Header and bumper in the former, muffler in the latter…

No good deed goes unpunished. While waiting for my baja bumper to arrive, I insisted on staying busy and moving the project forward. I welded in a bung for the O2 sensor and handed the header off to a buddy to run through his shot peen machine. The muffler did not go through the machine, so on Friday I sprayed it with chemical paint stripper, which worked quite well. On Saturday, it was wet and yucky out, but I still managed to get a couple of things done on the trike, such as mocking up the bumper to see how it would fit and temporarily bolting on the header to see how it would clear.

Well, the header clears.

The O2 sensor and the muffler don’t.

From the pic, you can see that the spark plug hits the bumper. The O2 sensor is even longer and has wiring attached, so it definitely won’t clear. Moving the bumper downward might clear the sensor, but would not look right and probably wouldn’t work with the bumper’s top mount. Conequently, the sensor needs to move.

While I hate to weld in (or probably braze in this time) another bung and plug the first one, it won’t be very difficult. Another option, however, might be to heat the metal around the bung and lever upward on the plug, making it more parallel to the ground, rather than pointing slightly downward. This may clear the bumper and my planned receiver hitch.

As for the muffler, I don’t really like a stinger that much, largely because you have to remember to cover it in the rain to keep water from being funnelled directly into the engine, but they look and sound pretty good and it will fit and clear the bumper.

Perhaps in the future, I can get a muffler shop to bend up a pipe for me, maybe something like this.

The fuel tank is curing well. Only two or three more days to go….