I saw that the Ear Shave procedure includes replacing the exhaust reed valves with blank plates and/or blocking off the vacuum supply to these reed valves.

As I understand it, these reed valves push fresh air into the exhaust during deceleration. It's part of the emissions system, to burn off any unburned gas remaining in the exhaust.

It seems people remove this system for two purposes:
1. To eliminate backfire/popping
2. To lower exhaust pipe temperature to reduce/eliminate bluing.

I happen to like the backfire/popping sound, and my stock pipes probably turned blue before I started 1st grade. So, is there any other reason/advantage to removing this system?

Thanks!

Just a middle finger to the state of California and every lib on the planet.

No.
I too liked the popping sound (reminded me of my Austin Healy) My stock pipes never turned blue. My take is if it doesn't make the bike faster, why bother?

It cleans up a lot of clutter around the engine. Makes service and cleaning a lot simpler. Losing the airbox (earshave) is the biggest improvement in that dept.

I took off my goats belly when I put my new Harley mufflers on. I removed the hoses from the reed valves and just put on big vacuum plugs with hose clamps instead of getting plates. Doesn't look the best, but my bike still pops on deceleration, maybe even more, and I like it doing that too.

Try playing with the air mixture screws

Sent from my Z899VL using Tapatalk