| Author | Message | ||
     Microchop |
Hey guys. While washing the XB today I noticed that the front strap broke (at the nut, which is now gone. It has never been reused, maybe I caught a speed bump with it.) I have seen how the Drummers mount and I am considering welding mounting tabs to my muffler to eliminate the miserable Torca Clamps. Comments? Also, I would like a little more noise, but not a lot and since I have to fix a ding in the bottom of my muffler, I thought about opening it up and partially sleeving one of the baffle tubes with an undrilled pipe. Has anyone seen this before? Thanks! | ||
| Blake |
DANGER! WARNING! STOP now before you doom yourself to a broken muffler/mount, injury or even death. I am not exaggerating. PLEASE Keep the strap. The Drummer SS and CF models are more than ten pounds lighter than the stock muffler and include a big beefy billet bracket and beefy end cap to which the bracket mounts. Also, welds impart residual stresses and are prone to cracking and fatigue failure. Unless your XB doesn't vibrate, welding on a muffler support bracket is a doomed experiment. The engineers at Buell came up with the strap mounting scheme for a very good reason. Just ask any of the folks who have dealt with muffler front mount and header failures on their tube frame Buells. The numbers are legion. I also think that without knowing exactly what you are doing, you will be asking for problems if you start messing around with the exhaust tract configuration. The EFI mapping is very sensitive to the effects of a modified exhaust tract. I'm not saying that you'll end up killing your engine, just that you'll likely find that with added noise will come some less than desirable performance somewhere in the operational range of the engine. Performance and reliability wise, a ding in the bottom of the stock muffler is not something that requires repair. If it were me, I'd buy a new strap, mount it up good and proper, and ride.  | ||
| Ridrx |
+1 | ||
| Microchop |
Duly noted. My strap broke right at the end of the nut. Is that normal? Harley dealers in my area need 7-10 days to get a strap...too long. Are any of the suggested alternates acceptable? Mcmaster-carr has some good candidates from what I can tell. It turns out my "ding" is actually a hole, so it will need a repair. In regards to the exhaust sleeving issue: no, I don't know exactly what I am doing, but I thought I'd run it by the board. Thanks for your input. |
