| Author | Message | ||
     Geforce |
Is one of our dear own "Odie" with his magic hands going to be able to save us the trouble? I am just really flustered at the exhausts made right now. None of them seem to really match up well with the bike. And I am sick of exhausts with packing. I just want a chambered exhaust, similar to stock, slightly louder and with better outlets. Anyone feel my pain here? Stock can and design is good, needs a bit more volume, and some stylish outlets. I can't afford the $1000 + or - for some of them. I can afford $250-300 for modding my stock one. | ||
| Xb9er |
I'm with you on this. I think the stock can just "fits" the bike. If I could get some more bark out of it well that would be just great. | ||
| Geforce |
Thank you! I'm done with my D&D Exhaust. It's just crazy. I have a hardly used stocker that needs some sweet outlets and a little bit of thunder...not to much. Just a little. | ||
| D_adams |
I'm working on it. Just got the stainless primaries and 2 1/2" mid-pipe and will order the muffler either this week or next. Polished SS pipe/muffler for under $500 can be done. I have a tig welder if you're just wanting to cut/re-weld the stock tips or even put something different on it. Someone else here cut the tips and angled them out and I think they said they took out the last pipes inside the rear chamber of the stocker. | ||
| Xb9er |
D_adams keep us posted on what your working up. I would love to have something that looks stock until you fire it up. | ||
| Hellgate |
D_A - a full exhaust, or slip on? Pretty sure you're doing a full. Don't forget the bungs for each cylinder.  If it looks good and dynos well I'm a customer! | ||
| D_adams |
Just a slip-on for the present. It will definitely not look stock since it's polished 304 stainless steel. I will be doing my 12k service in another couple of months and will have the headers off then to look into fabrication at that point. The tubing I got for the primary collector is a little heavy ( .080" wall thickness, I know the Jardine was a lot thinner) so I'm looking for other options, but the first one will be made with it. It's just for me at this point, but I also intend for it to last a looooong time. 304 SS tubing should do it. A co-worker asked about titanium tubing, so I may look into that later. It's tougher to do without a mandrel tubing bender, so I have to get pre-bent parts. It's pretty funny now that I look back. I didn't want to spend $1000 or even $1800 on the exhaust made by someone else, but I threw down $1500 for a Miller TIG welder and then had to buy the parts to make my own system. I'm into it all now for about $1800 and I don't even have a muffler in hand yet. Prep work for this is proving to be entertaining. I've got the collector welding jig set up, but I still have other work to do before I do any welding. Back gassing through the jig is the current plan, just need to do some drilling and tapping to set that up, then more stuff for the welder, ie; flow meters, misc fittings for splitting off from the bottle to feed the jig and the welder, etc. If I remember to do it, I'll get some pics of the jig with the pipes sitting on it. I'm starting to hear some grumbling from the wife about how much this is costing to do a custom exhaust. However, I will be able to say that I made it myself and be proud of it when it's all said and done. Geforce, I'm about 3 hours NE of you if you're wanting to do something with your stock pipe. (Message edited by d_adams on October 08, 2009) | ||
| Xl1200r |
Geforce - I have some ideas and some skill on how to better the sound on the stocker, I'm just paraniod that I'll need it someday and won't have one, so I'm hesitant to hack mine up. | ||
| Geforce |
I just googled mapped you. Right up near STL huh? I can do that trip in no time! Don't get me wrong here... I REALLY appreciate the hard work and effort that all the vendors have done to help get us products. I am not at all complaining about their effort to further or provide us with good stuff at a good price. When I got my 1125r one of the few pipes out there for them were Saron, Jardine and D&D. There wasn't much else. I expected the D&D to be loud after hearing their stuff on some of the XBs. When I shelled out the cash for it and it arrived I was amazed at the sound. After a track day...not so much. The looks of most of the aftermarket pipes are not bad at all. But there is something about the stock location that I do like. It hugs the engine nicely and provides a lift point. I do not like the outlets one bit. I am not upset at Buell, it's not a critical thing at all and on the scale of "real concerns" exhaust outlets just don't seem to rank up there. I do think Buell made a great exhaust but for some of us, it is going to need a little tweaking to be perfect. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. This is a picture Dean of what I am looking at doing with the outlets... this pic has been on the board before. I understand the exhaust is wayyyy different than what we have. But look at the outlets...that's the money shot.  I would be happier than a pig in sh!t if we could bring a little thunder to this pipe without killing the stock performance value... I know Odie has one opened up and he is trying to come up with a final say on the reworking of the innards. I wish him the best of luck as well. Dean, even if we get no performance value added over stock...and get a little thunder with sweet outlets... WIN. | ||
