Well... the actual removal of them only took 5 minutes... this was about a 6 hour job. With riding season over I decided to finally get around to doing this. Tools I used were;
1. welder/brush/gloves/etc
2. wheel cutter
3. hammer
4. pry bar/chisel
5. metal file
6. large C vise
7. bench vise
I have seen people struggle trying to do this through the outlets with odd drill bits...hammers and chisels... instead of doing all that I decided to cut my pipes open, remove the cats and weld them back up. Here is what I did.
Here is the exhaust removed. This is on a 2009.
Cuts made to the underside.
Here is what you'll see when you pry it open.
The first piece was easy to remove. I used a chisel and hammer to tap the beginning off and the rest pried out fairly easily.
The second piece tool a little more effort since part of it was inside the pipe that was not pried open, but all told both pieces came out in about 5 minutes (I didn't lie)!
After scraping away a few leftovers, filing down the cuts and blowing compressed air through I got a pretty clean interior.
I struggled a little pushing the steel back into place. In order to keep the proper contours I ended up vicing the metal down just enough to put a spot weld down, reposition the vice, and repeat. This will make sense if you weld at all.
All spot welded closed.
Finished welding. Please don't be too critical; I am a self-taught welder and it is not my trade!
Smoothed the ugly welds down.
And painted with high heat header paint.
AND back on the bike.
This is what your left with.
I hope this helps someone. The longest part of the job was removing the pipes; I am hard headed and do it without pulling my radiator.
I ran the bike after and it is a much deeper tone, but it's winter and I have a bad tire so a road test will have to wait.
Good luck!
* Last updated by: projo198 on 12/23/2017 @ 5:38 PM *
