Bandit and I were checking out the Amazing Shrunken FXR. "The damned thing," referring to the shrunken FXR project we had been hammering at, off and on, for almost two years, "has attitude," he growled, "a bad-assed attitude."

"Yeah, but will it have sound attitude?" I mused. "I want it to get attention. I want it to be felt in their chests before they see it. I want them to hide their children from the evil they fear."

The Amazing Shrunken FXR has developed into a mythic ethos. From a cardboard box full of rejected, beat-up, and cast off parts, the bike has become a sculptured icon, a physical dream, and perhaps a wrong turn down a bad dirt road, three miles back. The project began back in the spring of 2001. After a lot of fits and starts, the Buell Project, the Sturgis Run, the Deer Gut stew adventure, Bandit's painful recovery, the Red Ball prep, various events including a trip around the world and soiree's, we slapped parts on, hammered steel into shape, welded this and that, cussed and farted and got to where we are with the help of a RevTech driveline, Custom Chrome, BDL belt, Joker controls, Cyril Huze sheet metal and Compu-Fire electrics. The bike is raw boned, trimmed down, and mean looking. That's where it stands, inert and waiting for inspiration, up on the rack at the Bikernet garage.

Bandit regarded the raw metal frame with squinty-eyed intensity. "What you thinkin'," I asked, keeping my own gaze focused on the potential of the bike. At my question he stretched out his gangly, egret-like frame to its full 6'5". "It'll be a loud mother fucker either way you play it," he intoned in his gravitas basso-profundo deep voice. "We've shortened the frame and rear wheel base so much that it's barely a cunt-hair from the exhaust port to the rear wheel."

We cut a piece of an Samson Evolution system with a Mikita to use the exhaust port, then started welding other pieces in place. We cut it back to make a tight turn and create space away from the oil tank.

"Fuck it," I responded in my best Pancho Sanchez improvisation, "let's just start from the port and see what happens."

We rummaged through a pile of Samson scrap exhaust pipes that we had scavenged from a dumpster behind the Sampson factory. Flinging out fish tail tips, shot gun systems and swoopy cruiser exhausts, most of them dented and damaged so they couldn't be re-used. Mr. Samson gave us only the best to modify. We eventually came up with enough pieces to fabricate a Frankenstein exhaust system.

As I grabbed for a section 1 3/4-inch chrome pipe, I mistakenly grabbed a goodly chunk of fur. Bandit's midget, crazed demon of a feral cat yeowled in protest and sank his needle-like teeth into the back of my hand.

"God damn that crazy bastard," I screamed, "he's as crazy as a peach orchard boar." I'm sure Bandit has a mescaline salt-lick for that freaked out feline. After I extricated my hand from the jaws of Bandit's feline Cujo, I returned to the exhaust system at hand.

Our intent was to minimize the exhaust system as much as possible. We ran the pipe straight down from the front exhaust port, then turned it to hug the bottom of the engine case. We had originally hoped to put a flattened pipe under the frame, but reasonable road clearance dictated a different path. So we tucked it in and around the engine case, then inside the frame, coming out just at the edge of the back wheel.

"Our first mistake," Bandit spouted, "we needed a smaller diameter chunk of exhaust to form guides when welding chunks of exhaust together. If we had slipped it in one piece even a quarter of an inch. it would have held each chunk in alignment. That's one theory to building pipes. The key to fabing your own pipes is having enough scrap to slice and dice, then cutting and working each piece until it's as close to a perfect fit as possible. Finally the tacking process is critical. That's were the guides didn't come in. If we had guides we wouldn't have offset pipes tacked into place. That problem emerged severely a week later during the grinding process."

"It took two days of playing, cutting, fitting and welding to form a completely custom exhaust system in place," Bandit added. "Make sure you wet towels and form a fire barrior around your tacking area to protect the rest of the bike. I used a small 0-sized torch tip and common hanger to tack the segments of pipes together. I'm not confident enough with our new MIG welder with thin sheet metal, so I stuck with the torch."

" It wasn't perfect, but it was ours," Bandit added, "a completely unique system that would be tucked under the transmission and attached to the driveline solidly under the tranny backing place. Then we faced the muffler aspect. The pipes were too short to be open or we would have been arrested within a block of the headquarters."

Needing some kind of 'standardized' muffler elements, we went to our local San Pedro Kragen Auto Parts store. With the clamp-on piece in hand, we found parts and pieces enough to create a 7" muffler case. "Most of the elements were too heavy and glass packed," Bandit spouted, "We couldn't weld on a glass pack."

Back at the garage, with torch in hand, Bandit cut out a section of baffles from some scrap Sampson muffler. Spot welding the baffles into our jury-rigged muffler, we produced something that may, like Japanese Fart Wax, diminish the painful 'Brap-rap-rap' flutter of unrestrained exhaust back pressure. A right-angle turn-out will direct the dragon's breath exhaust from the screaming 88cc Rev Tech, high-performance engine to an unsuspecting public standing slack-jawed and terrified at the curbed edge of civilization, their hair-dos blasted straight by the sizzling after-burner of the Amazing Shrunken FXR.

"He gets sorta twisted," Bandit muttered shaking his head. "Actually with the baffle in hand we went to San Pedro Muffler Shop and looked at the myriad of tips and tubing alterations we could make. We found a tip and had a chunk of 1 7/8 tubing spread to match the tip. That formed the other end of the muffler. We just had to weld the three elements together."

I welded the baffle in place, positioned as it was in the Samson System. I discovered that the two elements didn't want to weld together. I have a feeling the tip was made of an inferior metal.

With the die grinder we cut notches for the muffler clamp.

"After welding and fitting I stood back and was proud of our uniquely tight system that would allow Giggie, from Compu-Fire, to machine mid-controls for a final touch," Bandit interupted. The exhaust played perfectly into the Shrunken aspects of the project. I removed the tacked system and began hours of gas welding to make it whole. That's when all hell broke loose. While working on another aspect of the bike with my back turned to my partner, he began to grind the welds. The college art history professor sought perfection with each weld and ground right through the thin walls of the 18-guage exhaust pipes. It was amazing. I was sure the system was ruined."

This shows the amount of area ground down so far we were forced to fill it or destroy the system and start over.

"Some builders tack systems together then take them to muffler shops for professional construction. I thought that was my next move. Unfortunately a regular muffler shop doesn't have the mandrels to make the tight bends we had proposed. I was devastated, but the man told me that he could fill the welds with his MIG welder.

More welds to fill the mad grinder's cutting work.

"Unfortunately each weld was now a 1/2 inch tall and wide zit at almost each junction of the pipe. Nuttboy began the grinding process again. More holes were found and I filled them with gas welding using hanger rods. I joke now that if the bike runs like shit we blame it on the exhaust system. If it runs well, it's the same roll of the dice. We'll see."

"Making your own exhaust system can be a blast, just don't get heavey handed with the grinders. Pipe is thin and a little weld that shows won't matter much since we didn't plan on chrome, but black Jet Hot coating. I've sworn off chrome exhaust systems on my bikes for the future."

That big bastard just won't shut up. The next episode in this mechanical adventure will feature Giggy's attempt a electrifying the steel monster. Next weekend, barring any new bike projects, Giggy's inopportune finger damage at the power tools, splattered deer guts, San Pedro political insurrection, Sin Wu's beguiling charms, a case of beer, or any other form of diversion or chaos, we will be closer to cranking this monster over.

On to Part 8........

Back to Part 6........

Back to Custom Chrome on Bikernet........

Back to Joker Machine on Bikernet........