| D_adams |
  Original post here. http://www.badweatherbikers.com/buell/messages/290 431/499041.html?1254379533 Something like this is relatively easy to do, or go with different tips for the same idea. There are other options as well, but that was the most recent one I remember. | ||
| Blower1 |
Here are some pics of my modified stock exhaust:    | ||
| Geforce |
Dean do you think the outlets in the picture I posted could be had simply by cutting a nice "chunk o pipe" diagonally across and then welded to the "inner outlets"? | ||
| D_adams |
I think the inner pipes would need to be removed and replaced with an enlarged pipe based on the rearmost baffle/plate. If it's just cut out, it would eliminate the majority of the muffler tubing inside. You'd end up with just a straight 2.5" pipe with no restrictions at all. All this muffler uses is reversion chambers. Amazing design when you actually look at what it accomplishes. Here's some other cutaway pics of what's inside. I do recall someone mentioning that there was a possible performance loss with some of the pipes being cut away though. I'm sure that with some tuning that it could be gained back.    | ||
| Zac4mac |
I tapped into the rear chamber by drilling and Dremeling. I still wanted a little more thump, got a Drummer.   | ||
| Crowley |
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| Crowley |
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| Geforce |
Great pics! Man that thing is crazy busy on the inside. Thoughts... The outlet pipes are connected to a solid pipe that runs down to an elbow. From the looks of it, there is no direct connection to the main exhaust tube that runs down and through the center. So everything is being pushed around and muffled through all that cheese grater piping. I wonder what would happen to the sound, if we just eliminated the outlet pipes that connect on the inside? Or if they were replaced with larger pipes? If the inner outlet pipes were removed all together *solid pipes in the picture that connect directly to the outlets* and much larger custom outlets were attached, surely we could get some sound out of it that way. Would that cause a huge loss of pressure resulting in performance drop as well? Lots of pressure being built up in this system I think. Pretty cool. Is there anyone at Buell we could sweet talk to give us a hint as to what would work, considering they have already tested this sucker and built it? Surely they had some great ideas to add some more sound to it, but that doesn't work when you are trying to keep regs off the build for production. | ||
| Prophet_136 |
i did a simple hole in the stocker after the last chamber and installed a new exit pipe, sounds great and it feels better on the seat of the pants (it was originaly redscuell idea).  | ||
| D_adams |
Three chambers.  | ||
| Geforce |
Is that small enough to fit inside the stock exhaust? Maybe just use that as a housing? Even if you were to build a stainless shroud around that one and make it hug the underside of the engine like the stock one, that would be sweet. What type of outlets are you thinking about for that? | ||
| D_adams |
I don't have the dimensions on that one handy, but I doubt it will fit inside the stock can. I'm thinking that the one above is 4x9x11 or 4x9x14. There were several others I looked at, most were 14" long. Some were 4x9 ovals and the others were 5x8. I think that the spacing is just too tight to really do a whole lot in the amount alloted there. I guess a round muffler could be made to work if it were a multi-chamber design, but the stock can is pretty limited on what can be done internally without totally degrading it's shape and performance. I can weld a lot of stuff, but it would quickly start looking like a frankenstein pipe with all the weld lines on it. Creating a shroud around one of these would be a nightmare if you don't have sheetmetal equipment handy, which I don't have in my garage. It could be done, but I'd guess it would be kinda rough looking. It would also have to be pretty thin to hand shape it. | ||
| D_adams |
