Looks better, but.....

[trbig]

Well,

After three days of scrubbing on the pipes from the nasty, rusty, parts bike, I swapped them with the pipes I had on which were painted the same silver color as I did the head and cylinders in. The mufflers on the painted set were pretty rusted out on the bottom and didn't sound too great any more. So my headers went from this..




To this....




The parts bike pipes looked sooo bad that I was just going to try to swap the mufflers, but I found that the P/O had welded the mufflers (3H7) to the collectors.. grrrr. So out came the Simichrome and the tendonitis.

I think it looks and sounds MUCH better... but it doesn't run nearly as good?!? It idles and everything fine, but when I really rip on it, it doesn't have nearly the power that it had with the pipes that were on it. Do you usually have to re-synch the carbs after something like this?? Should I go for a bigger main jet?? I thought with more back pressure, these bikes were supposed to be faster.. hence the 4 into 1 pipes. Do I just need to settle for better looks and less performance... or go back to the ugly girlfriend that was funner to ride??


Tod



P.S. I threw this last pic in here just for Pro... since he likes to pick the backgrounds apart and there wasn't anything in the other ones to gripe about! lol. Everybody needs six frikkin bikes crammed into their shop don't they?

[SiP]

awesome shop bro'

[TopCatGr58]

Hey Tod,

I can't tell or remember what you had as well as what you now have on there? Did you have 4-2 pipes before, and NOW the new set is a 4-1?

You mentioned though that the PO welded the OLD OEM muffler(2H7) onto the end of the new polished ?4-1? collector set?

That could be part of the problem, in that the OEM muffler doesn't breath as well as the others you had. The increased backpressure was to help the LOW END, but not necessarily the topend! And those OEM mufflers were for only 2 pipes worth of flow, not for all 4!?

The 4-1 with the proper muffler will breath better/scavange better at higher rpms allowing more power there, but "can" drop some of the low end grunt!
T.C.

[prometheus578]

"TRBIG... I'm Impressed!"

Nice shop ya got there.
No nasty comments this time.
Well... seeing how it's Oklahoma and it gets hot there, I won't even make fun of the ceiling fan.

No.. wait... that first picture. What is that there... bottom right?
Don't tell me you're one of those guys that feels they HAVE to drink bottled water!

You almost pulled it off, TRBIG. Just when I was starting to respect you as a man...
Yeah, like you'd know the difference between that and tap water.
Yeah, you're gonna get it now.
I note a Folger's can on the shelf, (hopefully full of nuts and bolts)
You do drink coffee, don't ya?
Or was that can there when you moved in?
Do you boil your "bottled water"... so you can steep your tea bags in it?
What a disappointment you must have been to your family.

[trbig]

Sorry if I made it sound as if I had 4-1 pipes.. I just meant that those type of pipes are supposed to be more performance than the 4-2. These are stock 4 into 2 pipes. The only difference is that these mufflers work, where the other ones were basically rusted out spark arrrestors.. but breathed really well apparently. The mufflers are 3h3.. sorry.. not 3h7 (or 2h7). But this setup has less all around performance... both on the bottom and top end.

So what this setup is on the bike... stock exhaust using '81 mufflers with pod filters and one size up main jets. Does changing the mufflers change the carb synchronization?

And Pro... heck of a try, but the bottled water with the sports squeeze top was used to recently fill up my lawnmower battery. The little squirt spout does great for that. Our water is is terrible. It will calcify all your fixtures pretty quickly... so that's why I just stick with beer! lol. I use filtered water in the batteries though.

The Folgers can IS full of nuts and bolts. I used to drink it regularly, but since they went to the little sissy plastic cans, (Hot grease in them doesn't work out so well) I switched brands. I went back after hurricane Katrina made them go back to the cans.. even wrote and told them I wouldn't buy it if they went back to plastic... apparently my opinion didn't mean much (Sort of like on here.. lol) So... even though I was/am a huge disappointment to my family (Thanks for pointing that out by the way) it wasn't for my use of bottled water.... unless there are hops and barley in there too!

