Has anyone else had problems with exhaust headers coming away from their mating plates that bolt onto the engine block? This happened to me, and I thought I’d blown a gasket as I had to re-use the stock ones and stock bolts when I installed my full Ti system.
I bought all new bolts and gaskets (£50!), spent an afternoon installing them and was very happy that it ran fine again. Though once I gave it full throttle recently, it blew again. I was gutted. It’s now got worse and the bike sounds AWFUL as gases escape at this point.
When cold, I can feel the slack in the headers, they’re literally coming out of the engine block. I think it’s the rings that fit onto the header ends, which are held in place by the mating plates.
I don’t know how this can be resolved other than by welding them in place (the circular captivators and headers, once the plate is installed) and that sounds extreme.
Because stripping half the bike is needed to get access to try stuff I’m left wondering if there’s someone I can take it to instead as I can see it happening again if I try and reinstall everything again.
Are there little stubby ends that bolt onto the engine and then the headers fit over them like they do on the Yoshi systems they are then held together with springs?
There’s not a great deal to hold it together to be honest. Plates go over the headers and then rings go over the headers to hold it all in place, but the headers are just coming loose and coming out of both items.
I don’t believe the plates are bent/bending. It seems localised to the headers.
So when they come loose…are the bolts loose?..Or nuts on studs loose, whichever is the fixing to the head. And does it look as though those fixings have undone? I take it the rings are captive on the header pipes and there is a gasket between the ring and the exhaust port?
Stig VR, thanks for the help… Here’s a diagram to show how it is. The grey header is coming out from the plate and ring.
When reinstalling the system after stripping it, I noticed one of the rings loose. It wouldn’t go back on easily so after putting the plates onto the headers I used a rubber mallet to ease it back into place. I used a little bit of copper grease, thinking it would evaporate off (which it did as it stank for a couple of miles!).
At this point I put the gaskets back into the recess that the engine ports have, and then mated the exhaust headers into the recess with the gaskets. I then secured it all in place with the the bolts.
Basically I installed it to the engine in the same way you see the photo above which is how they come from the supplier. I thought the rings were secured in place by weld or something, but clearly not.
I don’t think the gaskets go under or over the rings… The stock system didn’t.
I’m no expert on that kind of fixing, but i would have thought the rings would be captive to the pipe…unless it acts like an olive and clamps tight when squeezed into the head by the plates?
It’s deffo worth calling the supplier or manufacturer to get a heads up on how the system works and what’s going wrong. It seems to me that nothing is holding the header pipes in place and they rattle out of place through the rings?
Sorry i can’t be more help…never seen a type of fixing like that.
