Leatherat

I have tickets booked for 7pm wednesday evening........can't wait! I'll let y'all know just how great it was when I get back.

The exhaust wrap and the whitewall rear look very cool. I prefer the picture where the front mudgaurd has been removed, why did you put it back on? Have you ridden in the rain without the mudgaurds.........bet that wouldn't be much fun.

Yeah, honest Mister...... It's not easy to take good pictures of it,but the gap between the reg/rec and the new pipe is still really small....even after spacing with these spacers.... There's always one.... Agreed, just a symantic issue as I wished to use Bark a little later in the paragraph The Dyna Jet kit is £97.00 and a K&N filter (Recommended) is £40.00........I've just spent £210.00 FFS! Yeah me too! The rear pipe especially. It was OK until a flat out run down the motorway to check the top speed was still alright. Yes please! I'm looking forward to that!

After discussion with another XVS 650 Dragstar owner, I ordered these pipes 6 days ago through Ebay. The advert stated an estimated delivery time of 11 - 23 days, but to my suprise they arrived today. An hour later they were fitted. Not as straight forward as I'd expected but as you can see, they're on. Stealth mode off! The originals came off easily enough, the old gaskets were prised out of they're recesses and new ones fitted. The new pipes were offered up and I found that A. the front pipe was a pretty good fit, but the R/H foot rest and brake lever assembly had to be removed to allow access. The reg/rectifier had to be moved a 1/4 inch forward of its original position by means of a spacer, to allow clearance. B. The rear pipe was not bent correctly and the bracket to hold the rear end of the pipe was leaning outwards slightly, requiring a 3/8 inch spacer to be fabricated. Had the pipes been stainless rather than chromed I might have bent the bracket to suit, but the spacer does the job without detracting from the overall look as it cannot be seen. C. Once fitted, I found that the two pipes could not be made to run parrallel with either the frame, or each other. A new mounting would have to be fabricated or the old one adapted, neither of which was going to happen today. I can live with this as most people won't notice, but it's not ideal. The pipes come with bolt in baffles, I ran the motor up without them at first, and the pipe sounded lovely at tickover, but very loud and raspy at anything above that. So I fitted the baffles and that really attenuated the noise level a tickover, still a good sound but not as much of a rasp, but on the open road the pipes still bark........a lot! Moving off in first sounds great, pulling up through the gears.......lovely, but rip the throttle open for a quick overtake and you get an awful lot of noise, So much that even I was expecting the bike to be moving a lot faster than it actually was. All in all, the new soundtrack suits the bike far more than the original pipes had provided, however the new ones are very shouty and certainly not for shy or retiring types. I was stressing quite a lot about the need for re-jetting prior to fitting these pipes, the people I'd talked to were mentioning that I might lose mid range torque and top speed unless I re-jetted the carbs, and after looking into that I can report that it's pretty expensive to do it properly, so I haven't bothered. The general concensus is that it won't harm the motor but I might get slightly less economy from the bike. In reality, I think there is a little less torque in the mid range, it feels a bit slower from 30-50mph, but that might very well be me looking for a problem, who knows. The top speed hasn't been affected........at 90mph flat out it's still really slow! LOL! In conclusion, at £210.00 delivered, I'm pretty happy with these new pipes, although I'll reserve jugdement for a couple of months to see what quality the chrome is.

Sorry man.....I disagree. Make sure they know it was you whilst avoiding any evidence if possible. A show of 'Do not F*%K with me!' always gets results as most people are shit scared of anyone who stands up for themselves (cause most people don't).

If they want to play silly games, a breeze block through the windscreen works well. Everytime you someone puts the screen through costs an excess, 3-4 times and it will really start to piss them off. People in your road don't seem to be too vigilant when it comes to neighbourhood watch so somewhat risk free. Remeber, you've tried to be reasonable, and they started the war.

I don't know you're bike, but I've been reading BSH recently and someone in there mentioned 25ft for a triple with shorties on it.

This might be old news and I might be miles out of touch, but I just found this handy little site for everything Dragstar 650

Well I've just tried again and I got this message 'The member Ttaskmaster cannot receive any new messages' it comes up on a dusky pink background, so maybe that's why you've no new messages. I've been looking at these for a while now, but the 2" dia is a problem for me, I'd like the fat pipes by Highway Hawk, but the world seems to be conspiring against me on that front as I've missed out on some choice sechondhand deals just lately. I might have to bite the bullet and buy brand new, but if that's the case I'll have the fat pipes. Check on your message system though, there's something not right.

