I wanted a new exhaust anyway but - not like this!
Last week I got my rearsets sorted, so with a track day booked for May 4th, I thought I would check they worked ok.
You gotta think about these things...
Popped up the road, stopped, checked nuts and bolts and carried on a little. Things seemed great. Then my enthusiasm got ahead of my sensible brain and I decided to pop down the bypass just to "air the bike out a little after the winter". I would live to regret this as my sensible brain would have reminded me the exhaust was no longer braced on the pillion pegs. My enthusiam brain said "twist that throttle - yay!" and soon everything went very - very loud. :(
A drive of shame
I drove home trying not to draw attention to myself, but even a little 500cc bike sounds silly with no end can at all... I drove back up to the bypass both to check no one was injured by a flying exhaust and also to see if I could retrieve it, and maybe just maybe it was fixable.
In a short answer no it wasn't, the end of the pipe had been really bashed and the movement before it had worked loose had flared the pipe aswell. I did my best to beat it out and di manage to refit it but after a test ride I could see a crack in the main exhaust pipe too and it became more and more evident that I would probably need to replace it.
Life takes funny turns and a call arrived (obviously) to tell me there was a cancellation on a track day on my birthday. Well it would be rude not too... it is written in the stars. Time to sort this exhaust sharpish!
Delkevic make a full exhaust system for the CB500, as tempting as the stubby cans were I had a future MOT in mind so went for the carbon road legal one. Order placed Sunday evening and by Tuesday DPD had dropped off an exciting parcel.
I had worried about having to replce the exhaust - back at the beginning of the project I had replaced the copper gaskets on the headers and it turned out the header bolts were a little worse for wear. It wasn't an option to just put a new end can on though as the exhaust had been modified specifically for the Motard.
I removed the header bolts with a certain amount of fear, replaced the gaskets and tentatively tightened things up.
I was not going to make the same mistake twice, especially with a brand new exhaust, so next task was making a brace and finding somewhere on the bike to fit it.
Some research of the CB500 track bikes showed they often use the shock mount, so I got out some sheet steel and fairly quickly made a brace that would do the job.
With everything checked and tightened, I decided not to do anything else to the bike unitl after the track day. Time to start prepping for that.