Phase 1 of figuring out the exhaust started months ago, mostly trying to suss out if I wanted to tackle something bonkers like bending my own custom pipes. If access to the Makerspace hadn’t vanished, I might have considered that. This was definitely a case where reality held sway, but here are some shots of what I was contemplating.
First off, this is the stock exhaust. I shot these a couple years ago when the bike was blue. That huge tail pipe just had to go. For one, I didn’t really dig how it sounded, it kinda ‘whistled’ in a weird way. I’m by no means a billion-decibel-pipe kinda guy, but something a little more motorbike-ish would be nice.
One thing I thought might be kinda cool is if I could change it up and drop it across the top of the engine, then down to the stock mounting bracket. Sort-of scrambler-style. I mucked around with some PVC to see how that might work. Again, this was really early in the build process – heck, the battery is still in place!
It was an interesting exercise, but like I said, I lost access to the place that could have made it possible. Well, that and I decided it was probably a bridge too far for my skill level (aka, none where exhaust systems were concerned). I picked up a cheap black tailpipe, also early on, but it was literally a straight pipe with a groovy shape. No baffles at all, and just toooo friggin’ loud.
I did know I wanted to wrap the header pipe, so I picked up some pipe wrap and set to work. You soak the stuff in water for a spell, then do as tight an overlapping wrap as possible. It went pretty quick and I liked the results.
I spent a little time pouring over the forums to figure out what my options were for a replacement tail pipe. The general consensus was that a used Harley Dyna pipe worked perfectly, and the mounting hardware lined up with our bikes real nice. I poked around on eBay and found a nice shiny one for around $30. It arrived and I tried bolting everything up for test-fitting and discovered that when I slipped the new tail pipe over the header pipe, it wedged up hard against the mounting bracket, and not in a good way. The tailpipe also was basically going to be spitting exhaust all over the rear brake linkage, which it didn’t do before. This was a puzzlement.
A little more digging and looking at the old pipe revealed something I’d missed. There was a slight (word on the street was 10 degrees) bend in the front end of the stock pipe, allowing the whole thing to line up properly. My new setup didn’t have such a bend. Hmmph.
Ok, situation noted, but at least I could wedge everything together to see how it would work. I’ll come back to the final solution later, as at this point I was chomping at the bit to see if this bastard would ACTUALLY fire up.
Due to the new pipe and the new air filter, some work on the carb must happen ASAP, so that became the next priority.