Monday, September 29, 2008

Baffles, or the lack of...

We kept busy this weekend and our minds occupied by doing some long overdo projects around the house. And Brandy helped me in the garage to remove some baffles from my bike. I've been reading the BonnevilleAmerica forum for months on how to make the Triumph America a little bit louder without a spending a lot of money. This appeals to me not only money wise but too many after market pipes are too loud. I didn't want to spent several hundred dollars on an expensive set of pipes that would wake the neighbors, and I love the look of the tapered stock pipes. I just wanted a little bit deeper growl from the exhaust. The stock pipes don't have a simple removable baffle set screw, they are fixed/welded. A fellow America rider and forum member designed a hole saw that would fit down the pipe to cut the inner baffle and offered it to fellow forum members, nice guy eh?




I used a smaller hole saw first to allow the inner dimension of the extended hole saw to pass over the inner pipe of the exhaust.




Then I used a larger hole saw to remove the rest of the material at the end of the pipe.




And then the "debaffler" or extended hole saw to finish it up




The result is a nice, modest rumble at idle, more authoritative growl during acceleration and still fairly quiet at cruising speed. I am happy with it. I can hear the bike now over the wind noise but it's not the loud droning roar of most HDs. I did notice a little more vibration in the bars and pegs but I don't think it is anything that would bother me too bad. I haven't noticed any performance gain but I still need to adjust the A/F mixture as all my mods have had to do with breathing. AI removed, snorkel removed, baffles removed and soon a K&N filter.



Everything you wanted to know about your exhaust but were afraid to ask: http://www.bonnevilleamerica.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=344665&page=0&fpart=all&vc=1&nt=2

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2 comments:

  1. How did you build yur longest / final hole saw ? It looks like a pipe with a hole saw welded to the end ,, LOL . I have open ended slash cut exh tips , so I should be able to get it done with one hole cut . I can see the rear wall of baffle and removing this right one shouldn't change the backpressure too much.( previous owner removed left )

    ReplyDelete
  2. Would it be possiable to use this method from the fron of the slip on?and just remove the baffel from the front?

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