Blast Pipe Wars: Pro Series Exhaust vs. Kerker

Background

Late last year, Andrew’s 2001 Blast blew its stock header nearly in half. Though his bike doesn’t have many miles on it, its years of service as an Ottawa Safety Council training bike before he bought it had obviously taken their toll. After pricing a stock replacement, Andrew picked up a Kerker pipe that had been collecting dust from Ottawa HD for considerably less. Then it was parked for the winter and wasn’t looked at again until recently.

Though the bike is no longer licensed or insured for the road (Andrew has been too busy enjoying his new XB12s Lightning), he and his brother decided

Shawn delivers the Blast to our front doorstep.

to finally get the Blast going again. They attempted to install the Kerker and quickly ran into technical problems that they didn’t have time to deal with, so the poor Blast was again set aside.

Kerker Pipe Installation

This year I finally made the difficult decision and opted for early retirement, choosing quality of life over financial gain. Surprisingly, I have so far remained as busy as ever. What has changed is that my time has become far more flexible, so I volunteered to install the Kerker.

I had two advantages over Andrew (and his brother) to do the job: I had the tools, and I had a motorcycle table lift. A good assortment of hand tools makes most jobs easier, but in the case of the Blast, it was the lift that made the installation process far less of a pain.

The spacer used is not from the Kerker kit.

On the surface, the installation of the Kerker is pretty straight forward. At the rear, a bolt passes through the P clamp on the balance tube and the horizontal bracket welded to the muffler (can) and then screws into a welded-on nut on the Blast’s original exhaust support bracket, which in turn is bolted to the frame. At the front, another bolt connects the Kerker bracket to the Blast frame. Finally, the header is clamped to the head using stock hardware.

Sounds simple, right? Well, not exactly.

Since the Kerker installation instructions were MIA, as apparently were some of the fasteners, I first turned to a invaluable resource on the internet: The-Buell-Blast user group on Yahoo!. The founder and bonafide “Blastoholic”, Ralph, quickly provided me with the information I required.

Knowing now what I needed to hang the pipe, I proceeded with the installation. The pipe was already loosely bolted at the front, and the can was already attached to the pipe, so I continued by attempting to screw in the bolt at the rear. I should highlight at this point that there is not much clearance below the muffler and the ground, that compressing the P clamp while maintaining a proper alignment of all the components being bolted together is not particularly easy, and that the difficulty of doing this is further complicated by the fact one is lying on the ground with not the best line of sight. I could easily see why Andrew had been unsuccessful getting that bolt to thread into the support bracket. In fact, I couldn’t get the bolt to thread into the nut without the pipe – the thread of the nut had been damaged at some point.