MOTAD ON FORUM

[motad_uk]

I'm on the look out for some silencers for my 1200 trophy.The Motad ones on the bike have been on there for 22 years so not bad.They will probably last another 5 
The black chrome ones look quit smart
Maybe some for the old Hondas the cafe racer boys would love those.You wont see those going blue Bitsa.

we brought out a range of motad silencers to fit Hinkley Triumphs when the factory moved their production to Thailand (and stopped buying from us) . They didn't sell and we stopped- basic problem we created is that they wont wear out and just like yours 20+ years later are still going

[motad_uk]

On the other hand the chances of me buying a complete silencer are smaller than me buying just the collector for my special the exhaust kind of defines the bikes looks. I am afraid for my bike the motad chrome system for the 500/4 whilst if fitted well and did the job just wasn't the look I really want to end up with, too restrained and sensible. I don't necessarily want the full on noise of the preformace / free flowing exhausts, there Motad have the good factor, you can ride 500 miles without ringing ears at the end of the trip, but for a lot of specials the 2 motad systems I have in the shed are a bit 'safe' in the styling department. Maybe even the gatling gun look of the dunstall system I have at the end of the silencer might give the something wild factor I am after. Just my thoughts. It wouldn't take much if any tooling up, just make the first section of the silencer and the customer can add a end can to suit their bikes look. My ntv650 has a ducatti end can shoved on on this basis - somehow looks and sounds great, lovely bark if given the beans, nearly inaudible to me  cruising through town in a high gear.

we made Dunstall silencers for them in the 70s!
 I know the chances of being nicked for excess noise is slight - don't have a major problem selling leary stuff to experienced people who understand (like 99.9% of this forum)- the downside is when like so many of our competitors who are selling race stuff for the street without explain what their customers are buying
I would say that the majority of the crazy eu rules and regs have been created by of the eurocrats being woken up in his Spanish some crazy on an open piped horror at 2 am!

[ka-ja]

I don't have a problem selling separate parts to experienced people-  so a set of Motad pipes and also making a short collector  to allow someone to add/make their own silencer is not a problem

where it gets difficult is someone less able (like me!) fitting a system badly/dangerously and also the problem that generally to  make a system road legal and work you need a silencer around the size of the one we supply-   short and racy looks good but is often terrible on power if legal

Hi,
    My main problem along with a few others, is an engine in a fairly high state of tune that needs to "breathe" differently to a standard engine, and a hacksaw and matt black paint is the current answer or a very,very expensive model from outside the UK,a yoshimura at £650 is outside my means.

[motad_uk]

I would expect a stainless steel 4-1 would sell around the £185 mark

this would need 10 or more people (who understood the plusses and drawbacks of a system) to come on board so that the development costs could be spread

for most of the relevant models we already have down pipes and a good idea of required lengths - so we would have a head start

so far have only had one person showing interest (and must admit I suggested to them we would be unlikely to find more)

email me on ianmcdonald@motad.co.uk to prove me wrong!

[UK Pete]

Ian i would be interested in a 4-1 for the 750 model if we are talking £185
pete

[JamesH]

Count me in for two Ian. I would like to review / contribute to the design process though if at all possible. Also, if you need to borrow a 750k bike for a while to mockup/test I'd be happy to lend you one of mine for a bit...

[matthewmosse]

I don't suppose a new Dunstall silencer would be on the cards? (If the tooling still exsists) Mine has pitted chrome, not sure why but the silencer is chrome, the rest looks like a ceramic black coating or incredibly good black paint as it withstands even after all these years the gentle caress of a wire brush. Anyhow, many thanks for taking the time to join the forum and read and answer so may questions. I may well be on the phone when I have progressed my projects a bit to order a few bits. There are after all several cb500/550 bikes in my shed awaiting rebuilds.

[Trigger]

Ian, looking for a bit of advise.
Have a set of Honda 323's that were nos. Unfortunately they have been fire damaged. The metal is still in good condition but, have the down pipes a little out of shape.
I have spoken to a few company's  that have mandrel pipe benders but, they say it is not possible because the down pipes are double skin and all they could do is cut the down pipes from the silencer and form a set of single skin down pipes to be wielded to the silencers.
Do you know of anyone in the UK that could do double skin pipes? Or any ideas on repair? 

