I’ve been tearing my hair out over my Nightster pinging when hot and under load. 

I’ve tried sticking with BP ultimate over the shit I get from my local Servo with little benefit, and I chucked a set of high compression screaming eagle plugs in which made the biggest difference but yesterday on my way home from work (particularly hot day) I wound it on in 5th to overtake and it was worst that I’ve ever heard. I’m at the point where I don’t want to ride it until it’s sorted, but it’s my main transport. 

When I picked the plugs up I had a chat with the tech at my local HD dealer, and as I suspect from what I’ve read, it more than likely needs a new map with maybe more fuel or a timing adjustment. 

I’ve got a Screamin Eagle tuner and I’d rather get the issue ironed out myself and learn something rather than handing over hundreds or more to the dealership.

Aside from the pinging, it runs really well, starts up super easy everyday and pulls through the RPM’s smoothly so I’m hoping it’s only a minor adjustment and I can sort it with the help of some knowledgeable forum members. 

 If anyone has any advice on where to start, it’d be much appreciated. 

if it is pinging under load, I would shift back a gear to 4th gear.

a few other things you could check, check cranking pressure see how high that is, and if you can check AFR under load see what that is.

Looking on the VCI it’s tuned for a 1275 kit, flat top pistons, 570 jackhammer cams, port and polished heads and intake manifold and 2 into 1 exhaust, the tuner is a screamin Eagle pro street tuner. It’s also got a bit of a dodgy chain drive setup at the moment which I’m about to revert back to belt temporarily, could it be possible that the gearing is too tall and asking too much of the engine? 

Also probably worth mentioning that the plugs were pretty white, I had the pipe off to have cracks and mounts welded up and noticed the inside of the headers and the exhaust ports were also white. 

Ok so I plugged in the VCI and straight away this stood out to me, I’m no mechanic but the red highlights seem to be right around where I’m hearing the ping, or at least I’m guessing so because I don’t have a tacho, I was going to adjust these numbers, they’re all at their maximum potential figure, they can only be decreased so I’m assuming that is less air in the ratio but I’m starting to feel like I’d be better off leaving it to a pro... 

I can only assume it has all the hardware that the VCI is tuned for, but I told my friend who is a mechanic about the dyno figures and he also said they’re pretty underwhelming for the alleged configuration so maybe the whole shit fight needs a good going over. There’s a lot of guess work involved at the moment because I have very limited info, I had no idea it had the work done when I bought it, which is odd that old mate wouldn’t tell me, I guess it’s a selling point for some but a deterrent for others. I never really asked anyway, I just assumed it was mostly standard. 

I’d also rather not making the situation any worse than what it is, and I’m thinking if I start playing with the AFR without knowing what I’m doing I could potential fuck something up. 

I’m not in melbourne, I’m far north coast NSW, I’ve been told of a local guy who is apparently pretty handy at dyno tuning, he does a few ASBK bikes apparently so I think that’s my next port of call. 

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply and help out, it’s much appreciated! 

Let me guess, this bike was tuned by a rotary tuner in melbourne?

I won't name names but not hard to figure out. The term "ping is power" comes to mind ;)

I don’t know enough about mechanics or engine tuning but that was my assumption, they’ve got the thing highly strung to push out impressive figures which doesn’t actually interest me, I didn’t buy a sportster to race or set landspeed records. 

So The local ASBK bloke wasn’t interested in tuning it because he doesn’t like Screamin’ Eagle tuners and is already overloaded with jobs apparently. His best offer was to look at my AFR table and give me advice for 100 bucks. Yeah, no thanks. 

So I went with a mob up the coast called Karupt Kustomz who are HD specialists, they seem to know their shit, are avid Harley riders and enthusiasts themselves and seem like a cool crew of guys. 

I went up on a bad day, it was raining torrentially most of the way up and it hung around the whole time I was up there, they advised they’d do the best they could but they couldn’t test ride in the rain, it needed a complete new map, they didn’t want to even try adjusting the original as they said it was so far out it could potentially cause damage. So I said yep, go for it. 

4 hours or so on the dyno and we’re done, figures are roughly the same so I’m happy, As soon as I hit the starter I could hear the difference and I was pretty excited to get out and give it heaps, snapping the open throttle it sounds crisp and clean, ‘Fuck yeah!’ I thought and went off up the road spinning the wheel through the rain with a huge smile on my face. In the cooler conditions I wasn’t expecting it to ping if it would at all and I was pretty confident from how different it sounded and well it rode that the problem was solved. 

But after going for a ride a few weeks ago up north a bit where the temps were edging towards 30, I heard it again loading it up in 4th gear climbing burringbar northbound doing about 100kph and my heart sank, it’s only very, very minor but It’s there and I’m damn tired of chasing these problems, I just want to put the miles down. 

Bummed to say the least but I’ll get there. Booked in for next week. Just going to have to continue riding it very carefully in the meantime. 

In my mind and experience you  need to change your riding style to match the bike build.  You cannot lug a race engine like a tourer as the builds and cams are totally speced for different things.

also I don't care how many HP they make , it's how quick they make it!! but it's Torque I can always feel. by the way I've got 230 pound cranking on my carb sporty no problems but never been on Dyno as yet, will be soon.

your bike looks good.

Also you could probably solve the high cranking pressure with a cam change, as I said I have high cranking pressure too but I love it! I have always had high cranking pressure on my Harleys just have to use good fuel & ride to suit. but they grunt!!