New Project: Exhaust Headers

[GLoweVA]

Update

Just thought I'd throw an update out here.
It's been over a month now and almost 1000miles so far and they are GREAT!
I've found that my right boot touches the outside pipe every now and then when shifting and has melted a little rubber to that pipe.
The paint is holding up great too.
Header flanges are still tight.
The only thing I wish we had a little more time to figure out is the center & kick stand clearances.
The rubber damper on the kick stand works fine to isolate that, but the center stand sits right up against the left muffler.
I'm gonna look into lengthening the stop bracket to limit the up travel on the center stand.

Thanks again TC.

For any of you out there that need some replacement headers and don't want to spend an arm and leg for some aftermarket types, TC can hook you up and if you need mufflers, he can make the collectors fit just about anything.
I picked up some free shorty harley slip ons off craiglist 3 weeks ago.
I'd put them on my G, but they won't fit the 2.25" collector that TC fab'd up for my MAC mufflers.

[Rasputin]

Ok I have to ask.... Did you buy collectors or fabricate them? I know you posted a price for collectors but did not catch if you fabbed them yourself or bought prebuilt ones.

[TopCatGr58]

Hey George,

I appreciate the comments and all, but I'm not anywhere near ready for mass producing these things! This was a trial run to see IF it could be done, feasibility, costs, time, as well as fitting parameters, etc.! As I believe Don/Dragon stated was a moderate PITA in doing/making something like this CUSTOM. I was more than glad to be able to help you get a decent system on your bike so you wouldn't burn up your valves and such, and using your bike as a test bed for fitting and performance, but would take much more work to be able to make these to the level of quality that people would expect to shell out good $$ for them!

Ras, I ended up making my own collectors...after viewing the MAC pipes and such, I took a 2.5" to 2.00" standard muffler adapter section, and put it in my vice to bent the 2.5" end into a decent oval that I was able to ram the 2 pieces of 1.5" straight pipe into, and then welded it up using some triangle pieces between the pipes so I wouldn't FLATTEN the pipes "MUCH" after "fitting" / jamming/hammering them into the oval section!

I used the 2.5" to 2.00 adapter because I was expecting to possibly use them for OEM and other slip on/bolt on mufflers that used the 1.75" size. Turned out that his Mac's had a 2.25" I.D. muffler connection, so I had to put a couple of enlarging adapters..2.00 I.D. to 2.00 O.D and then 2.00 I.D to 2.25 O.D. to get it the right size for his mufflers.

I didn't post these, just sent them to Don/Dragon in a PM during a discussion.







Of course, THEN he finds some very nice clean Harley 1.75" mufflers on Craigs list...AFTER we had made/welded/painted the headers for his Macs!! So...like he said, WHEN his Mac mufflers finally rust thru, THEN we can play with the fabricated headers and put them back to the 1.75" outlet size for his shiny chrome H-D slipons!!!!

Who know, by that time I/we might be into making these in SS!?

But for right now, I still need to get some more stock and crank out a bunch of SOFA's and SOFCA's for folks that are interested in getting some!

T. C.