More than one way to gut a cat
 

Well I woke up Saturday morning thinking about what I'm going to do on the hawk today. I planed on taking an early morning ride so I do the usual check list...checking oil, chain, ect. I waxed the chain and while checking the oil I noticed a good bit of rust forming on the exhaust pipe. So I might as well pull it off and repaint it. While I had it off I looked in the pipe. The welds were pretty decent and clean. I had a piece of wire and slid it in the pipe and of course hit the cat. So I figure might as well get the hack saw and cut it open to see what inside. How the hell these motors run with that plug up pipe is a miracle. Took out the drill with a 1/2" bit and started working away at it. That corrugated what ever they used was packed tight in there. After about 30 minutes of working on it I finally got it all out. I broke out the trusty old MIG Welder and welded back up then repainted it. I stuck the pipe back on and took her for a long ride. Man what a difference in power and throttle response. Who needs a $140 exhaust system when you can get the same results for free. I know Jerry's a cheap bastard. :lmao: Hell just look at my cost for my upgrades so far in my sig. I was going to weld a bung on there to put an O2 sensor so I can hook my air/fuel ratio gauge but ran out of shield gas before I finished welding up the exhaust as you can see from the crappy weld. But no leaks. It feels like its running lean now. I'll rejet it after I get the gauge hooked up so I can jet it right.
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What weld? Should there be a pic? We want the pic!

3rd picture

I just put one of those $129 mufflers on my bike. Then we got dumped with 6" of snow so I wont know what it will do until some snow melts but it sure looks good on my bike. Congrats on gutting your cat. I cant wait to feel the new power myself. I was going to gut my cat buy Iam just learning how to use my tig and I chickened out lol.

The welding is easy but the metal on these exhaust is real soft. I had to set it on the lowest setting to weld. Then it started spattering and realized I was out of shield gas. I figured the worst thing that could happen is i would have to buy a new exhaust system lol. A cold front came through this morning and now it's cold and raining.

Iam wondering if you cleaned up the weld inside the pipe where it meets the engine? Every weld Ive seen on that part of the pipe closed up the pipe alot.

It's was clean. Must of had a more experience Welder working on mine. At least a 15 year old kid. :lmao: I should of taken a picture. I took out my little grinder expecting to have to grind it down but was a clean weld job.

Good deal. You couldn't fit a quarter through mine.

Nice Job Jerry! :tup:

Jerry, No shame in being cheap at all, I mean, look at the motorcycles we all choose to buy. :D One of the first things I did was pull the exhaust on my Hawk and replace it with the racing pipe MotoCheez recommends. I actually had all the upgrade parts for it before I even had the bike! Conventional wisdom said that I should have broken the bike in and ridden it a bit to get a feel for the upgrades, but I was too impatient for all that. Once I had the bike assembled, I started it stock and ran it up the street once to warm the oil, then I pulled it back in the shop and drained the fish-glue, pulled the exhaust, spark plug, carb, and other odds and sods, and went to work! I'm in Tampa finishing up a few jobs down here, then it's back home for a few days before I have to go to Tuscaloosa, AL for a week. After the new year, I should have a few weeks of local work. That means I can put in a few rides and finish up some work on the Rebel. I'm just a few miles shy of the 500 mile mark on the Hawk, so I'm going to do another oil change, clean the screen, and build a magnetic drain plug for it. I have some craft magnets I picked up for that project. I'm thinking it should be as easy as drilling out the shank of the drain plug and using some high temperature metal epoxy to stick one of the magnets in the end. I'll post on that when I make it happen.

Thanks.

Nice work, Jerry! I'm pretty Scottish, so I don't wanna pay for a muffler either. I've modified a few, and I've also cut a cat out like you did. I figure these bikes can't outflow a well-modded muffler, so that's my preference. All that said, I did score a nice XR250R muffler for cheap on eBay, and I welded that to the midpipe of my Lifan. The only reason I did that is to satisfy the Rangers.

very nice work!!!
i think ill do mine this week!!

Thanks for all the compliments. I wanted to get some ride time in yesterday. To bad the weather didn't cooperate. I went out yesterday morning and it was a warm 72 degrees. I went inside to get some breakfast and get my helmet and within an hour the temp had drop 25 degrees along with cold a_ rain and wind. :doh: By 5pm it was down to 38. Needless to say I did ride lol. I know you guys up north are freezing and these temps would be a blessing to you. You all keep warm up there.

