Quote:
Originally Posted by Weldangrind
There's the last piece of the puzzle. See the bulge in the exhaust pipe, under the chrome heat shield? A catalytic converter lives in there. It needs a lean mixture to function properly, so a blast of air is introduced that goes from the air box, to the control valve and then into the cylinder head. The point where air is introduced into the head is just above the heat shield; it is a black tube that becomes a flange which is held in with two bolts.
To respond to your original question, yes, the two highlighted green areas in your first pic are meant to be connected with a hose. It doesn't hurt the air injection system at all to remain as is, except that unfiltered air could eventually damage the valve. As well, if the fitting at the bottom of your air box is after the filter, you're drawing unfiltered air through that hole into the engine (not good in dusty conditions).
The truth is that most of us delete the catalytic converter to free up some power. Once it's gone, you have to delete the air injection system, or you'll get a crazy loud back-fire every time you let off the throttle. Deleting it means discarding the control valve, the hose and the tube with flange. You then have to fabricate a replacement for the flange to seal the hole. Finally, you have to change the two carb jets and adjust a bit. None of this is a big deal; there are plenty of folks hanging around this shop to guide you. Such changes will increase top speed a bit.
It's not necessary to make any changes. If you're happy with how it runs now, just replace the missing hose and enjoy the bike for what it is.
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Thank you so much for your time, patience, and expertise on this. It's good to know all that information as I have another carb laying around that I intend to install when I want a little more power from this ride. But for now I am probably going to just ride it the way it is as I don't do much dust riding