Also, I think the main 2.5" tube is directly connected from the header, into a collector, then down the main pipe all the way to the back. Yes, there are holes at the very front of the pipe right at the collector, but I think thats more for scavenging and/or backpressure relief. Flow goes all the way to the back, then reverses back to about 2/3 up to the front again, switches back again in the mid-section and the the 2nd from the rear is like a baffle section for even more noise control. I just haven't quite figured out why the final exit pipes are so damn small. I don't remember the ID on them, but it just didn't look like it's enough. I guess thats one of the many reasons I'm not an Engineer, nor do I have a PHD. It looks like too much work. I'll take the simpler route with a 2-1 collector, straight pipe to a 3 chamber muffler and then out. We'll see how it goes. | ||
| Bob_thompson |
When Buell advertised their 1125R they said something about a Helmholtz chamber muffler as defined somewhat by Wikipedia below: "Helmholtz resonator A Helmholtz resonator is a container with an open hole or neck. It is sometimes used as a passive noise control device. It behaves essentially as a mass-spring-damper system, and its resonant frequency can be calculated". It seems as though when the fine engineers at BMC designed it and has been proven it gave us the most performance while keeping the sound level "within EPA regulations". I do not know if you would be able to obtain similar performance, stock, with any modifications to the stock muffler. It is also proven that additional ECM programming can help any other systems, not stock, including BMC's own beautiful race exhaust. Some aftermarket systems seem to have come real close to, or slightly exceeded stock performance but no longer meet EPA regs. It all seems to be a compromise for your intended purpose. I am satisfied with my system, for my use, but if I were looking for more performance to seriously race I would go in a much different direction and probably ante up for BMC race items. Last word is I enjoyed my endeavor without causing any harm to my engine or bike so enjoy your work but go carefully and use as much intelligence as possible. I have enjoyed all of your various tries at something a little different. Bob | ||
| D_adams |
Well, the collector is machined down now. 1.75" 304 SS mandrel bent tubing, 6" legs. I ended up milling off right at 1/2" on each side to get the right angle. The spacing between the headers on mine is almost exactly 1/2" so I roughed it off until I got where I wanted. Forgot to bring the stuff home from work though, so no pics yet. I still need to finish drilling holes in the jig for back-gas. Maybe tomorrow and then get some pics of the setup. Gotta find me a tubing expander to round out the end of the collector once I weld it. Btw, Bob, I'm having a ball figuring all this stuff out. I'm not a machinist, just a machine repair mechanic for an aircraft company. I have almost 1000 machinists to ask questions on how to do stuff. | ||
| Bob_thompson |
Dean(D_adams), looking forward to following your endeavor. Kinda fun hey? I really like your idea so far and it seems as though you are going slow enough to get things right. I believe a turbo type muffler is the best compromise between performance and sound. I bought the smallest one I could find. A lot of common sense in these things. I was also a machine tech. for a major company until retirement but I pulled from a lot of engine building and automotive tuning in the past. There are just many things that work with all types of engines of all configurations. Very basic engine tuning procedures. It really shows in BMC's fine race exhaust with long primaries, a collector and free flowing muffler(?). I wish I had access to a tubing bender. Mine would have been better but probably needed additional ECM tuning. I might just do that anyways from what I hearing but running real good right now. Have fun and stay focused. Bob | ||
| D_adams |
Small update, got the fixture finished now. Just need to hook up the flow meter off the bottle and run the line to it. Also gotta find me some metal duct tape, looks like aluminum tape.    Hehe, looks like a giant cannon hole, don't it?  | ||
| Geforce |
Dean... NICE! I need to come up there and check all this out. BTW, thanks for calling me yesterday good to hear all the great ideas and projects you have. BTW, if you can figure out the cost to do muffler mods in Bud Light Lime...let me know. I got hooked on that stuff last year at the lake. It's not the greatest beer in the world. It's not not bad for what it is though. Plus it tastes good. (Message edited by Geforce on October 10, 2009) | ||
| Ponti1 |
d_adams...great looking project you got going on there!! (your beer is getting warm) | ||
| D_adams |
It's 37 degrees outside right now, the beer is just peachy, err, lemony, err, nevermind. It's gone now. | ||
| Bob_thompson |
Good looking job Dean. Not so much fun in the cold though. You're well on the way. Keep the pictures coming; I'm sure many will be following your progress. Bob |
