Some of you may remember a while back I did a tech post on making you own lakes style header baffles. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43062 Anyway after fireing it up I've come to realize it's still loud as shit and I need to tone it down a little. So off to town to get some steel wool cause I heard of others useing it. I packed it around the outside of the baffle and reinstalled the baffle and turndown like this side Then I fired it up. Almost instantly as it heated up, red hot steel wool sparks started coming out the ends of the pipes and it got louder and louder. After about 5 min. this is all that was left. So my question is, do they make something better than steel wool? what are you guys doing?
Couldn't you try that muffler baffle stuff you get at motorcycle shops? It is made for mufflers so it should work. VW's with their stinger exhausts use the same thing and it works for them..
man, where did you hear that, steel wool usually has oil in it to keep it from rusting, and if it get's hot will catch on fire. I've heard of people packing it with fiberglass, but I've never done it myself. Harley shops sell some different kinds of baffles, but not sure if youd be able to use them on hat setup
Mike, Let me look around the plant tomorrow, I'll bet we have a roll of SS mesh, maybe that'll help. We use it for screens on a bead washer, has about a 0.08 inch square holes...
This may be a bad as steel wool, but how about Brillo pads? They're stainless and shouldn't burn. Haven't ever heard of it, but it might work.
Tommy Ivo used to use copper chore-bot scrubber pads,held with cotter pins,to baffle the tubes on his nailheadT. copper shouldn't burn out too bad? Makes for a pretty green exhaust Sparky
haha...um....ok yeah as far as the baffles go... I think you could probably use insulation. i used to work at a chopper shop and seem to remember selling kits which came with glass which you could run or not, depending on how loud you wanted it
i have the same setup you do, and im using fiberglass. i dont know what kind, insulation or whatever, it came with the baffles. it will need to be repacked soon. it does keep the sound down. trey
As others said, glass will work, but burns off quick being so close to the heads. I have talked to othes that bought all Stainless Steel kitchen type pads that looked like steel wool but was way "courser" the steel wool. It didn't have any cleaners in it, just a SS Pad. They worked great, did't rust/burn etc. Just a thought, but worth a try maybe
try www.jpcycles.com and look up the fiberglass repacking kit p/n 440-270 $8.99. I don't know the actual size of the kits, but it's a start. As stated above, try a used bike parts place, maybe even new foreign bike shops. All the youngin's putting the high-perf exhaust pipes on their GSX-r's and such. See if the techs will thow some of the stock mufflers your way and just yank out the packing. I'm sure if you'd pull up in your ride they'd be more than happy to hook you up.
Yeah, steel wool burns pretty good in an exhaust system. It really looks good driving out on the highway at night. Kinda looks like flamethrowers, but just doesn't last very long. A friend of mine tried to use it to quiet the straight pipes on his Mustang. We took it for a test drive out on the highway, at night. It didn't work, but it sure put on a cool light show for awhile.
how 'bout a muffler to quiet it down? it always works for me..... i've used brillo pads and/or a chore boy pads.but,they have to be impacted in the tube.goooood luck. skratch
I think the best idea I've read on here is to use the dirt bike silencer packing. The stuff is super cheap, and it is made to do what you want done. I usually repack the silencer on my YZ 125 about once a year. And a package only costs about 5 bucks. You can pick it up from any motorcycle shop that sells dirtbike stuff. But really??? whats this too loud stuff?
https://www.fmfracing.com/products/catalog.aspx?CategoryID=47 the pink stringy stuff works good in my Briggs 5hp powered minibike (homemade pipe with a KX80 can)
Yes you need fiberglass but not the insulation kind, it will blow out. What you need is specially made for silencers and is just one several hundred feet long thread. Easiest place to find it, unless you live close to a muffler factory, is a jap bike shop. They use the stuff to repack race cans. A more icky way is to cut open a used OEM silencer, even if the outer shell is rusty you can still use the fiberglass. But it is disgusting work. To get some silencing out of your baffles you may have to put a small washer sideways , halfway in your inner tube to force the sound pulses into the silencing material.
I seen your tech post and made some myself , ya they were still a little too loud, so I went down to the dirt bike shop and used the silencer packing and it made a huge difference I even had to take some out becuase it was too quiet, thanks for posting that they work great.
SOS pads work, I used them on my '65 mustang to pass a decible test at the local small town cop shop about 6 years ago. "Fife" had no idea, I told him I put baffled header gaskets in and he agreed. I found those at the local Napa, right next to the muffler bearings!!
I used steel mesh last year. Rolled it up and jammed it in the pipes. Really quiet...too quiet. This year they are wide open.
I can see this becoming a trend. Flamethrowers are neat, but isn't even cooler to propel red hot threads of steel out of your exhaust?
But steel wool is apparently traditional... I remember an old Gus Wilson story in Poular Science-- http://www.arcpress.com/modelgarage/gus.htm Maybe about 1960 in which the local cop was ordering the local punk to get his muffler fixed...as the cop walked away, he said something like "and I don't mean steel wool stuffed up the old one!"
I feel a story comin' on .LOL I used 1/4" galvanized wire mesh wrapped around the center tube on mine with no blowout problems in 12000 mi. But I learned the hard way the real trick is not to make the hole on the inside end of baffle tube any bigger than necessary,like say 1/2" or so. With a 1/4" hole in the end of mine the first time I fired it up it sounded like a Sun. go to meetin' car, my bud's standing around in the shop laughin' and shit and I said,hell I can fix this. Sooo....smart guy I'm not I whipped the baffles back out and fired up the 1 1/4" hole saw and poked the hole in the end out bigger,No Problem!Stuck them babies back in and man it sounded cool.The boys appreciate my ass now. Jumped in the old pile headed to the corner store (5 blocks up the steet)to get a few cold beers & thought damn this thing is bad.! Stood on it harrrrrd on the way back,climbed out of the cockpit and my poor head was ringin' for an hour. Anyway the moral of the story is,the bigger that hole in the end is,the louder that mother will be no matter how much mesh you wrap around that bad boy. T.OUT
Similar question... Will this baffle work in quieting down the noise, but still keep it louder than with a muffler? I am running 2 1/2" pipes off the headers that exit below the fenders, about 32" long. I'd like to quiet it down some... I'm deaf enough.
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