I’ve said before that exhausts are the Devil’s work when it comes to restos... I’ve found that they either; rust out, have accident damage or have endured ‘the idiot factor...’
Most people understand the first two, but might wonder what I mean by the latter. Well... Perhaps its just me, maybe I’m cheap or unlucky (or both lol) but take a look at the two pipes I’ve ended up with having to repair for this build. Would anyone else bother I wonder?
Pipe 1: I bought this off ebay as it looked good enough to use ‘as is’ in the quite blurry photos. It arrived with the most bizarre packing that included a single wrapped of bubblewrap and then some kind of mini pallet (sized about a third of the pipe’s length) simply taped to its middle. What it also came with was a bunch of what was likely shipping damage; it looked like it had been dropped repeated from height onto the rear end, making it look like a stubbed cigarette. Sigh. The seller refunded me and told me to keep it which was good of him, but now I had a pipe that needed work and you know I cant chuck anything RZ away... lol. I considered cutting the end off and welding in a better one, but it just hung fro my rafters annoying me for months and months...
Does this remind anyone else of the Beastie Boys album artwork?
I decided before I got cutting that the best plan would be to first try and tease the steel back out. From where I was starting this seemed a mammoth task as this is thin steel where its been stretched to be formed into shape and it was very compressed. Just look at where its stepped around the bolt hole, becoming oval.
I considered welding on studs and pulling it, but wasn’t sure where the actual ‘end’ had finished up so decided Id start gently. After gentle taps with a bodywork hammer, heat and some pulling with grips I managed to pull about half it it back up to looking somewhat reasonable. Of course that was the part of the ‘rim’ that was on the back side, not the bit you see... Arrgh! Aint that always the way! I worked it some more and then when I could do no more and the steel was starting to rip rather than straighten I started to weld up the edge and build up the end of the rim using weld as filler. At this point the thin steel of the pipe was not my friend at all (had it ever been with this damage? I wondered) as I kept blowing holes in the pipe body where the steel was paper thin from the original forming, no wonder these dent so easily. With ever reduced welding settings I got those welded up and linished it all back with the powerfile and various other tools. With a bit of cleaning up I got to this.
All it needs now is some JB weld to fill the rest of dents before painting. Sure it’s not perfect or ‘as new’ but consider that an afternoons work transformed this into a usable pipe again.
Pipe 2: This one came to me as part of a set of two when I was looking for OEM pipes for the F1. The other was close on perfect (just a few dents and scrapes to fill) and I just created the ‘special dent’ in the back edge for the wider F1 axle and used it on that build. This one would have been nice enough to be used as well as it only have minimal damage, except for this.... what the hell has happened here?
This damage is on the top edge, just after the header on the first 'cone' section, you can see the header clamp in some of the pics.
(these pics were taken after I’d started trying to pull the dent hence the blob of weld and the snapped stud)
I started by trying to pull up the steel in the hope of getting these dents out, but the steel on these is really thick and due to the welded edge there was no way I could shift this dent any more than a few mm. Eventually one of the studs I welded on pulled a hole in the steel and that put and end to that idea.
I spent a lot of time on this pipe and the whole I wondered; Just how did someone damage this? I can only think that this happened while it ws off the bike, maybe it was run over?
The next plan was to cut out the dented area. Once I had it open I’d be able to fix the smaller dents on the lower parts of the pipe from the inside and straighten it, then weld in new steel. Say it fast and it sounds easy, but I wanted this to look like it had never been repaired of course. Hmm... This would probably look better than the dent pulling as well of course.
For a while Id been asking my mates if anyone had a dead RZ pipe that I could cut up for this section. You can crash a bike a lot and not damage this part, so perhaps I’d be in luck... It’s a sad state of affairs in Aus that any RZ pipe is either accounted for on a project or long ago been put in the bin, so I was out of luck. Then one day when I was idly thinking about bike stuff and I realised that I’ve never had a single RZ pipe until I bought the one above more recently, so somewhere I must have a spare from when I bought the F1 and fettled one of a set of two for that bike... and then it dawned on me, it must be in the ‘LC pipe collection’. All excited I rushed to the garage, pulled it out and... It was the wrong side. Sigh... Totally different profile. Back to the drawing board...
However, while I was in the LC pipe pile (its more of a rack actually) I found the front half of the pipe I cut up to create a decent 350LC pipe for the LC resto. This was of course not the correct shape either, but it was conical with much of the shape required, the right thickness steel (LC pipes are thicker but we’re splitting hairs at this point) and was already in my garage, was essentially scrap and of course it was free. It was better than starting from flat sheet and making a cone so I cut an oversize piece and set to work.
My plan was to start with a single piece the right-ish size, close on the shape needed and then cut it into two. This meant I could repair the pipe in two stages, allowing for adjusting the shape of the cone to match the RZ profile for each piece and also then step the edge of the outside repair panel to form the ‘folded and welded joint’ on the top just like OEM. These are some of the pics.
I planned to only dress back the side that you see on this pipe. I don’t want (or need) to hide the fact it has been repaired plus I wanted it to be strong. With a bit of cleaning up and maybe a skim of JB weld feathering the edges it should look invisible to anyone who didn’t know its history when looking at the bike.
Of course, this has been quite a lot of work over a few days, but a good project if you like puzzles and fumes LOL. Of course spending the time repairing pipes likes these over the years has saved me a bunch of cash along the way and also means I’ve been able to save rare old parts as well as completing my restos with OEM parts. I think it helps not to set out with the mindset that 35+ year old pipes would be perfect as they take such a beating in use, but these are now at least usable... And no longer annoying me by hanging in my rafters, taunting me with their damage every time I go in there. Happy days. :)
As a side note:
What is interesting is that now that the pipes are done I can reunite the F1 with the correct F1 pipe as the one I bought from ebay was an actual 350 F1 pipe and the correct side to replace the one I fitted to that resto which you might remember was the other one of the 31K set that came with the pipe with the front pipe dent. With that swap done the F1 will have correct F1 pipes and the 31K will have its matched set reunited as well. Alls well that ends well... Er, once they’ve been sanded, filled and painted of course... More work!
Top marks for tackling that.