Repairing crushed header / building a pipe

oldkaws4ever wrote:

ya for what that bassani lacked in looks it made up bike time in power. A pipe extender you say? Hmmmmm that sounds like a tool that will find its way into my tool box, i have passed up countless pipes because of the dented primary pipes. Can't wait to see the pics......look's like you got this in the bag.

Remember this only works on the straight part of the primaries. And you have to be able to get to it, if you are not cutting the collector off. I cut it here (straight part of primaries already fixed in this picture)

timebomb33 wrote:

a pipe expander works good on the collector end but they would be next to impossible to get inside the primary tube even if you could find one that came in a small enough size

You type faster than me :laugh:

how do you plan on welding up the primaries after you have done the deed. on the inside i mean

I bought a new collector from Cone Engineering. I will be building a pipe from the collector back just using the repaired primaries.
www.coneeng.com

I've heard about the trick with the ball bearing. I am going to try something else though.

Great thread Dutchz. Looking forward to seeing your progress.

keep us posted on your progress.thanks for posting the link to the header parts also.

I have pulled a couple of small dents out by heating the header in the bad area, and use a tapered wood rod, you can use a closet rod, and tap it in side it works pretty decent.

the down side is it will not go around a bend either

Question: If you were to find a fairly heavy spring (maybe for a garage door or something) that had an O.D. close to the I.D. of the primary pipes do you think you could drive it into the pipe (maybe grease it first)? This might pop out the dents, and it should flex around the curve of the pipe. I would think pulling it back out wouldn't be too bad as it should tend to unwind and loosen it's grip on the pipe. Might be worth a try if you can find the right size spring. Ed

I have never tried that, but I think the main problem would be that it may be hard to force the spring through to put pressure on the dent. Beating on the end of the spring with a hammer would be interesting...

So here's what I did: plug the ends up, pressurize and heat so the dent would pop out. Supposed to be an old dirtbike trick or something...

Bought some 1 3/8" freeze plugs, same as pipe ID.

Disassemble one and put a steel motorcycle valve stem in it.