Picked up my '14 Terra a month or so ago and am a little north of 1K miles now. I changed oil around 600 miles and consider her broken in, though I'm not a revvy guy by nature and don't very often get too far past 5,000 RPM. I installed AltRider crashbars and skidplate, a Seat Concepts saddle, and Trackside handguards from Cycle Gear (50% off sale). I pulled the air cleaner and it appeared to be sealing well (and in truth I'm not off-road that much), and so I intend to use an oiled insert of the Uni foam material as a pre-filter, to address the air filter issue. I'll keep an eye on that situation. Anyway, I was wishing for just a bit more of a bark from the exhaust, and decided to pull the baffles and consider a mod. I had tried that once before but given up when the crossed awls were not working to remove the baffles, but it occurred to me that I had another tool perhaps better suited to the task. A common seal removal tool, available at most auto supply parts (I got mine at either Autozone or Advanced, for a prior fork-seal job). Still took a little persuasion, but without great difficulty they both popped out. (Tip: Wear gloves, because the fiberglass packing can become uncomfortable even if you're not trying to mess with it) I wasn't finding any threads relating to drilling out that plug in the end of the baffles, but decided to go ahead an give it a try anyway. I first punched a hole with an awl, and then progressively drilled larger holes up to the arbitrarily chosen end result at 7/16". I don't want it overly loud, and figured I could later re-extract the baffles and either drill them out more, or epoxy plugs inside the recessed ends of the baffles (if I wanted to go back to stock). I started her up (in the garage---it's been raining all day), and I'd say she does sound a bit, but not terribly, more authoritative. Hopefully it will stop raining tomorrow so I can test ride her, to further assess. I'll report back afterwards.
Not sure I see the point of this. You can remove that whole piece. Drilling it only makes it useless as it is no longer a spark arrestor.
My thoughts were; 1) it looks legal even if it's not. 2) No baffle at all might be too loud (for me), and without the baffle I'd need to deal with the fiberglass packing that would blow out, 3) I can easily go back to 'stock' if I so desire, by JBWelding a couple slugs in the recesses where I drilled the holes. That said, maybe I will try it without the baffles. My modification didn't make much difference, I'd say, though I think it's a bit louder than stock. Can anyone testify as to how loud it gets with the baffles totally removed?
