First ride of the season!

[buellosaurusrex]

First ride of the season....threw my newly-repacked race muff (American Sport Bike kit) on the bike, fired it up and went for a short 7-mile jaunt today. Man, it felt good to get back in the saddle!!!

See...www.americansportbike.com

[buellosaurusrex]

Details.....from my own notes. B.Rex

Buell Race Muffler repacking

WHAT THEY GIVE YOU-

1) 1 pre-rolled blanket of insulation
2) Package of steel pop-rivets
3) 1 HSS 3/16 drill bit

WHAT THEY SAY YOU WILL NEED-

1) Electric drill
2) Pop rivet gun
3) High temp RTV

WHAT YOU NEED BUT THEY DON’T TELL YOU-

1) Wooden yardstick
2) Drill press
3) Latex gloves
4) Dust mask
5) Long screwdriver or crowbar, prybar, etc
6) 3/16 pin punch
7) Hammer
8) Rubber or plastic mallet
9) 12” 2X4 cutoff
10) spring loaded center punch
11) 3/16 cobalt or carbide drill bit
12) 3/8 drill bit or countersink
13) Half-round file
14) Coarse sandpaper
15) Scotch-Brite
16) MEK
17) Plastic scraper
18) Scratch awl (optional)
19) Flashlight or droplight

HOW TO DO IT-

First, I don’t recommend using the HSS 3/16 drill bit they give you. The rivets you’re drilling out are steel and the bit is not up to the job. Likewise, the hand drill they recommend is barely useable. Start with a new cobalt drill bit and a drill press if you have them available. Drill out the center of each of the 12 rivets on the inlet side cap. Once you’ve drilled deep enough for the pin punch to “bite”, insert the pin punch into the drill-holes and pry upward to snap off the rivet heads, one at a time. Once you’ve snapped off the heads, use the spring loaded center punch or the pin punch to knock the bucktails into the can. Clear the holes with the HSS 3/16 bit in your hand drill. That’s all it’s good for anyway!
Now they tell you to “remove the end cap”….good luck! They RTV them on, the ba$tards! The only way to get the thing off is to take a length of 2X4, set it up against the edge of the end cap while leaning on the can and begin wailing away, moving your way around the perimeter. It will eventually come free. Eventually.
Now reach inside (after putting on the gloves and mask) and pull out the baffle tube and old insulation. Throw away the old insulation blanket and inspect your baffle tube for cracks or damage. I cleaned up my parts in a deep sink using industrial strength soap and super-hot water and dried with compressed air. Makes things SO much easier to handle, instead of getting soot all over yourself.
The first order of business is to clean off the old RTV. Soak the old RTV in MEK (again, I used the deep sink) for a few minutes and it comes off using your plastic scraper with a little work. You can make a plastic scraper from scrap plexiglass that will work just fine. Anything steel will scratch the stainless. Scuff clean with Scotch Brite and MEK. You are wearing the gloves, right? MEK is nasty stuff. Now you have to work on the Most Heinous rivet holes with their many sharp burrs. I used a half-round coarse file and sandpaper, then de-burred with a 3/8 drill bit in the electric drill. If you don’t clean these up, you’ll tear the new blanket, cut yourself, and generally make life miserable. Just do it. On the inside of the can I used a right angle drill with a shorty bit- any size bit larger than 3/16 will do…..works well if you have one. Otherwise, get busy with the file and sandpaper. The important thing is to remove all the burrs so they don’t snag the wrap blanket going in. They will- it’s a tight fit. Once the can and end cap are clear of all old RTV, cleaned and de-burred, follow the instructions that come with the packing kit. Slide your baffle tube INSIDE the cardboard tube, then slip the cardboard tube out and throw it away.
I tried, with not the most satisfactory results, to stuff this confederacy of malcontents into the can. Easier said than done; somewhat akin to putting a pair of coveralls on over your winter coat. It worked; but just barely. When I looked in through the tailpipe, I could see the majority of the packing still bunched up at the inlet end. I used the yardstick to try to distribute more to the back, which helped, but it still ended up with less than perfect results. I might suggest trying to tightly wrap the blanket with a single strand of safety wire in a spiral wrap fashion; this way once you get the packing in you could cut the wire and theoretically pull it out as one long piece. I wouldn’t leave it in there to possibly wear into the can. While it’s (the can) thick
(.065) there’s nothing else in there to damage it, so why invite trouble? Just my .02 cents.
You will no doubt find that once you have the tube & blanket inserted, that the back end of the tube is hitting the flange it’s supposed to surround. Shine a flashlight in the tailpipe so you can see what you’re doing. Using a long screwdriver or prybar, (or the yardstick, in a pinch) insert the end and maneuver the tube to fit over the flange (this will be self-explanatory) and seat it as far back as it will go. Stuff the rest of the insulation in the insert-end and install your end cap. You will have to engage the inner baffle tube as you install it, then drive it home using a rubber or plastic mallet; it’s a tight fit!
The directions recommend using Hi-temp RTV (such as a Dow-Corning 736). I don’t, and I didn’t. It’s such a tight fit between can and end cap that I couldn’t conceive of any need for it. Maybe time will prove me wrong, but I don’t think so. Besides, you’ll be going down this road again some day and cleaning the RTV was the worst part, aside from de-burring the rivet holes (which in theory, should not have to be done again either). Line up your holes using the pin punch. You might need a scratch-awl to get the first hole aligned. Pop in a rivet at 12 o’clock, now do another at the six o’clock position. Likewise 3 and nine o’clock. Now you should be able to install the rest of the rivets. Presto-you’re done!
Some people recommend substituting aluminum 3/16 pop-rivets for ease of removal. I don’t recommend it due to ease of shearing, but to each his own. The cobalt drill bit and drill press makes short work of the stainless ones so for me it was just as easy.

[Darth_Firebolt]

the aluminum rivets will break after they have rattled around from your engine moving them for long enough. lots of people have had cans come apart from this problem.
i did the same thing with my jardine, only i used stainless steel wool, so i wouldn't ever have to bust the thing open again.

[buellosaurusrex]

the aluminum rivets will break after they have rattled around from your engine moving them for long enough. lots of people have had cans come apart from this problem.
i did the same thing with my jardine, only i used stainless steel wool, so i wouldn't ever have to bust the thing open again.


Just curious...how long has it lasted?

[Darth_Firebolt]

10k miles.
i packed it pretty full. i think i used 2 packages of 4 stainless steel wool scrubbing pads that i unraveled (for lack of a better word, it gets the point across, right?) and wrapped around the core. it was awfully quiet at first, but it has quite a bit of midrange boost over what was in it. it also got a lot louder than the stuff in there before ever was. not a bad sound, just more of it. : ]
i was worried about it rubbing through, but then i realized that it was just a tube of aluminum. and my dads friend owns a metal fab shop... ;)

[buellosaurusrex]

Just curious...where does one obtain stainless steel wool?
As a footnote, one thing I forgot to mention was that for the first 200 miles or so, every time I brought it home, there was a two foot string of glass hanging out of the pipe. The more you'd pull, the more would come out. Not wanting to unravel the cone I'd just put in, I'd cut it off flush with the tailpipe with my pocketknife. It did stop, eventually.:rolleyes:
Also, the newfound quietness lasted a few weeks. I still have to ride with earplugs or suffer the consequences the rest of the day. :mad:

[Custom85VT]

stainless steel wool
http://www.briwax-online.com/GMTStainless.html

[buellosaurusrex]

stainless steel wool
http://www.briwax-online.com/GMTStainless.html

Thank you!!!:D