Annoying noise

I have a 2004 road king. I get a annoying noise that sounds like its coming out of the mufflers. It's not the mufflers it happened on three different kinds. Its a noise that sounds kind of like a compression nock type noise at the end of the mufflers. The engine has no unusual or concerning noises of any kind. It sounds normal. I put new hangers on the mufflers, not it. The exhaust fittings are tight. I have the stage one download from Harley, stage one air, a power commander and recently dynotuned. The bike runs great. It does'nt matter if the bike is cold or hot I get the noise. It is predominant when idling, giving the bike a little gas under load and when I'm giving it a little gas while cruising. It seems to go away under higher rpms like 2500 and up. PLEASE help me! dan

Weird Problem! Weird Answer? Do your baffles remove, if so take them out and make sure the fiber is still in tact that wraps them. I had one side of mine give up thought I had a rattle did it worst on the decell my mech said its called an exhaust ping I rewrapped the inner core of the baffle with some fire blanket and no more noise Hope this helps

Tiny

Thanks for replying,
I've had two different pairs of screaming eagle mufflers and still had the same problem. The mufflers that are on there now are V&H oval slip-ons. The sound is not there on decel. Exhaust ping is a pretty good description of the sound though!

I always run premium in the road king. The sixtysixdodge was a slant 225. I don't know what a pie plate is

Noisy harley ?? no way ! your crazy
dodge dude, you gotta make a game out of this or it or some noises will keep you up at night. Lord I know.

The main rule of thumb to always remember is noise travels. you may think you hear it in the mufflers but it may come from farther up the pipe. Check all your brackets. remember the engine moves but the mufflers don't so somewhere the pipes are bending. They can hit the frame. there are a lot of clamps that if not rotated the right way will hit something. The bracket that comes off the starter moter has broken on my once. Keep looking everywhere a long your frame.

Poly Granny ?? Is she the one that makes the pies?
See Chuck, even I got it

Amen to that !!!

When I bought the '95 Sportster (used), the previous owner had replaced the stock gas cap with the flush-mount "aircraft type" & I thought the flip-up lever was rattling @ certain speeds - held it down with a finger but the noise was still there. Then going down the road I laid my left hand down on the back of the gas tank & the noise stopped. Back home I really got to looking & found there was a slight leak from the petcock & the rubber parts of the rear tank mount on the left side were deteriorating from a little bit of gasoline blowing back.

Not long ago I had to pull the exhaust on that bike while changing pegs & foot controls & while I thought I'd lined everything back up, the heat shields for the crossover pipe & the rear pipe weren't exactly right. On the road @ 4500 rpm, I got a rattle that sounded like it was coming from the front of the bike !! What the heck is that ?? New front tire, new brake pads, I know the wheel bearings are good, etc. Crossover pipe heat shield just barely touched the rear pipe heat shield & only @ 4500 rpm. Easy problem to fix - but identifying where the noise is coming from, especially on a bike, is often not the least bit easy.

GOOD POSTS! pie plate . . . awesome! very good chuck! those sorry V&H designer clamps are a joke. 12 lbs torque are you kidding? the factory clamps are the best for sure.
I did notice some noise further up the pipe where there is a strap that secures the header to the frame. i was going over the connections with a mechanics stethoscope trying to detect any exhaust leaks. i will check this out and the other clamps also this weekend.

I had the same little mystery noise on my Eglide for a while, and like you I thought it was exhaust related. But, I found out what it was and have fixed it with two liitle pieces of leather to cushion the contact areas. That is the saddle bags would vibrate against the bracketry, since the conectors that hold the bags on are rubber washered. The rubber washers would compress enough to where the other pieces of the saddle bag would make contact to hard points, then just slipped a piece of leather between them and viola the noises went away. Now if only I can make them go away in my head...

Well, here's an update. I checked the muffler clamp and the hanger where i heard the noise with the stethoscope. Nothing was hitting and nothing i did made any changes. You guys put me on the right trail though. I listened closer and the noise was loud in that area. I put a call in to V&H and their technician
asked me to hit the muffler with my palm when the engine is off. It rattled. He's sending me two new baffles. Thinking back I realized that when I had other mufflers on there i had two other problems that i just fixed recently when i put the V&H mufflers back on. I think these other two problems made a similar sound to what i have now. One was an exhaust leak where the pipe comes out of the rear cylinder. The other one was a weak left muffler hanger that was squeaking.
I'll let you know what happens with the new baffles.

Oh it was the mufflers

I took my V&H ovals off a month ago and took the guts out. At the end of the inner part is a tube that, when inserted back into the outer part, slips over the anther tube on the inside and only the other end has two screws that hold the whole thing together.

So if these two tubes are not tight they .. well... rattle. So I took a rubber hammer and hit the inner a few times to squash it a bit and when I put the whole thing together I had to bang the inner a little to get it to seat, but no more rattles.

I never thought of asking V&H for a new set of pipes
They would probably just rattle too.

how did you go about pulling the baffles out without tearing up the muffler body? When I was trying to find this noise, I tried pulling them (with the screws out of course) and they wouldn't budge.

I have V&H Slash Cuts on mine. Might have to southern engineer a hook that you can stick up inside and get a hold of something give a good pull and twist and they should come write out. Maybe you will have to tap on your hook or on the bottom side of the muffler ( GENTLY NOT HARD) use a rubber hammer I put an old screw driver in a vice and made a hook. The baffles are made of Stainless Steel they wont bend very easy, but the outside shell will.
or you can take the whole thing off and tap it out from the front side.
Tiny

I have the V&H True Duals on mine and when I tried to put the baffles out the right side came right out, but I couldn't get the left one out. I finally got it out by using a bigger hammer and what I found was that when they welded the muffler hanger on the weld pentrated inside the tube and was binding the baffle. I don't know how that got it in, in the first place. Had to grind down the inside to get the baffle to go back in.