get home safely and begin the ridiculous long process of bleeding my brake.
Nothing worse than having a new bike sitting in your garage that you can’t use. Especially you have new shit on it that makes the whole thing feel brand new to you. Lesson learned.