Drewl's new High-Mount project

drewl · May 29, 2012

The time has finally come.
For years I have wanted to open up the rear wheel to show it off. I was too afraid of losing fuel efficiency and too cheap to spring for a new muffler set up. Things came together recently, thanks to SLOVFR.
Brian had an old Carbon Fiber Vance & Hines that he gave me a good deal on. I could no longer stand to put it off. Soooo...

The first thing I did was line things up to see what I wanted it to look like.

At this point I had to go spend a few moments alone. Once I had composed myself, I had to figure out what to do about the mid pipe.
V&H is just down the road in LA so I gave them a call and told them what I needed. Their response was, "Yeah...we no longer sell those, so we can't help you." I asked if they had the name of any distributers that might have leftovers in stock. Again he said he could not help. I did some searching on line and came up empty handed. So I took her to a local muffler shop and asked the dude if he could fab me something. He was sure that he could, so I made an appt. to get it done.
In the mean time, Brian and I worked out where to mount the bracket, gathered materials, and got to drilling and cutting.

A piece of 1/4 inch steel serves as the bracket. I lined up where I thought the brace on the can would go( this one is easily moveable so precision was not an issue). Then I cut out a slot from the undertail. This allowed the bracket to fit inside the tail plastics without having to cut any fairings.
After the bracket could be placed on the subframe, I chalked the frame so I knew where to drill the holes for the bolts. I also chalked the bracket for the bolt holes.

Then we had to come up with a bushing idea for the muffler itself. The stock can is mounted using a rubber sleeve inside the passenger foot peg to reduce vibration. So we used a couple rubber washers and a couple larger metal washers.

Once the new muffler was in place I realized the right rear reflector would have to be removed and the OEM rubber sleeve would have to come out as well. This would allow the new muffler to hang without rubbing on anything.
The next step was to spend a few hours with the muffler guys. It was a private shop and not a chain like Mynakey or AAMCO, so I got very personal attention. One draw back was that they had limited bending ability and this effected the final outcome.

All in all it turned out alright, but the bend near the rearset that leads towards the cat sticks out further than I would have liked. The muffler dude said he couldn't bend it any tighter with his equipment without crimping it. I know it could be done with a better setup, but that was not available to us. I did not spend very much, so I feel I got what I paid for.
Two things to note in that last pic. If you look inside the passenger peg, there is a nut welded to the midpipe. This serves as an anchor point for the springs. More importantly is a little piece we put on the bottom side of the pipe.

The stock pipe had a bracket with a rubber bumper for the center stand. Without this, the center stand would come all the way up and ride on the chain. This will not do. So I had him weld the little pipe section right where the center stand crosses the new midpipe. It is only a half inch or so in diameter, but it holds the stand away from the chain quite nicely.

Once it was all done, I brought it home and painted it with flat black BBQ paint. I then wrapped it with header tape from the local auto parts store. And, voila!

She looks and sounds GREAT. Not much louder, but definitely a better tone. It really allows the growl of the V4 to be heard.
It is about 10 pounds lighter than stock. Parts cost about $105 dollars for the bracket, hardware, header tape, paint, and custom midpipe.

I am quite proud of her. Just ask anyone that attended R3! :tongue: