Louder Exhaust Question

I was wanting my KZ550 a little louder. I don't expect it sound like a big Harley or anything, but a little louder would be nice. My buddy told me to just drill some holes in the back of my 4 into 2 exhaust. I dont know about that. Would that mess anything up? Would it even add enough sound to worry about? I plan on redoing the exhaust one day. But, what can I do for right now?

If you have a decent set of stock exhausts, I would not screw them up. They are worth a lot of money to bike restorers. Even more than a new set of aftermarket headers.

As to your question, drilling the rear plate of the muffler will make it a little louder and probably screw up the performance some.

Why make it louder.Nature doesn't like it,And they used to inforce noise levels until those Lousy Harley twurps scared them from keeping the piece. Stock 4-2 has a good sound and better left that way. Stock Rocks

I'm pleased to see you exercised good judgement in asking for a second (3th, 4th, etc.) opinion before drilling holes in a perfectly good stock exhaust system. I'd say if you want more noise, wait until you can buy an aftermarket 4-1 pipe, but don't wreck the stock exhaust. As others have said, if the stock pipes are good they are more valuable than aftermarket pipes, but once you drill holes in them they're worth practically nothing. If you really feel like you must have a louder bike you may want to pick up a cheap 4-1 used pipe from eBay to see how you like the sound and performance before you pay for a new pipe. If you end up buying new you can always resell the used pipe, but if you don't like the noise you can switch back to stock. You can always cash in the stock pipe on eBay if you decide to stick with a 4-1. Ed

Get a used exhaust off e-bay and drill away... Everyone here has provided clean advice, don't ruin a perfectly good set of exhaust! Especially just to make it louder

Also, what you're most likely to find is as follows...

Once you start doing exhaust modifications then the carbs will most likely need tweaking for sure and pending the mod extent, you may even have to re-jet to get the engine to run correctly.

All in all, what good is it if it sounds loud and bad but doesn't go anywhere (accelerate) when you hit the throttle.

Kinda like all these kids you see these days where they put big old exhaust on their cars... Sounds like a race car...eeeeeeeewwwwwwwww, wow, but the car is still going 45mph.... :blink: