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Chapter 1
Chopped Ass
It was a cold and dismal night late in January. The wind howled as
it pressed and the rain kept a steady drumbeat against the garage
door. A dimly lit enclave extended from the house where a fellow
could get some work done and be alone with his thoughts and best
friend. The project involved cutting fresh polymers from a recently
acquired motorcycle. My best buddy Harley was keeping me company
while I sank deep into thoughts of recent events that kept me from
exploring other means of social interaction. He might not be much
for deep thought or conversation but he is a good listener and lends
himself handy wherever possible. This I can be thankful for, he is a
true and trusted friend. If only I could get him to stop chewing my
shoes.
"The back end of this thing is atrocious”, I muttered under my
breath. Lets have a looky see how all this plastic crap is put
together. Harley added in a ‘whelp’ as I rolled my chair back and
caught his tail.
Off with the seat. Off with the side panels. Push those little pin
buggers in and pull their tiny lil heads off! The plastic just fell
apart in my hands. A few bolts and nuts and the back of the bike was
in pieces. Well, I just can’t pull that rear ‘snow shovel’ of a
fender off with out leaving a lot of open seams. “How am I ‘spose to
get rid of this hunk-o-plastic and still leave the necessary stuff”
I thought out loud. “Ruff” is all Harley had to say. And I mean with
out paying out the poopshoot for someone else’s bolt on stuff. If
there is one thing that bugs the hell out of me is that somebody
goes and figures something out and then all the ‘lemmings’ hafta
have the same thing. ‘Lemmings’ that’s what I call ‘em. ‘Friggin’
lemmings’.
Ha, I’ve got a better idear! (Paul Sr talking now)! How about I just
cut the offensive part of the fender off and then modify what’s left
to meet the legal mumbo jumbo crapola stuff. Good ‘nuff for me.
OK, put all this plastic back on. Bolts, nuts and those cute little
Pop-Ins…what crap!
“Where is my saw”? I just cut the fender off as you can plainly see
in the pix and leave that three-sided extension just below the
taillight. This will give me a platform to mount the license plate
and turn signals. I do want those ugly stalks ‘cause I don’t want
some suburban or minivan runnin up my ass.
 Here in the greatest state in the union…that would be Texas for
those of you unfortunate souls who are from ‘not round here’. We are
required to have our bikes safety checked each year. For our measly
12 bux they give us a sticker and we are suppose to display it near
the license plate. Well, the certificate plate issued to us works
just perfect for my idear (that’s Paul Sr talk). Turn the plate
upside down and bolt it through the plastic. The accompanying
pictures tell the story. I scavenged a bracket from the old license
mount and used it for the turn signals bracket. Couldn’t have taken
all of one hour to do this work, but with Harleys help we managed to
spend most of the evening discussing which was the better way to do
it. He really tries his best, but you just gotta understand, his
brain is about the size of a walnut. I must take that into
consideration.
Chapter 2 Gotcha a sore bum?
This here stock seat sux. No I mean it really sux. I have had a lot
of bikes thru the years but this has got to be the worst seat I have
ever sat and ridden on. Even my old sportster that would numb your
ass in an hour was like a lazyboy recliner compared to this POS. yes
really.
Well, what to do, what to do? I suppose I could spend a lot of money
and just buy another seat. OR! I could take this one apart and cut
it down and shape it. God knows I couldn’t screw it up any worse
than it already is. Cool, got another project and a plan!
Take off the seat. Pull out the staples. Remove the cheap ass vinyl
cover. Note the piss poor foam that has been molded to follow the
bike lines and not your butt lines. It’s a friggen seat, for God
sake! Use a black marker and draw some idear (again Paul Sr talk) of
what your butt may look like whilst upon the throne of doom. OK,
where is my knife?
Cut, Saw, and Shave the foam to something resembling two cheeks. I
think that is what they refer to as a “Double Bubble”. I’ve been
reading about that a lot on the website, but they keep talking about
putting it on the front of the bike. Personally, I think they’re all
nuts on that site. Hey, but that’s just me, I’m just visiting for
entertainment value.
Well now that we seem to have managed to screw this up pretty well.
Lets get back online and see what our options are. There are few
recommendations for Gel and Corbin seats. The gel seat looks like
crap. The Corbin looks good and is lower. Lower is good. Everybody
has good things to say about the Corbin, so I say OK, let’s do it.
So off a calling I go. Finally find a reseller in SoCal that is
willing to ship freight free. 220 skins. Later I learn that 2 bills
is the going price, so I wound up paying the freight anyway.
A week later I receive a package at my door. My new Corbin seat has
arrived! Off to the garage with my little buddy in tow. He tries to
be helpful.
How difficult can this be, you ask? It’s like a walk in the park. On
Elm street. Friday the 13th. Freddy’s neighborhood. What the hell
has Corbin done? The seat came with two little screws that are
‘spose to fit under the frame hooks. More POS. Well after a few vain
attempts, I actually am able to get the thing to fit and secure.
Well it looks good. Man this seat has NO padding in it whatsoever.
It is just leather on top of a seat pan. OK, it might have 3/8” off
some used carpet underlayment material in there. Certainly it will
soften up over time…MY ASS! It’s now been durn near 5k miles and
that seat is as hard as piece of construction lumber. The shape of
it is wide and low…yes it is low..er. BUTT the sides are hard and
sharp and after an hour of steady ridding my legs where they meet my
gluteus maximus hurt like a Son of a Bitch. I have to move side to
side on the seat just to get any momentary relief from the shooting
pains that I am enduring. This is a major distraction from my
enjoyment of this otherwise magnificent piece of rolling machinery.
