Vance and Hines exhaust future

Noticed that Jeff ( www.z1enterprises.com ) is pushing all the V&H exhausts and is already sold out on Kawasaki but still has some CB and GS pipes. Is there something happening with V&H that few are chatting about?

dynoman.net/exhaust/kerker-apps.html

You can still get V&H at Dynoman's as well for $329...
But why when for an additional ~ $150 you can get a chrome Kerker for $499 or for $459 a Black one!

OMR

vance and hines became just a name on a sticker years ago.ive dealt with 2 of their headers on kzs,never again!

i have a supertrapp with the aluminum can and it is really great ..finish is clean,,welds etc....oil and filter access and the same merge at the collector as my old kerker had...i got a vance and hines in a bike deal and it is kinda squarish in it's bends under the motor..i may try it sometime...i noticed that the v/hines headers seemed to be all clearenced priced when i was header shopping last year and i figuered at the height of v&hs popularity ..maybe they produced way more than they sold and ended up way overstocked at all there wharehouses..who knows??....peace craig

i ran a gs1100 sidewinder on my last motor.. it held up great... even the megaphone and it fell off at over 60mph.. haha

V&H is a very difficult company to deal with. At various times we've waited as long as 11 months to get certain pipes.

They have a number of issues regarding packaging their pipes. In the last batch of 10 pipes we received, 8 of them had either taken damage in transit due to inferior packaging, or was missing emblems on the mufflers. We received a batch of replacements, then had to wait 2 months for a couple of the replacements, and now we are still waiting on a replacement muffler for one of those damaged in transit - all from an order paid for in September.

They have no desire to keep these old pipes in stock - occasionally they'll have a pipe or two, but basically we order and wait, and wait, then wait from replacements, and replacements for replacements....

It's sad that a company that was considered in high regard has slipped down and down.

When MAG (Motorcycle Accessory Group) bought them out, I thought there would be a focus on solving some of these problems - unfortunately they have not...

We are going to stock the limited number of Kerker pipes for these older bikes, and if the economy picks up, seriously look at getting pipes made exclusively for us.

Jeff.Saunders wrote:

....and if the economy picks up, seriously look at getting pipes made exclusively for us.

That would be cool Jeff. I personally would love to see someone make a reasonably priced vintage Yosh style race pipe, like the one on Wes Cooley's old GS1000. I guess a survey would be good, to see what most KZ owners like in a header with regards to finish, headpipe style, megaphone flare, diameter, length.

i had a yosh pipe on a z-1 in the 80s and it looked like a clone of wes cooley's pipe...it was so cool ,,made the bike look real bad ass,,all flat black and smooth lines....i'm no tuner but it was really snotty and worked great with a z-1 airbox ,29 smoothbores and a high compression 1000 somthing kit...sometimes(twice) i see em on e-bay but i've spent all mama will allow on a header for a while...p.s i got to sit on that bike (pops yosh #34 gs1000 a.m.a champions)one night at a friends rental guest house...i was a changed boy the next day...it's all i could think about..still do...ditto on making those pipes again..peace

I still have my Yosh pipe on my 650. Would love a new one. I used to hang out with some west cost Yosh guys in the late 70's early 80's, here there having a problem with a tire change at the Budweiser 6 hour. They used my 650 as jig for making pipes.

wow nice pic...there is some guy in ca, that is re-printing those t-shirts(copyright infring???)anyway i bought a couple on e-bay and they are really good shirts,not cheapies and the screen job is perfect, they were really not much $$$ either..kinda cool...again nice pics...

I guess I am one of the lucky ones. I bought a Vance & Hines for my Z1 last December from Dennis Kirk and it was not damaged in shipping. It also went on with no problems whatsoever. From reading some of these posts sounds like I just got lucky. I wanted a Kerker but could not produce the funds so close to Christmas. All in all I am satisfied with my V&H.