[motad_uk]

Ian, looking for a bit of advise.
Have a set of Honda 323's that were nos. Unfortunately they have been fire damaged. The metal is still in good condition but, have the down pipes a little out of shape.
I have spoken to a few company's  that have mandrel pipe benders but, they say it is not possible because the down pipes are double skin and all they could do is cut the down pipes from the silencer and form a set of single skin down pipes to be wielded to the silencers.
Do you know of anyone in the UK that could do double skin pipes? Or any ideas on repair?

double skinned pipes are expensive because of the tooling costs- to make a set of pipes would probably involve £25,000 of tooling!. The original exhausts were designed to last a max of 4 years in average use as Honda wanted us to trade the bike and buy a new one!. Problem for us is that the cost of restoration is so high nowadays that a lot of the bikes that are restored are now spending their life on display and trailers (so nor being used ) which makes it harder to justify us spending the money to make originals.  My advice on repair is that anything that is done will be a short term fix purely because of the fragility of the metal to which you are fixing- and be very carefull if you want rechroming- it is rare to find a chrome willing to put used exhausts into their mega expensive chemicals and often the ones that are of poor quality

[Trigger]

Hi Ian,
I did point out that this was a NOS (new old stock) set. The metal is new, just a little out of shape from fire damage. No wielding or anything like that needed. There is no problem re-chroming with a set in this condition. The only problem is how to put them back in to shape seeing that they are double skinned.
How do they manufacture double skin units?
 

[matthewmosse]

My take on this would be to clamp up using soft jaws, probably ply, even worth rebating the shape in first. in something like my sheet metal press which can evenly clamp up to 4 foot long and weights about a ton, then heat with acetalene and see if they would streighten by hand. The tricky bit would be identifying where the streightening effort would be needed, probably a bit everywhere. It would probably need a good set to compare to and a bike to test fit against. Bet it would be a days work to do the first one. I streighted a set of forks for a mate, first one took ages, next one was faster, by the time I needed to do a set for me it was fairly quick. Exhausts would be far harder though.

[motad_uk]

Hi Ian,
I did point out that this was a NOS (new old stock) set. The metal is new, just a little out of shape from fire damage. No wielding or anything like that needed. There is no problem re-chroming with a set in this condition. The only problem is how to put them back in to shape seeing that they are double skinned.
How do they manufacture double skin units?

the double skinning is done with complex (and pipe specific) mandrels and once bent the fixings are attached which would stop their use again

think that the problem you will have is that any skilled metal worker is going to need to introduce heat to the pipe to "encourage" it back into shape and this heat is going to discolour the chrome

[K2-K6]

Going back to some of the earlier posts on here, I thought that the Dixon racing "Yoshimura" pipe was the best looking by far of the aftermarket stuff made at the time, a mate of mine still has one fitted to his 750 F2 which I had a look at last week and the chrome is still good on it with no blueing either, so whatever you where doing to them then seems like good quality to me.

I thought at the time that the headers were a bit too short and fat to work well on the midrange of the 750 (looks like they flow for higher rpm) that F2 was quite quick though when matched against it's contemporaries, so it can't have been bad.

As for the examples made by carpy, I think looks will probably outweigh pure performance especially on an old bike as you can just get speed on a newer bike now rather than being concerned with ultimate output on a SOHC.

Like the others who've expressed an interest, I'd be interested in buying at least 2.......if they looked like those originals but in stainless/good chrome

[Trigger]

Hi Ian,
I did point out that this was a NOS (new old stock) set. The metal is new, just a little out of shape from fire damage. No wielding or anything like that needed. There is no problem re-chroming with a set in this condition. The only problem is how to put them back in to shape seeing that they are double skinned.
How do they manufacture double skin units?

the double skinning is done with complex (and pipe specific) mandrels and once bent the fixings are attached which would stop their use again

think that the problem you will have is that any skilled metal worker is going to need to introduce heat to the pipe to "encourage" it back into shape and this heat is going to discolour the chrome

Hi Ian,
The fire damage was that hot that they have no chrome left on them. This is why i was trying to find someone that could bend them back into shape before i send them for chrome. Have another NOS set so they could be measured from those.
Did find another problem this week from Honda double skin pipes. The pipes on the outside are in mint condition but, the inner pipe had rusted at the cylinder head end and was vibrating at 3.500 rpm. The vibration sounded like a cylinder head problem but, it was not until you put your finger inside the down pipe that you could feel the slightest movement. Only took 4 hours to find that one out. 

[Mike on a bike]

Just to change the subject a wee bit, on a historical note, I am sure a few of you on here know or have heard of M&P and Busters (one and the same) well going back to mid 70's M&P had not long set up shop in Swansea and I knew Mark (the M in M&P) from school. Well I needed a new system for my 500/4 and he sold me one of his first Motad system sales and then gave me the nickname of "Motad Mike" See, history being made here...lol