 That Gel seat is looking better all the time. I wonder if somebody
might be interested in a trade? HEY, there is a new post for some
super soft comfy BuggerLax seat on the old website. It looks like as
someone said ‘a slug’, but I bet it would be kissin’ my butt all the
livelong day. My kinda seat. I’m in love…again. (See chapter 13, if
either you or I last that long) Chapter 3
Slammin n’ Jammin on the Lowdown
Damn, why the **** do they make this bikes so friggen tall? Not
everybody is 6 foot 13. Or is that the only way they can get these
things to lean over so far? I’m gonna have to fix it. Again.
Read all the baloney on the website about lowering links. More stuff
to buy. How hard could it be? “Me thinks I’ll make my own links,
thank you very much”.
How the **** are you ‘spose to get these links off? I can’t get the
bolts out because this god-awful exhaust system is wrapped around it
like a boa constrictor. More ****! I’m just gonna have to pull the
whole damn exhaust system just to get to the links. Damn!
See chapter 4 and why I refuse to put that friggen exhaust system
back on.
OK, now we have the exhaust off. And have fabricated several
replacement links to see how much I can lower this here beast. “What
is up with these offset brackets”? Why on earth would Suzuki design
such crap? I mean after getting a good look at that nightmare of an
exhaust manifold, now they’ve gone and made the friggen links with a
bend in them. ****!
So off I go to the website and get me that number 1-800-buy-my-***
for 70 bux. A week later I get an envelope in the mail with two
chincey looking pieces of aluminum, but hey notice the fancy bend in
them? That’s what cost ya the 70 smakers.
 So, now with the new links securely in place let us see what our
floor to seat dimension measures. WOW, that’s an impressive 28.5”
unlaiden. Damn near chopper territory! Lets see how she fits. Damn!
I can sit flat-footed on both sides. Damn, I can stand up and give
my sore arse a breather at the stop lites. Damn, I impressed with
the good work I do. Damn! Chapter 4 Custom Pipe
or “who’s blowin smoke up your arse”?
Well it was established way back there in chapter 3 that the stock
exhaust system leaves a whole lot to be desired. In particular, that
convolution of a manifold down under the bike where the front
exhaust meets the rear exhaust and they do a dance that defies
imagination. Some have said that this design incorporated the use of
a forklift and its tires to extricate those intricate bends and
turns and hammer spots that certainly must have been engineered for
maximum performance with minimum amount of exhaust gases actually
able to flow out of them. Whew! I’m tired just thinking about it.
OK, I busted my hump getting that contraption off. And from the
looks of things it is even a bigger job to put it back on. (Only
later did I learn that you have to remove the kickstand to
re-install the middle manifold) Which of course necessitates that
you invest in yet another bike specific item, a front or rear wheel
stand. But what the hay, as long as you’ve got your credit card out
you might as well get them both…your gonna need it!
So a beer or two later, while I am down here laying on the floor
looking up the skirt of this her bitch wondering why I am laying
down on a dirty garage floor looking up at a motorcycle with a wet
dog sniffin my nuts and then attempting to lick my face when I could
be laying on a perfectly good bar room floor looking up some real
skirts, I have a real epiphany! Man, do I have to pee! So in the
process of wheeling myself out from under and sitting up I manage to
hit my head pretty darn good on something hard that really that
didn’t want to share space and time with my otherwise softer
cranium. F**K! I am going to build my own pipe to fit that bitch.
How hard can that be? You ask..again?
Damn, you are a sucker for punishment.
OK, so what we have here is a perfectly good stock front and rear
header pipe. It’s everything else from here that is garbage. We know
what to do with garbage. Put it in a box and save it for another
project later.
 So taking some 1-5/8 inch copper fittings and pipe, I begin to weave
my magic skills as I fit a 2”x 1.5/8” bushing at each header pipe. A
couple of cuts with the old saw and stainless hose clamps and they
are now part of the bike. Cut and measure two short sections of
1.5/8” pipe, long radius 90 street ells, a short 45 street ell, a Y
connector (why not?), another long radius 90 street ell and your
done. Fit all this up and under the scoot, mark each joint where it
lines up with each other. Take it to your buddy with an
oxy-acetylene torch and have him silver-solder (weld) that puppy up
at 1800f. Be sure it’s the right puppy. Even though Harley is a
‘wiener dog’ we don’t need no hot doggers, if you get my drift?
 As always, refer to the pix for more explicit details. They tell a
more detailed picture if not as colorful.
 Pipes, we need pipes!
Pipe #1 was 16” long x 4” diameter megaphone with a reverse cone
resembling a trumpet. While it was an interesting…ahem, muffler, it
was in my opinion too high pitched.
 Pipe #2 was yet another megaphone only this time 24” long x 4”
diameter. Problem was that this is definitely a muffler and came
with a non-removable baffle and was indeed too restrictive and
quiet.
 Pipe #3, now this was an interesting unit a 19”x 4” ‘Cherry Bomb’
from Hearthrob that I really considered a keeper ‘cept it was bit on
the large side and run up too close to the tire. I didn’t want any
surprises down there, so back it went.
 Pipe #4 was the trick being a 12” long x 3” diameter ‘GlassPack”
from Hearthrob. It RIPS, has a good low nuff tone and lets the old
gasses flow just like granny on exlax!
 Coming up on 5k miles, its time to do some changes.
 Pipe #5 was the unit I had consider from the beginning only took
some side roads before going back to my original idear (Paul Sr sure
gets around). It is a 16” long x 3” diameter ‘SideWinder’ from JCWhitney. It did come with a hefty restrictive baffle, which I
intend to get good use of my chisel and hammer and knock that sucker
into tomorrow. Results are pending but you can look at the pictures
for now.
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