Exhaust. Sigh. If I say thinking about how to do this was exhausting, will I be stoned to death for a poor punster? Anyways, the old exhaust pipe was friggin’ enormous as shown back on page 24:
The existing mounting bracket by the rear wheel lines up nicely (as it should) with the angles and mounting points on that monstrous tailpipe. My intent was to use it as-is, since that’s supposed to be why Savage riders pick this particular Harley Dyna pipe I got my hands on.
Well – I’m assuming it wasn’t working because there needs to be a roughly 10 degree bend from the end of the header pipe into the tail pipe. As mentioned before, that bend is integrated into the stock pipe, so I had to come up with a solution. A lot of folks talked about heading down to their favorite exhaust shop and having them bend a little piece of pipe for just such a purpose. I contacted a couple/three shops in my area, and none of them were very keen on the idea for some reason. My gut says that they were probably swamped with real business and it wasn’t worth their time. As of writing this page it’s Dec. 20, 2020 and I had first reached out to folks in August. I think an awful lot of folks were getting work done on vehicles in the middle of pandemic-mode since they weren’t actually USING vehicles so much.
But I digress. If I couldn’t get something made, I had to come up with another idea. I kept test fitting the pipe and eyeballing some math when it occurred to me I -ought- to be able to cut a slot in the end of the header pipe, use the metal I didn’t cut as a sort-of hinge, pull the pipe end to the proper angle and weld up the seam. I’ve gotten (maybe too) comfortable with the idea of ‘go for it and figure out something else if it fails’. I figured worse case, if I completely botch it, a used header pipe isn’t that expensive.
I did my best to figure out how wide the widest part of a slight “V” cut I needed to make with my cutoff wheel, and exactly where the ‘hinge’ needed to be to kick the pipe slightly down and slightly away from the bike. Here’s what I ended up with:
The only issue was that my calculation of where the ‘hinge’ needed to be to work perfectly was too close to the top, it needed to be way more to the back. The result was a big gap on the back. The intent is to weld it up and fill in the gaps, but I felt anything I could do to make the gaps smaller would be wise. So, I measured around the pipe from one end of the slot to the other, cut a thin strip of steel to length, bent it on the vise over a wooden dowel rod that was close to the right diameter and then gently started shaping it with a flap disc to get as tight a fit as I could.
I was actually kind of surprised how well this seemed to be working. I called up Mike and asked if he had any time for me to run over to his garage to do the deed with high voltage and molten steel.
It came out better than I hoped! I took it home and spent some time grinding it down and hitting it with some of the high-temp paint for rust protection. Once it was dry I did a test fitting, and it was friggin’ perfect!
All this aside though – it -still- didn’t line up with the existing mounting bracket without either bending it (which was basically not possible) or just not using it at all and coming up with something completely different. Upon closer inspection, the mounting socket on the pipe itself lined up with the very front end of the bracket – it was the rest of the bracket that was useless. Time for another executive decision. With a “Devil-may-care” grin, he reached for the cutter…
I was going to figure out how to cannibalize one of those rubber grommets as a vibration dampener, but it turns out 20 year old grommets are more than a little brittle. I picked up a 2″ carriage bolt to slip into the channel on the exhaust-pipe mounting socket, drilled a hole through the stub left from cutting off the old mount, and voila!
Test-fitting worked great. Two last things to do. First, the pipe itself -used- to have a little ‘bulkhead’ about 1/3 down the tube from the engine end. Apparently a lot of riders like to knock those out to make the pipe louder. I rather enjoy doing quiet-ish rides down country roads and don’t feel the need to be as friggin’ loud as this new pipe was as-is. A little research revealed that you can buy ‘freeze plugs’ or ‘expansion plugs’ used in engines (and other places) as a tight seal designed to fail if, for example, fluid freezes and expands inside something it should be expanding in. I didn’t read a whole bunch on their proper uses, but it turns out a freeze plug designed for a 1 1/4″ ID pipe fits PERFECTLY in a Harley Dyna pipe.
I used a couple foot long 1″ wooden dowel rod, balanced the plug concave-side down on the end of it, then lowered the pipe down over this precarious setup. It worked pretty well after a couple attempts. I then flipped it over and tapped the thing firmly against the concrete floor until there was a sort-of ‘snap’ sound. And bingo. I have a new baffle.
The other thing – there’s a little bit of a gap between the outer diameter of the end of the header pipe and the inner diameter of the muffler. The common cheap-ass solution is actually quite effective. Get a can of vegetables, soup, whatever, empty it, clean it and cut it so you have a strip of the part of the can that has the corrugations. Figure out what your total length is, and cut a 45 degree angle on each end so they ‘overlap’ when you wrap it around the header pipe. Then slip the muffler over this new ‘seal’ and tighten the clamp. I’ll get a photo of this soon…
But in the end, I’ve got myself a solid new exhaust system!