I just epoxied one of those small rare earth magnets to the head of the drain plug. It's about a 1/4" dia. but super strong. The whole drain plug is a magnet now. I can still use a socket over it.

Jerry, I think your solution to this problem is the right one.

My wife use to do crafts and she had a butch of these magnets for refrigerator magnets laying around. They are about a 1/4" dia. x 1/4" long similar to these. https://www.amazon.com/BYKES-Neodymi...words=1%2F4%22

What a relief!

The cat lover in me clicked on this with terrible fear!

:lmao: I figured the title would catch everyone's attention. No worry, no animal harmed in this experiment.

I got some ride time in over the holidays. I took my bike out Saturday and did a WOT run and cut the power then coasted to the side of the road. Pulled the plug to confirm it was running lean. So I drove back home and swapped out the 110 jet to the next size I had. a 115. I took another WOT run and pull over to check the plug. Looks like I will be close. I wish I had a 112 or 113 in my pack of jets to try. I may have one missing as I had two 100 jets. Top speed is still 74 mph (GPS) but gets there a whole lot quicker. :clap: Removing the cat is the best mod so far on this bike. I'm liking my Hawk more and more every time I ride it. I think I'll order an adjustable CDI with no rev limiter because I'm defiantly hitting the rev limit.

Getting an adjustable CDI unit is probably a good idea. I don't agree on the rev limiter. The rev limiter is on there to protect the engine from when the rider misses a shift, or the chain breaks. It is set at 1000 rpm higher than the power peak. On the other hand, if you are hitting the rev-limiter in high gear, it's too short geared and you need to change sprockets.

makes sense , if the operator doesn't have enough sense to hand off the throttle in that event, he probably should not be riding in the first place.

:lmao: I've been riding before rev limiter were invented lol. That's what a tach's for. I haven't ordered my digital cluster yet. (Christmas put a big dent in my Hawk budget) but will have it before I get crazy with the rpm's. not sure what the limit is set at on these Hawks but it sure ain't over reving. I have that built in tach in my ear. lol

Digital tach/speedo
 

Okay, I was looking to purchase a small tachometer and ran across this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01J7SN5MK...I24J5Q0Y2S64AK Has anyone on here installed one? The price is right. I have no problem figuring out the wiring. I could replace the whole cluster with this one for $27. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...e5400ef7fe.jpg

Almost all older riders have a built in tach. People forget that tachs only came on super sports type motorcycles, in the old days. And usually you got a tach OR a speedo, not both. BSA Goldstars were the first I recall that had both. Because of Goldstars, my ear tach knows almost certainly where 7200 is by sound alone.

How does one go about finding a cdi box for a magician/hawk?

you be the guinea pig we will follow.

I bought it and it is accurate with my gps when set correctly . The tacho, well...it gave up about a month in. Reset switch for tripometer is in back and hard to reach but is my only choice to keep up with mileage. I paid about the same. It's so cheap I could easily afford a replacement if I had to have the techno but I just really needed it to keep track of mileage.

After reading reviews and watching a few videos I discovered one glitch with it. If you accidently change the in the settings from 1 cylinder to 2 or 4 you could not reset it back to 1. With the luck I have I would of messed it up so I went ahead and through the cheap bastards award out the window and got the digital cluster from Matt. I'm glad I did. It was plug and play with Matt's cluster.

What was the problem with getting the tach to work ?

No problems . It just quite working after a few weeks. Nice while lasted. Sorry I forget to mention about the cylinder thing. I ran across that on the web so made sure I didn't mess it he it but doesnet matter since tacho is toast.

I saw a pickup with a husky and a ktm in the back the other day...must be nice to be able to spend that kinda of dough :hehe:

Dlx efi decat??
 

has anyone done this ? no carb to adjust does it compensate? any word on a ECU reflash? or powercommander options? any help would be great... Always in search of more power!!

Delphi/Low cost ECU you will not cheaply change inner workings of software.
Yes you can buy stuff from the Russians around USD$750................
Maybe the Old Harley Davidson Delphi MT05 commander.....
Will self tune up to 6000RPM then run of a fixed map.

Or take the bike to EJK in Montana get them to make a controller like they did for the AJP PR5

probably a wire connection