go rent a high quality heat gun. find a bike the same as yours without a cat . ride the same distance take heat measurements in all the same places. You will probably have no differences at all I did it with my freewheeler and found my bike was over 5 degrees cooler than the one with no cat. in my opinion all this talk about taking out cats id just a money grab the same as it was when they introduced cats in cars. You never hear about people removing car cats anymore
Gerald,
I have a Tri-Glide. I think the freewheeler may have more air movement around the passenger and rider but I have never ridden one.
In my case it was NOT HD that looked for a "money grab" on removing my cat. In fact HD has to be very careful about this type of thing due to the EPA laws.
As I understand the cat it is basically an "oven" that will ensure unburned fuel emissions gets burned before leaving the exhaust. By design it adds heat. That's it's job. (Unless I'm wrong, I'm not a cat expert).
But because of the EPA rules the bikes are tuned lean to send the minimum about of fuel emissions to the cat. That in itself causes the engine to run hotter than it would with a richer mixture of fuel.
Once the cat is gone that's just the start. You then can change the tune to a cooler burn and the exhaust pipe now has less restriction allowing an extra benefit of improved HP.
In my opinion the heat gun test would need to be compared cat vs. not cat while on the road or "under load".
My experience has been with my 2016 Tri-Glide is a much reduced rider felt heat for mostly my passenger since the heat seems to want to collect at the passengers right leg. I also don't feel as much heat with the cat gone. But beyond removing the cat I've raised the tank and removed the left side air deflector to help get better air flow around the engine. Those things along with floor board extenders can be tried before adding the expense of removing the cat.
In my case the cat had to go before my wife could be comfortable.
The 2017 models may have engineered the heat issue away from the rider and passenger straight off the showroom floor.
They moved the cat, added a fan and I think even added some extra water and/or oil cooling to the design.
I want to try out a 2017 once it's not so cold outside.