My old exhaust system was comprised of the header pipes that came with my bike, with the rear one being trimmed back a bit, a couple slip-on mufflers from a 2006 Sportster that I picked up on Craigslist for $20, a custom mount that I welded together using some scrap metal behind my shop, and a custom exhaust piece with an h-pipe crossover that I built myself from some cheap exhaust pipe from a local auto parts place. Additionally, I performed the "Gronk Mod" (more or less) on the mufflers. With the mufflers and crossover, the motor seems to run much more smoothly, and according to my "butt-dyno", my bike accelerated more quickly. I mainly wanted a decent sound that didn't beat the shit out of my ears, which I got, but the performance bump was nice!
However, there was a serious problem - the damn mufflers dragged the pavement in any hard right turn. This happened whenever I took my favorite turn on my way to work. The mufflers also scrapped really badly if leaving a parking lot downhill. I got to where I was kinda scared to take right turns without slowing down to a very not-fun speed.
The mufflers were right next together, with one right under the other. I liked this configuration, but I didn't have much room to move them up without interfering with my right saddle bag. I had the option of doing a more traditional Sportster muffler setup, but ended up deciding to just put the mufflers as close together as possible, move them back a bit, and tilt them up behind the saddle bag. I spent a whole weekend putting together a new mounting plate, and bought some square tubing to make a new mount. And then this happened:
I got gas on my way home from work, and turned right out of the parking lot. This parking lot exit has a fairly steep incline, and I could hear a horrible screech as the bottom muffler dragged. As I accelerated, I thought to myself "Damn, the bike sounds a whole lot louder!" I turned around to go the other way, and saw my damn mufflers laying on the road! They were too hot to touch, so I kicked them into the center lane. I was very close to home, so I could come back for them later.
So I went home and scarfed down some dinner. After about 15 min. or so, I figured the mufflers were plenty cool. I threw my backpack on the sissy bar, and went back for my mufflers - AND THEY WERE GONE!!! I hope whatever asshole took them burned the hell out of his fingers. With just the crossover, I still had some performance boost - wasn't expecting that - but my ears were still being assaulted with every ride. I'd like to actually still be able to hear in a couple of decades. And later, the crossover ended up off, since the mounted mufflers were mostly what held them in place.
So I had to decide what kind of exhaust system I wanted next. I knew damn well I wasn't going to spend several hundred dollars on a set of pipes. No judgement against those who do - I'm sure Vance and Hines makes very nice sounding pipes, but my budget is too tight. Besides, I didn't want to miss out on the fun of building my own exhaust system.
I decided to buy a 2" Thrush Glass Pack muffler. Why? Because they're damn cheap, and do the job well enough for my purposes. Sound is somewhat important, but for me, sound takes a huge back seat to function and cost effectiveness. I could have done without the extra length and bright red paint, but for $25, it's hard to complain.
To mount the muffler to the frame, I welded together a mount using some square tubing, a bit of flat stock, some mount rings made from old motorcycle drive chain. The rings fit perfectly around the muffler. Welding the chain was easy - I just used my torch to melt where the edges of the inner links overlapped the edges of the outer links. I then popped some rivets to use pins to mount the rings to the square tubing part of the mount. The mount holds the muffler farther back than the old pair of mufflers it replaced. It's also angled back. No part of the muffler is lower than the bottom exhaust header. Hopefully the pictures will explain better than my words.The first piece of custom piping I made to join the muffler to the headers was a 2-into-1 fitting. I cut a single 1 3/4" pipe at an angle. I intended to simply then rotate one pipe around to where it formed a point, and tack it together. But I ended up damaging the edge of one side of the cut. I simply cut another piece to do the same thing. Next, I fit the pointed end of the joint into a 2" pipe that would fit into the opening of the muffler. I traced a circle around where the edge of the 2" pipe fit round the pointed fitting. I then cut the point off with my angle grinder. Of course, this didn't leave a perfectly circular cut, so I had to heat the edges of the cut with my torch and hammer it a bit to where it fit nicely with the 2" pipe. Then, I just welded it together.
So to complete the exhaust, I mounted the work I had so far to see what gaps needed to be filled. I would cut some pipe at whatever angle I thought I needed, see how it filled the gap, cut another pipe wedge to weld to it, and repeated. For the top header, once I got close to closing the gap, I used a 1 3/4" fitting to join the pie-cut exhaust section to the header - I want this to be easy to remove when needed. For the bottom header, I simply added enough pipe to the 2-into-1 fitting to attach to flex pipe, and simply filled the rest of the gap to the bottom header with flex pipe.
Sure, this isn't the prettiest exhaust you'll ever see. While it doesn't sound bad at all, it's definitely not the most bad-ass sounding exhaust you'll ever hear. But it does the fucking job without having cost very much. It clears the saddle bags, boosts performance over straight pipes, is sufficiently quiet, is easy to remove, doesn't scrape on turns, and seems to be sturdy as fuck. That's good enough for me.
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