Tod

[HobbyMan]

Nice Job. I have a set of mufflers that you can polish for me if you are still in the mood.... Are both sets of muffs stock? Like you said, the rusty ones must breath better. If you wanted similar performance, maby drill the baffles? It wouldn't hurt to sync the carbs if you have the tools. I do it every time my carbs come off. Hey Pro, I have coffee cans too but they are full of either motor oil or brake fluid.
TRBIG, you know what is better than having six bikes to work on in the garage? Six running, road legal bikes.

[DiverRay]

Pro, this time I'm going to stick up for Tod. Have you tried to drink the liquid they call water in OK, or Texas??? One good drink, and it takes years to get the straw taste out of your mouth! Why do you think they drink so much beer??

[prometheus578]

"Y'all missed yer chance!"

(That's Texas talk)
Why no one made fun of me for incorrectly typing "seep" when I meant "Steep"...
Too late, I changed it.
Truth be told(as I so seldom do...), I immediately figgered that the water was either for the batteries or TRBIG's bladder, due to the high mineral content and it's otherwise undrinkability.
As there was nothing else for me to poke fun at, I took a chance. I figured maybe, just maybe, TRBIG would break down under my relentless pressure and admit to being a bottled water guzzlin' "sissy-boy".
That's ok.
Sooner or later....

[trbig]

So is that what I should do? Drill out the end of these mufflers? Prometheus obviously isn't wise enough to actually help me with any of my problems besides my shamed family and water-boy status... so does anybody know?

I'm assuming it is meant to drill out the ends of the mufflers shown here





Is this the only option? How much does it change the sound? How many holes and what size? (Pro can leave that one alone too!) I hate to take some decent mufflers and go drilling holes into them, but it really has decreased the performance considerably.


Tod

[wingnut]

To drill or not to drill.....

Trbig, I have a set of stock mufflers on the 650XJ that the PO drilled out the end plates. 4 3/8 holes in each. It dose make it sound louder but I really don’t think it helps the performance all that much. It’s the brother in-law’s bike so he gets to make the decision to plug them or not. It also makes tuning the idle a little harder. The 750 triple we did last winter had drilled out mufflers and I could not get it to idle pretty. It had about a dozen ¼ holes in each pipe. We made SS plates which we JB wielded and pop riveted on giving us only the stock outlet, made the bike nice and quite and lo and behold the idle adjustment came right in. If you drill them you can go back if its not what you want.

[DiverRay]

My '78 I had drilled four 1/4" holes in each muffler. it was just a little louder, but helped on the top end. I spaced them at 12, 3, 6, and 9 O'clock.

[SiP]

I'm just about to fit my new 4 - 1 so I'm interested to see what happens now.
Oh and I'm never posting a pic of my shop as I don't think I could handle the abuse

[trbig]

Four 1/4 inch holes in the exhaust did the trick! I am not exagerating a bit when I say that I bet I lost 10-20% of my power before the holes were drilled... and I was getting a lot worse gas mileage. I can now visit Wheelie-ville again when wanted! Plus the top end is back also.

It is a bit louder.. I liked it the way it WAS sound-wise.. but the snap is back in the throttle now... revs very quickly and drops off quickly. Problem solved guys... thank you.

Tod

[HobbyMan]

I thought you were taking it easy on those new bearings? Btw: what jets are you running in your carbs? couple over stock for pods and exaust?

[trbig]

Just one size up from stock. It had 112.5 mains, and I went up to a 115. This is still considerably smaller than the XS carbs, but my pilot jet is also a lot bigger. I originally went up three sizes to a 120.... way too much. These new pipes don't seem to be changing colors yet, so hopefully it's close... but I have been riding in the rain lately. It's hard for the metal to get hot enough to change while it's getting a bath.

Tod