WOOT! When I bought my sewing machine... err.. I mean my America it sounded like George Jetson's little flying car. Then I had my standard pipes modified, gutting the first two baffles and it sounded like George Jetson's car on steroids. I'd been considering some better pipes for a while, and after going for a ride with a friend who'd recently put Bubs on his bike I was convinced that it was worth the cost. I like the look of the standard long slashcuts, and wanted stainless steel rather than chrome for its longevity, which pretty much narrowed my choices down to Thunderpipes, Staintunes, and Scepters. I was favouring the Scepters simply due to price till I realised I'd have to purchase the baffle separately to at least come close to Australian noise laws, which made the price very close to the Thunderpipes once you added shipping and currency conversion in. The Staintunes ruled themselves out on two points; the much higher price and the somewhat tinny note, despite me wanting to be patriotic and buy Australian.
Today I took delivery of my very own long, slashcut Thunderpipes after waiting with eager anticipation. Shipping took a mere three days from New Zealand, more impressive given that it's just after Christmas. Contact and communication was excellent, with emails from Jason Howcroft giving fast answers to questions and notifying of shipping dates. First impressions of these pipes;
very well packed - there was no way these were being damaged in transit. Beautifully made and polished with no visible welds etc once fitted (in fact I don't remember noticing welds before they were fitted either). Instructions were fairly simple but they said what they needed to say clearly. It was at this point that my only criticism appears; unlike the Scepters the Thunderpipes don't come with their own mounting bracket, rather they rely on the Triumph one (though they DO have new stainless steel mounting bolts etc). In itself this isn't a huge issue, except that Triumph mount the brackets to the standard exhausts using some incredibly strong thread lock that usually requires a blowtorch to loosen. The instructions clearly described what needed to be done but several hours were added to the fitting to find someone with oxy-acetaline gear. It did work as advertised and the bolts came out easily once heated. A little bit of black paint from a spray pack to touch up the heated brackets and I was good to go, however I have to wonder how much more it would cost to make up some simple stainless brackets to include with these (admittedly not cheap) pipes.
Other than that, removing the old pipes and fitting the new ones was a piece of cake. Required tools were a ratchet handle, a 13mm socket and a 12mm socket. You'll also need to buy a small tube of red RTV silicon sealant from any auto shop (the high temperature stuff). Total fitting time (minus traveling to the oxy gear) was under an hour, and not a single curse word was spoken or tool thrown across the workshop.
The finished result is a very pleasing low rumbling note at idle, and a definite, very British bark when you twist the throttle. I think the volume is very slightly less than the Bubs but I've not heard them side by side yet. If you play nice with the throttle you can quietly burble out of your street at 6am without waking the neighbors, but every time I've given it a twist heads turned, fingers pointed, and faces smiled (well most of them smiled - some scowled but that's just as good). They do come with removable baffles that I've not yet played with yet (a single screw set into the underside of the pipe removes them), but I imagine that'll get into "hot dang, where's my earplugs" territory.
Thunderbike advertise a 28% power gain for using these pipes without changing jets. Just going by the "seat-of-the-pants dyno" I've noticed there's definitely more power at higher RPM but low down seems about the same to me. I should point out here that I'd already gutted my standard pipes and put slightly larger idle jets in so I may already have gotten my low RPM power gains. At some point in the near future I'll get my bike dyno-tuned and publish the dyno run here so we can compare to those shown on Thunderbike's site.
The pipes cost me AU$1002.10 including shipping to Australia (about US$875 on today's exchange rate). That's more expensive than a lot of the other pipes out there, but most of the pipes out there aren't stainless and will eventually rust out. They're available from
Thunderbike's Website.
