If a job's worth doing...

I have decided to tackle the major task of removing of the whole exhaust assembly. I think that after the swim the muffler's aging packing finally kicked the bucket and ended up as this horrible sludge mixed with water all pooling happily at the bottom of the collector.


So we need to remove the exhaust assembly, which on a V4 it is easier said than done.
It's pretty damn busy down there...



I read in forums that you can just about get to the exhaust studs if you remove the lower bolts holding the subframe to the main frame of the bike; no matter. Better to take out the whole thing instead and sort everything properly.
Sub out...




...plastic undertray out...




...battery holder out... (Note how the citric acid has totally removed the paint from the top side of the tray after it was dipped in to clean up some battery fluid residues and rust that had gathered around the top)




With all that out of the way the bike was looking a bit naked now... Still damn sexy though! :)




The subframe was in a very decent shape with thankfully only a few bits rusting, most notably the black brackets that were holding the original Honda panniers that came with the bike. These were not meant to be permanently on the frame but the previous owner had tack welded them on so I had simple let them be. Now is a good opportunity to remove them for good, so the subframe was put in a citric acid bath to let all the rust clear out.


Even with the subframe out of the way removing the exhaust assembly was a major undertaking. Having two cylinders at the front and two at the rear in a V formation makes for some pretty intricate pipeworks to put it mildly. Point in case: the whole assembly has 9 different flanges joining the various pieces together! All service manuals call for removing the centre stand before removing the exhaust but that was an even bigger undertaking.
Thankfully with a bit of wiggling around and some interesting choices of vocabulary I managed to get the whole thing out but I sudder to think about trying to put it back on again...
Look at the damn thing!




Removing the exhaust I ran into another problem which is quite common on VFRs: broken studs.
In order to make the removal of the exhaust marginally easier Honda decided to put a connector to the rear downpipes. The engine block has the usual studs which hold the pipes on but further out there is another joint with three studs connecting the pipes to the rest.

However trying to remove the studs, two of them snapped off like they were made out of Playdoh.
To make things worse these studs are simply straight through bolts which have been tack welded in place, so I now need to take them to a specialist to get them out. Thanks Honda!