The bike came with these enormous chrome mufflers. I’m sure someone thought they looked good, and I’m sure they were de-rigeur a few decades back. But they’re just not to my liking.
I did a bunch of research through the Australian Design Rules and discovered that a 1982 motorbike needs to comply with the rules of 1982 – which means that its exhaust noise is not allowed to exceed 100dB. That’s plenty loud, and around 4 times louder than the current 94dB allowed. I decide to go with some shorty mufflers.
After messing about with trying to fit them onto the existing rusty old pipes, I sent them out to get new stainless straight pieces welded on, to replace the dinged up straights.
I guess some previous owners dropped the bike or otherwise hit rocks – who knows.
I pop riveted the mufflers onto the new stainless pipes, made a couple of hangers from some shiny chromed steel bits I had lying around the workshop – drilled and bent them to shape, and added a couple of plumbing brackets to hold them to the frame. No welding (that’s a no-no according to the same Design Rules that I leveraged for the noise levels) so I had to be creative.
Of course, no self-respecting café racer or brat bike would be seen without fibreglass pipe wraps. I discovered this stuff is NASTY on the hands, so I got serious gloves to work with it.
The accepted wisdom is to wet the wrap, and wind it tightly from the cylinder head down… but nobody tells you that the damn thing is always 6 inches too short… and that you have to take 3 tries at getting it just right, unravelling and starting again.
In the end it worked fine. I was concerned that I’d got grubby fingerprints on the pristine white wraps, but that concern evaporated after a few rides – it all evens out to a slightly burned patina!
Davo's Weekend Workshop 