Hey everyone... well, I finally did the Short Mod to my exhaust, and this is the story...
After getting my FZR in March of this year, I was very happy with it. I loved the exhaust (stainless oval Scorpion pipe). It's the second aftermarket pipe I've had on a bike, but the first one that was actually good (first was made by my friend for my Kinetic GF170, and just really sucked).
Everything was good until I got back to the office one day, and found my bike had been carelessly knocked over by a dumb cager. The exhaust took the brunt of the damage, and to this day has had a nasty dent right in the middle of the can. More recently, I put my bike down the road, and it got a bit more scraped up, so I got to thinking about doing something to fix it up, or at least make it a bit more presentable - Read: Rugged to go with the rest of the bike.
Tools used:
Pic #1:
- Random Angle Grinder
- Falcrest Diamond disc dry (for bricks and concrete, but it works fine on stainless steel exhausts) - for angle grinder
- Flat screw driver
- Hammer
- Rubber mallet
- Rivet Gun and rivets
- Corded Drill (cordless ones don't work)
- Small centre punch
- Electrical tape
- Permanent marker
- Measuring tape
Bike without exhaust.
Pic #2: Exhaust marked for death - rivets already removed and end cap taken off.
- I removed the rivets by grinding them away with a standard grinding disc with the angle grinder, although the correct method is to use a corded drill and drill out the rivets. After one of the above have been done, use the hammer and flat screw driver to remove whats left of the rivet, and then with the hammer and centre punch, knock the remainders of the rivets through into the can (don't worry, you'll get them out after the end cap is off).
I've measured and marked where I want to cut the exhaust with duct tape, followed along with permanent marker (cause duct tape melts away at high temp), and then quickly followed over with the angle grinder just to get an indent line before doing a final cut of the exhaust skin.
Pic #3:
A picture of the end cap
Pic #4:
Using the angle grinder with the 'dry' diamond disc, I've followed the line, and cut the skin of the exhaust and then pulled it off the exhaust. You've now got a bunch of fibreglass wrap staring at you... If you aren't already, you'll want to be wearing gloves cause fibreglass splinters suck ass.
I found the easiest thing to do was just carefully cut the fibreglass wrap all the way through to the perforated tube, I then just folded the f-g wrap up and put it out the way.
Pic #5:
With the fibreglass wrap out of the way, cutting the perf tube wasn't difficult. The only problem between this picture and having the end cap on is if your end cap has a rise inside it... I had to pull out a jig-saw, and cut about 2cm more of the perforated pipe. Once that was done, the end cap fitted nicely.
You'll now want to remark the holes for riviting the trim back on around the exhaust. Unfortunately I don't have a corded drill, so I couldn't re-attach the trim, so I'm going with the "fit the end cap in just past the skin, and hammer the skin with a rubber mallet until it folds around the end cap method" (do at your own risk)
Pic #6:
Rear end view of the exhaust (look at the pretty 54 tooth rear sprocket)
Pic #7: Next post
Side view of my bike with the shorty exhaust. When I do a tail chop, it'll look good.
Pic #8: Next post
Front view... the exhaust still seems long, even though I've removed 16cm from the exhaust... It has gone from 40cm to just 24cm, and on the road, it still sounds good, but just slightly more aggressive coming up to the redline.
Hope this helps anyone that is wanting to do the same.
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Originally Posted by megageoff76
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