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Home > Do it Yourself! - Tech Tips - Exhaust Pipes
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| New
Pipes For The Mad Dog's Black Widow |
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This
was originally written by McGoo from Biltwell,
Inc.It was posted here with
his permission, and is a nice tutorial on how to use
the Biltwell
Custom Exhaust Pipe Kit to make custom
pipes for your bike.
BMX
kingpin Chris "The Mad Dog" Moeller at S&M
BMX solicited my help to make some new pipes for this
infamous Black Widow. S&M BMX builds their own
high-dollar BMX bikes in their own building right
here in the US of A, so we had skills (shop manager
Jason Balls, himself a chopper freak of some repute)
and equipment at our disposal. Chris and I are old
BMX grease monkeys, but we put our heads together
and dreamed up a pipe set for his new motor in a matter
of hours using only a Sharpie, a piece of welding
rod and our (half) wits. Here's the blow-by-blow from
last night's shop session:
Step
1: Prep your work area
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| Step
2: Make your rough drawing |
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| Step
3: Create your basic shape with a piece of welding rod |
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| Step
4: Install your header flange and start picking your
bends |
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| Step
5: Tack your little bends and straights into shape |
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| Step
6: Assess your progress by installing and reinstalling
your pipe as it grows |
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| Step
7: If you like where things are headed and and everything
is clearing what it's supposed to, do some 1/2"
long root welds to hold your sub-assembly more firmly
into place |
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| Step
8: With front half of pipe in limbo, assess your design
and method of mounting in the rear. Mad Dog didn't like
the way his cocktail shakers hung on a giant bracket,
so he jetisoned this contraption in favor of some tabs.
Yes, those are zip ties Jason is staring at. |
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| Step
9: Clean up your tube surfaces with a flap disk to make
room for new tabs and new welds |
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| Step
10: Using your pipe sub-assembly as a guide and a jig,
determine the location of your support tabs and tack
them into place |
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| Step
11: Finish weld your pipe |
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| Step
12: Admire your handwork. Repeat for the rear cylinder |
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| Random
stuff we learned along the way:
Not
even the clean cut of a bandsaw will leave your tube
openings in perfect shape for end-to-end welding.
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| When
this is the case, massage the tube openings with sandpaper.
The more horsepower, the better |
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| The
pipe for the front cylinder took us a little over 5
hours to build, and required some mods to the peg location,
and the aforementioned mods to the muffler mounting.
We measured three times. cut twice and welded once on
every joint. It's better to whittle away a little bit
of tube at a time to get your joints perfect than it
is to whack off too much tube... taking off is always
easier than adding on, especially on tight radii.
Beer
actually made this project go faster.
If
you're a badass TIG welder like Jason is, you can
fuse these tubes together without rod. He did this
several times and it looked awesome.
As
the three of us proved, anyone with average talent,
simple tools and some spare time can make pipes for
their bike—you don't need a multi-million dollar
bicycle factory at your disposal to do it!
Thanks
to Chris for inviting me to his party, and to Jason
for being such a good workmate.
I
can't wait to see the rear pipe. Good luck and have
fun, Mad Dog…
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| A
great piece of advice from Derrick (hatchethairy on
the JJ): "For all you tig-tackers, try using
some hose clamps with holes drilled in it to hold your
place while you tack. trust me, it makes a world of
difference in time when fitting and welding a set together." |
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