If you have Stock Jets, You'll be fine with the K&N. If you have it Dynojetted or any other size jets in there, or the needles are shimmed or there's been holes drilled in your slide (If you don't know about these things, you will in a couple weeks after tinkering around with your bike) then you need to get rid of that air filter. When you swap Air filters, you shouldn't have to adjust your jets. It only comes into play when you're dealing with performance pipes, like those yoshis, and when you have an aftermarket air filter. A good thing to find out is whether or not the bike has been jetted. From my experience, a jetted bike with the K&N air filter will stumble a lot. It feels like there's no power across have of the powe band. Laggy response times. And of course, popping on decel. LOTS of popping.

 

Usually you end up with a fairly large dip or hole in the power band when you run one.

Some folks have made them work but on average they cause more problems than any gain.

 

No, you're trying to pull it away from it's stock settings. The stock air filter will run good though with aftermarket pipes and a jet kit though. Some people on here believe it to be the best, and usually switch back to it. I'm currently happy with my BMC, I can feel the difference, hear the difference, see the difference. I ran with a K&N for a year. Then when I did my jets, bleh. The bike ran like garbage. Now it's a super beast with a different air filter.
Like I said, if your bike is Jetted, swap the airfilters. It's worth it.

 

Well, so far this thing seems to (cliche here) pull like a locomotive from 3500rpm and up, but I haven't had it up near redline much -- I just haven't had the opportunity yet. I'll likely ride it as is for another couple weeks and then just swap in the stock filter when I'll have more miles under my belt to compare it to.

Besides that, I'm still at the point where just standing in my garage and looking at it is rewarding.

 

Well to give you something to compare with, my bike will pull cleanly from 2k in any gear.

 

Wait till you start doing your own mods.
I stared at mine last night for over an hour.
Feels good doesn't it? haha

 

Between my GPz750 and this, I also had a 2004 V-Strom 650 for a short while. Fantastic all-around bike, but it just didn't do it for me. Sold it about a month ago; money started to burn the proverbial hole in my pocket, and then I casually begin reading about Superhawks. Then craigslist searches .... From "just looking" to "new owner" didn't take long. I suspect the same will be the case with mods.

 

Well, that's something. I wouldn't say it doesn't pull cleanly, but the torque really jumps at 3500. Definitely will experiment with the stock filter, though, since I got that with the bike too.

 

The fact you feel a "jump" is an indication that you are coming out of a hole in the torque curve, should be just a steady constant build up.

 

Thread derailed. Not that I care, it's just that now I feel bad answering the original question, like nobody will care.

I bought my 98 FireStorm with 52k for $600, plus a battery and DMV fees.