Currently working on a lot of (not-yet presentable) projects, so some pictures of my favourite bikes of the 2016 Gmunden Bikeday will have to make do for now.
Personally I was very, very fond of the Exesor Sprint Beemer, which was my personal highlight. Oh and of course the Indian Scout.
A very sexy TR1... as usual the nice bikes aren't to be seen at the show, but in the parking lot - But then again I may be biased! ;-)
My dad wanted me to take a picture of that...
And here we have the Exesor Sprint-Beemer, which I honestly thought is pretty cool. I can see lots and lots of tuning potential on this one though...
Brilliant sidecar
The Sporty exhaust is kinda nice...
Well and then there were those two bikes from Munich, which honestly were pretty grand. Ratty and tatty just how I like 'em. (Even though it was faux-ratty-ness!) But with proper Dellorto 40 carbs, so I secretly hope they're not just show-ponies.
Dirtster.
I've got a soft spot for nice Guzzis.
Don't think that turbo's doing much, but hey...
The tail's a bit inspirational
And I have to admit, I'd take this one home in an instant... it was leaking, rough in various spots, but it sported the coolest badge ever.
Another Beemer and the seat was kinda nice.
And just as we were about to leave, this Indian came round (and not on a trailer)!
Every now and then you run into bikes, people, etc that inspire you. It was just that with me and this bike's build, which I saw about a decade ago on the old OSS. It inspired me to start building bikes like that, even though back then the legal side of it wasn't as comparatively easy as it is nowadays in Austria.
I'll simply put the pictures in here without huge comments, mainly because I am led to believe that they both speak for themselves and if I point out all the brilliant engineering, you won't have any chance of going through the pictures and spotting it for yourself.
Every now and then you have to do an angled cut on your trusty little bandsaw. With mine being the standard RF-115 China-bandsaw, finding back to a perpendicular cut can be a bit tricky.
Very recently I saw this little fix on a German-made bandsaw and I decided to do the same on mine. Using a carbide scribe, I marked out the 90 degree setting and then angles in 10 degree increments.
I have to say, I was pretty happy how the Mk.6 exhaust had turned out a while ago, but to be honest it was just the rendition of an old theme (engineering-wise) that I have done over and over again, refining it in the process, yet not exactly getting anywhere.
In reality I've known it for a long while, if I want to make serious power, the headers have to be equal length, but up to now I was kind of lacking the bright idea on how to package everything as I wanted the whole setup to be as stealthy as possible.
Now building an exhaust strictly for my own use allows me to play around with certain aspects, whereas when I do one for someone else, well it has to be spot on.
One of the things that has annoyed me a lot was the retaining rings fixing the initial bit of the downtube to the head as the two-part construction would shift during initial fit up and is actually a lot of work to do. So I came up with a new idea of one-piece retainers, which I do have to machine on the lathe in order to have the downtubes go in. On the up-side: Both sides are perfectly parallel and the seal to the head is better.
With these sorted, which didn't take as long as I dreaded, but in reality just means I substitute weld time with lathe time. So I guess, this may become an option down the line. Welding them on works really nice though, even though I have to admit that the mandrel bends I used are actually really, really egg-shaped.
The next thing was to build two Y-joins from 90° wastegate bends. This involved a bit of marking, cutting on the bandsaw and then some welding to make the Y-joins.
This is actually the finished product and it's not quite in chronological order
Now one of the other things I tried out this time was to backpurge all the welds in order to improve weld-quality. (Stainless is indeed a bit picky on this subject!) My purge-setup is nothing to write home about, it mainly consists of some ally left-over disks from drilling large holes with a hole saw and a 6mm tube glued into the center of it. Unlike what other people told me, it doesn't specifically help with burning through, but the backsides of welds do come out nicer. (Especially when you're welding a bit on the hot side!)
From there onwards it was *just* a matter of joining all the bits and actually building an exhaust.
An especially tricky bit was the rear downpipe as it had to:
1) go through the frame
2) go round the swingarm
3) clear the centre-stand
4) be of equal length as the front-downtube
And with those headers being sorted, it was down to the tube going to the second Y and then the splitter to the exhausts.
And that's what it sounds like on the bike (before sync'ing the carbs):
