As a result of
http://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/ne...eply&p=1405078
Here is what I did:
Basically from all the research I did for this mod, it seems that the easiest and best thing to do is remove the last baffle plate from the mufflers. i should draw a diagram to explain it clearly, but imagine there are 3 chambers in the muffler, so the exhaust goes from each of the headers, to the appropriate muffler, then hits a baffle and the only way past the baffle is thru a small pipe into the next chamber. From there it repeats this process, with the last baffle being the one you can see when you take off the shiny covers on the exhaust tips, i.e. the back of the muffler is the last plate and the exhaust has to hit that then go out the smaller pipes.
What i did is cut off the back of the muffler, thus we eliminate that last chamber. this makes the exhaust nice and throaty but not tooo loud, and apparently it doesn't change the exhaust characteristic too much from factory because we are not making big changes to the backpressure and flow and so on.
The other exhaust mods i have seen involves putting a long bit of pipe down the muffler and beating the crap out of the middle baffle until it breaks off......another one is to drill out that middle baffle. I didn't like the sound of either, then i came across this mod and decided it was the one for me as it is easy, cheap, requires no welding or even removal of the mufflers.
1. remove license plate and plate light, WOF holder etc.
2. remove the exhaust rear mount bolts (one each side from inside under the pillion seat) - take care to support exhaust before this point (use a helper or some string to hold it up, you can see i used an old chair.)
3. loosen the 2 bolts on the exhaust header pipe where the pipes go under the engine
4. now you should be able to swing the exhaust down, it will be rotating down on the loosened joint from step 3. you might want to remove the rear mudguard, i just squeezed the exhaust past it as it is soft and flexible enough to do this. Also in the pix you can see i cut down the mudguard while i was at it.
5. support exhaust in this position so that it doesn't strain the pipework.
6. remove exhaust end caps and heatshields
7. hacksaw or angle grind the ends off the exhaust - hacksaw is not actually that difficult you just need a couple of good blades.
8. clean up the ends of the pipes - also in my research i read that there is no danger of metal filings going into the engine, as there is a catalytic converter and the other chambers of the muffler in the way, also the exhaust wants to blow any bits out. note that you might want to be careful about sticking your face behind the exhaust for the first few mins of running after doing the mod - you don't want metal filings being shot at your face!
9. I actually painted the ends of the pipes black so they didn't look so obviously modded, but then the paint burned off and they got all black with soot after a few runs anyway.
10. reassemble heatshields and endcaps. note that one of the 3 endcap mounts is now gone - we cut it off in step 7. but there are still 2 more, and the endcaps aren't exactly heavy or under strain. i read that some people epoxied on a nut or similar for the 3rd screw.
11. swing exhaust back up and remount with the bolts under the seat, and tighten the middle pipe bolt from step 3.
12. check to see which bits you have accidentally left off, swear a bit, go get a beer, then fix it!
13. start her up and enjoy that V4 noise!
If you wanted to go further you could drill out the next baffle(s), or open the mufflers along a weld and and gut them then reweld.....
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