| Author | Message | ||
     Brandon_m |
First things first, yes, I use incorrect grammar, misspell words, use improper punctuation, take terrible pictures and I'm sure someone else has posted about this before. Here it is anyway. I've heard stories of the carbon Jardine pipes coming apart, but it's been just that, stories. It always goes like this; "My buddy told me that he heard the Jardine pipes have weak rivet points." Or something else along those lines. True, I've never scoured the site to verify this as I'm sure it's happened and someone has posted on it. I'm just saying I've never come across it..... until yesterday. While heading to an evening class, a pick-up in front of me lost a shovel out of the back. No big deal, it happens all the time. Brake then swerve, no problem. That is, until the car behind me decides to pass me at a high rate of speed. The shovel actually came to rest in the adjacent lane. When the car past me and just as I was passing the shovel, he/she knicked it with a tire and literally launched it at me. Not much I could do at that point. Luckily it missed me all together. My bike wasn't so fortunate. It struck the exhaust can, separating the carbon fiber from the endcap.   After getting the bike home, my first thought, concerning the repair of the bike, was to buy a new one or put on the stock exhaust from my other bike. I don't have the money to spend on exhaust right now and I didn't want to put the stock exhaust on so I decided to just park the firebolt and ride the lightning (insert music here). I wasn't fond of that idea either. Can i repair it? I've never dealt with carbon fiber before. What material will bond carbon to aluminum that I wont have to buy in bulk and won't cost just as much as a new pipe? I still have no clue. I figured I'll just glue it back together!! Where's that epoxy? The heck with it, if it holds for the season that'll be great. If not? I'm only out $4. And then!!!! The light came on. Cut out the bad section and stuff it back together. And so I did... I wanted to keep it as close to original length as possible for one simple reason.... The engineers designed it that way for a purpose. I decided to use a chop saw with a metal cutoff wheel to cut it. This should provide a nice clean and square cut. I removed the core, or the baffle screen (call it what you want)and proceeded to shave off about 0.75". The carbon cut very nice. The result was a clean and square cut.  I completely forgot about the baffle core and tried to put it all back together. For some very odd reason it was about 0.75" too long. Weird...  Instead of dragging the saw back out and changing the blade back over, I broke out the pneumatic cutoff wheel. It didn't have to be near as pretty so I hacked it up.  There wasn't much packing left in the can so I figured I'd repack it while it's apart. What was left of the old glass, I pulled out.  After a quick trip to the local Yamaha dealer, $11 later, and a quick glance at the pictures on back of the bag, I went to it.  Cut and packed, ready to secure the endcap. No epoxy, sorry. I've invested this much time so I might as well do it right. The old rivets were still in the end cap so I quickly drilled them out.  The removed the rivet band...  I had originally planned on using the existing holes but after inspecting the end cap I found the holes to be elongated. That turned out to be a good thing. That meant I didn't have to measure, mark, and hope the new holes in the carbon lined up with the endcap. I simply rotated the band an inch and drilled new holes. After each hole I placed a rivet as an alignment dowel. All the holes drilled, band set, time to secure it. And so I did.  Now this is the most critical part of the entire project. I found 2 stickers that came with a different pipe. I couldn't let them go to waste so I applied them to the can. Just so you all know.... bubbles under the sticker increase horsepower, adds precious torque, lowers reaction time, and adds sex appeal. In other words, bubbles are good. Total time was just over 2 hours start to finish.  After mounting and all that boring stuff a test was in order. Sounds like the lighting, I must have dome something right, test complete. (Message edited by Brandon_m on June 25, 2009) (Message edited by Brandon_m on June 25, 2009) (Message edited by Brandon_m on June 25, 2009) | ||
| Bob_thompson |
Good job Brandon, and great pictures. Maybe this will help someone else who at least has to repack his muffler. Nothing like a Buell with a good sound. Bob | ||
| Augustus74 |
Mine was loose on one end, not that bad though. Drilled out rivets, stretched out the old packing (low mileage), and put in new larger rivets. Sounds great. Oh, go to the Jardine website and look for the link, they will mail you a free brandy new sticker.  | ||
| Fastxb12r |
excellent write up.  | ||
| Brandon_m |
I was going to scrap it but then I thought, "What would Bob do?" Well I didn't have the time, the vision, or the materials to fabricate my own custom exhaust so I just did this. It's not quite up to par with yours but it works.  |
