Making Custom Pipes From Your Stock Pipes
Remove the brackets and have the holding screws drilled out.
This part turned out to be a real pain, and I didn't take any decent pictures of the pipes either, so bear with me here. Once we got the ends cut off and exposed the ends of the pipes, we figured we could pound a big pipe down the suckers and knock the remaining guts out. Not! We pounded and pounded but to no avail. we finally decided we would have to completely remove the two internal nuts that hold the pipe brackets on. The machinist drilled them out completely and the entire guts fell out like nothing. But now we had two large holes in each pipe where the brackets needed to be re-attached. I didn't want to screw around with welding them on and messing the chrome up really bad, as well as risking not getting an "even" look when putting the pipes back on if the welds were the tiniest bit off. So we went home for the night and thought about it. Well, I had a few homebrews and Mike did all the thinking. He came up with the idea of using these little compression nuts. He had to special order them in as well. I will find out exactly what they were called and post that info when I get it.
Anyway, the picture below (I had to brighten it up so you can see down into the pipes) shows the 2 compression screws he installed. They were tack welded in place and have a 5/16" thread to them. The tiny tack weld was just to hold them in place while tightening them down. I just put a 5/16" stainless bolt in each of them with the brackets on, and a big washer for support, then tightened them down really hard until they collapsed into themselves and held the new nuts in place. Pretty slick.
At this point I was all excited so I took them home and put them on and went for a short ride. Holy Busted Eardrums Batman! Way too loud, even for me. They sure sounded good but the harshness was too loud. I needed to tone them down but still keep the nice deep rumble they now had. I could ride like this, but earplugs were required, and my ears still rang when I got off after a 15 minute ride, besides, I felt like I was riding on a Police magnet.
On to the next step. The New Baffles
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