I have been trying to PM you about this very topic......These Gemini exhausts, are those the Italian ones on ebay for £210.00? Have you fitted them, what do you think? They look a bit on the skinny side in the photo on ebay (when you compare them to the Highway Hawks.

Yeah I know exactly what you mean!

Having had a poke around a XVS250 a while ago, I'd say pretty much a straight swap, but I await correction. The problem is finding a 250 motor.

You don't stipulate the size, but if it's a 650 I'll eat my underpants if you get anywhere close to 80mpg! mines 'run in' and I get around 45mpg on average.

Odd really, as you usually associate birds like that with Purple helmets, not flowery ones.

To be quite honest, Ebay is as good a place to start as any.

All together now......She's got a luverly bunch of Coconuts, there they are all standing in a row.

Yeah, but you I know what I'm thinking....... "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as that is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, (Yeah Yeah, I know it's a slighty different peice but the quote doesn't work with the 357 so go with it!) and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Get pissed and invade Lybia? Oh no, sorry thats Baraco Barma, Jesus would explain that the path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. He would go on to remind us all that Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children, and then he'd tell us that he will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is The Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. Or turn the other cheek ......... it's all a bit confused really, ain't it.

Mines noisey from pretty much everywhere except the exhausts. Whiney, rattley and grindey to a greater or lesser extent, I've had it checked out and everythings fine, but you're quite right about the screen increasing the engine noise, but it makes the bike so much more rideable. Various aftermarket exhausts are available, but they're all pretty pricey, there is a drilling technique that makes the stock cans more noisey, you'll find several how to videos on You Tube if you care to look. I haven't gone down this route as I don't want to ruin my exhausts just to find that A. it sounds Shite and B. the MOT man isn't happy and it costs me more than a custom set to replace the originals.

OK, for those poor souls who are heading straight for Hell, a synopsis of the video.......... During a Softball game (for the Brits....it's exactly the same as rounders but with uniforms and a proper pitch) a sad, sad girl who is in her senior year with the league, in the last game of the last season in which she will be able to play, has never scored a Homerun (Rounder). She hits the last ball of the game and wallops it really hard. She starts to run an trips up, damaging herself so badly that she is unable to carry on and lays flat out on the floor. Her team mates are unable to help her as it would be tantamount to cheating so two of the opposing side carry her around the pitch to score the winning run as "She really deserved it". Only in America!!!!! Flag waving and tears of Pride etc etc yada yada yada, appple pie and.....well you get the picture.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/yamaha-xvs-125-dragstar-highwayhawk-fat-pipes-/110666394729?pt=UK_Motorcycle_Parts&hash=item19c43b2c69

2 soft twats & 1 clumsy cow.

Well said young man, please take heed or you run the risk of ending up with something that looks like this.... Oh, and if you can (I know it's difficult for you Welsh chaps) please use English as your first language, as whatever tongue you've been typing in is terribly difficult to read. Thanks awfully.

Thanks, it's mint condition, having covered only 11,700 miles in 13 years. Even the underside of the frame and engine casings are clean. It's not the bike I was looking for, but once I'd seen it, I had to buy it. The addition of the screen makes motorway use far more viable.

Ok, so here's the pictures......... The screen cost £140.00 from Matts Motorcycles, Bristol and is actually very good quality, you have to strip the bolts out from the stainless strips when you first get it home as the stainless has that blur cling film all over it, (gives you the chance to make all the screw heads line up). Once thats done, you have to build the mounting kit onto the screen, then take it all off again once you realise that it's a PITA to fit with all that hardware hanging off it. The main problem I encountered was with the rather ugly and inadiquate mountings for the handlebars. As you can see in the picture they just can't be made to fit well. I guess thats the problem with universal fittings. Anyway, it's on and only moves slightly (Rotates on the handlebars towards the rider) at speeds in excess of 85mph, which was of course tested on a local private test track . I have plans for new billet mounting brackets, they are to be machined locally and once done I'll post some pics.