Time to be heard
Since the day I bought my Futura I have been thinking about it. It’s very nice to be able to ride the bike without disturbing other people. Yes, loud bikes make people mad and upset instead of saving lives. How many times did you wake up at night when some jackass on a Harley with open pipes passed by, sounding like he has no mufflers at all?
However don’t you hate it when the bike sounds gutless? Aprilia Futura is one of these 1000 cc race bred V-Twin bikes that sound like Zinger. Run the throttle wide open, and it still sounds like it has no balls. Try to attract some attention by blipping the throttle while spliting lanes and nobody hears you coming. The fact that Sideout got Futura with Taylormade exhaust didn’t help the matter. It was time to pull the trigger.
Futura comes stock with pretty restrictive and heavy catalytic converter. Luckly, AF1 Racing makes “H- pipe”, it’s direct bolt on replacement for the catalytic. It shaves a couple pounds off the bike while letting it breath better.
This is where a got lucky. My original plan was to order H-Pipe and modify stock mufler, gutting it out and filling it with straight cores surrounded by muffler packing. I didn’t want to change the look of the exhaust since I believe it plays important role in bike’s design. To my dismay I found out that the H-Pipes are no longer produced. In desperate attempt I placed wanted ad on AF1 Racing forum. Couple days later I was in contact with the fellow Futura owner who was selling his H-Pipe along with the muffler ALREADY MODIFIED exactly the way I wanted. Did the stars align my way or what?
UPS devilered the box Friday afternoon, and few hours and six pack of cold Foster’s later the exhaust was installed on my bike. This is what V-Twin is supposed to sound like! First ride this morning revealed that the bike sounds amazing at any RPM, now I can honestly say that Sideout’s Taylormade exhaust is blown away. The only side effect I noticed is slowly fluctuating idle, I’m hoping that it will fix itself once ECU “learns” new conditions.