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OEM 4-4 exhaust vs Cycle X 4-2-1

The Cycle X exhaust got rusty sitting for a few years so I decided to take them off and paint them with some high temperature exhaust paint.  While they were off, I decided to try the original 4 into 4 exhaust to remind myself what the performance was like with the original exhaust.

After struggling for a while to get the exhaust on the left side of the bike, I realized that I needed to put the center stand back on in order to get the side stand out of the way to install the pipes.

After finally getting everything connected I took her out for the first time to go to work the next morning.

My first impression was I had much less power.  Snapping the throttle did nothing much until the RMPs got over 6k RPM and it feels like the idle speed is a little too low like the engine is struggling to stay running.  I don't like the performance loss but the 4 pipes out the rear kinda look really cool.

I also noticed the rattling noise I used to have around 4-5k rpm was back. Not sure what part of the these pipes are loose or if it's internal.

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