Mark,
I couldn't find a jet kit for my 1966 Greeves 250 Silverstone racer, so I made them out of a couple of old Whitworth sockets. My problem is that I now have no sockets left, so I can't reinstall the carb. I'm told this is a good thing. Is it?
Sir Alfred Angus Hereford III,
Lord of the Dance.
Dolittle, Scotland
Will installing an aftermarket exhaust system harm my motor?
This one is sort of a ringer, but the quick answer is no, a properly installed exhaust, with correct fuel management will not harm your engine. Of course if you're incessantly revving the thing up at 2 AM and some engaged neighbor takes a sledge hammer to the jugs, then yeah, some damage is probably inevitable, though how much depends on the size of the neighbor and his dedication.
How come my bike surges at low and moderate throttle openings since I installed my pipes?
This is another fuel management issue. By and large small throttle opening surges are caused by lean EFI or carburetor settings so the cure is straightforward. If it's happening somewhere between idle and maybe 1/8 throttle, fatten up the pilot/idle circuit. If the problem occurs between 1/8 to 1/4 throttle the problem may be in the pilot circuit or it might be in the needle height/midrange adjustment (EFI). Because there's a fair amount of overlap between fuel circuits at small throttle opening my inclination here is to richen the pilot circuit first, if that doesn't cure the problem, you'll need to richen the midrange slightly. If that makes the bike too rich, go back and lean the pilot side out a bit.
Why did my new pipes turn blue?
I dunno are they're depressed? Many aftermarket pipes turn blue at the cylinder head, and usually for some of their length afterwards. Self appointed experts will tell you it's because the bike wasn't jetted properly or you let it idle too long or left the choke on too long or whatever else they've decided the problem is. Bull, unless the pipe is blue from the exhaust port to the muffler outlet, what you're seeing is nothing more than the affects of high heat on chrome. Here's the deal, most of the OEM manufacturers (and there are a few exceptions here) use a double wall construction, one tube inside another to build their header pipes. The inner pipe carries the exhaust; the outer one is there for appearance. Because the inner pipe does all the dirty work it discolors and leaves the outer one shiny and bright. Many aftermarket systems are built using single wall construction and because of that they tend to discolor. Yes, allowing the bike to idle for a lengthy period will discolor the pipe, as will anything else that creates a lot of heat, but no matter what, all single wall pipes will eventually discolor to some degree.
Mark,
I replaced the engine in my 03 Suzuki Intruder with a Wright 975(E) Whirlwind engine that I pirated from a 1926 Ford Tri-motor. As you may recall the 975 (E) is a Supercharged 9 cylinder radial, that makes 420 HP at 2400 rpm. If I replace its Stromberg carburetor with a HSR48 flat slide Mikuni do you think I can achieve a more consistent idle?
Flyboy
Southbury CT
Will installing an aftermarket pipe void my warranty?A loaded question if ever there was one. According to the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975, and I'm paraphrasing here, the installation of an accessory doesn't void a vehicles factory warranty. It can however result in the denial of a warranty claim that results from a problem caused by that product.
To use an extreme example; let's imagine your relatively new cruiser, equipped with an aftermarket pipe, burns up an alternator, investigation shows there's no connection between the alternator and the pipe, so the factory must cover the repairs under warranty. However three weeks later the bike holes a piston. Here's where it gets sticky, if the pipe made the bike run lean, causing the piston to overheat and detonate, you're liable for all the costs of repair, however if the pipe was properly installed and there are no issues, like an improperly mapped EFI, then the problem should be corrected under warranty. As you can see there's a lot of wiggle room here, and the discussion between the broken bikes owner and the factory can get contentious, but in the main, if the pipe isn't directly responsible for the problem, the breakdown be covered under warranty.
What are the legal ramifications of installing an aftermarket pipe?
Actually, hardly anyone ever asks me this one but they should. By law the federal government, or more correctly the EPA and the DOT set minimum standards that every motorcycle must meet before they can be legally sold in this country. While the majority of those laws cover things like side reflector size, tire sidewall nomenclature and the width of the taillight lens there are standards for exhaust noise and pollution emissions.
However, there's a catch. Although the Feds set the minimum, the states, along with the counties, towns and cities that make them up are empowered to create their own, more stringent regulations if they want to, so long as those additional regulations do not interfere with interstate commerce. For example California's Air Resources Board has emission laws that are more stringent than Federal requirements; currently Royal Enfield motorcycles don't meet them so they can't be sold there. Nonetheless, if you own a Royal Enfield that's registered in another state it can be legally ridden in California because to prohibit its use would interfere with interstate trade.
Here's where it gets scary. While the federal government strongly recommends that the states and their entities adopt the in place EPA noise regulations, and to my knowledge all of them currently do, there is no law that requires them to. So if some state, city or county suddenly decided that the current EPA standard of 80 (dB) was too lenient they could certainly pass, or at least propose legislation that lowered it to say 70 (dB).
I don't know of any place that's actually done that, and it'd be a difficult law to enforce, but there's no legal reason they couldn't and in fact some localities have passed some draconian exhaust pipe laws in an effort to combat excessive noise. For example; in 2007 Denver, Co, decreed that any motorcycle manufactured after 1982 that was operated within its city limits had to have an OEM type EPA engraving on the muffler stating it was an approved exhaust system. If your pipe wasn't so stamped you got a ticket, no ifs ands or buts. It didn't matter where you lived or where the bike was registered, if you rode through Denver your bike had to have an OEM/EPA seal of approval.
By no means is Denver the only town to have passed such an ordinance, only the latest, and I expect to see more legislation like this coming in the near future, but that's a separate conversation. As a side topic, enforcing the law is the responsibility of the state, or the locality that passes the law, and if there's any bright side here it's that they're notoriously lax.
The other side of that coin is the pollution issue. If your state has emission testing in place and your bike fails because you've changed the exhaust and remapped the fuel settings, you're going to have your work cut out for you getting it to pass. And that my friends can get mighty expensive as Jesse James found out to the tune of nearly 300 large when he ran afoul of CARB.
So the bottom line here is that every state is different, and the law being the ass that it is, enforcement issues change day to day. But if nothing else I'd recommend hanging on to those stock pipes and air box, you never know when they'll come in handy.