Exhaust system as advertised.
January 23rd, 2001 - conclusion
In opening the two boxes that contained the exhaust, i noted that there was no installation instructions, carburetion tips/info, or parts listings for the system, something that i've received with other manufacturer's exhausts that i've purchased in the past. Documentation is usually not needed if you know what you are doing, but it is reassuring to have and refer to for info, rather than doing an installation where you are piecing exhaust sections together for fit - and having to entirely rely on the uncalibrated Mark I eyeball. This was but a harbinger of things to come.
The first real physical problem that was to be encountered with the exhaust system was with the Header mount flanges. The flanges for numbers 1 and 4 cylinders required corrective grinding to fit on the inboard portions of the cylinder head. Additionally, the mounting kit for the 18" exhaust canister consisted of a 5" x 1" flat aluminum bracket that was (in theory) meant to fit on the same frame bracket that the passenger footpeg bracket mounts upon. In fact, with that mount position, the system ended up with 17" of canister dangling to the rear, and the header/midtube assembly being forced up by 2" to meet the bracket. All in all, a good recipe for a pipe stress fracturing or deforming.
The solution to this was to devise my own mount setup, using components from a GIVI saddlebag mount kit that i had in the garage, unused. An alternative mounting bracket was fabricated, using the bungee rail and the grabrail subframe mounts as the tie-in points. Works a lot better now. However, it should NOT have cost me the $150.00 GIVI bag kit, as it is now incomplete of components and cannot be used for it's original intended purpose. This whole situation showed that Hindle took some real serious shortcuts in his design of the exhaust system - if he used a Bandit in it's fabrication at all. This is a pretty good sign of a non-quality exhaust system in my books - sort of what one would expect from an early 80's Jardine $75.00 cheese-chrome megaphone slip-on, not an expensive system like this.
Additionally, one factor that i did not consider, and i did not note any info on the website or from info that the dealer had regarding this issue, was loss of the centrestand in the install. If i had known this before starting the exhaust install and modifications, i would not have kept the system and returned it for something that did work with the centrestand, as i consider the centrestand as essential for maintenance.
The rear passenger footpeg bracket has been another source of amusement and frustration. From talking to Lang Hindle prior to purchase, i knew beforehand that modifications were going to be required to fit it, but i didn't (and he sure didn't) account for the bracket's OEM exhaust mount point, and the interference fit that would result between it, and the canister/midtube junction, not to mention the god awful appearance of a big 2" rubber donut nuzzled up against the canister when he suggested the solution of a spacer block - I share most of the fault for not recognizing the problems beforehand by just looking at it, but does the manufacturer of a product not share blame, if they don't know their product and give erroneous advice?? This problem was surmountable, however, with about three hours of fabricating a 1" aluminum block spacer with basic hand tools, to space the footpeg bracket out to clear the midtube, and cutting away of the muffler mount and ankle guard from the footpeg bracket itself. The results are pretty good, considering - but required the mangling of a stock part and more work than the average Hindle customer is going to do to make it fit.
I'm not one to bitch about something, without addressing the source of the problem first. I phoned Hindle twice, in the days after getting the exhaust, and i got no answers re. my fitting concerns, just some vaque explanations that they needed to update the Bandit exhaust system for the footpeg retention, as well as a better exhaust hanger, and that i probably have an older Bandit kit, because they don't chrome plate the exhaust header flanges any more - so they should send out updated flanges so they don't cause a fitting problem, well uh duh ... I'VE ALREADY FIXED THE PROBLEM!. The person that i talked to, claimed to have sold quite a few of the Bandit high mount kits so far, but i don't know how they could have satisfied Bandit customers with an exhaust system with so many problems/complications that this one did. Additionally i followed up with a detailed email message with plenty of photos of the exhaust problems, both to their webpage advertised hindle@pathcom.com and the newer langleyhindle@hotmail.com address that i was advised to email, since the Hindle website is supposedly being moved to a different isp and redesigned. No response was made, as was promised would be over the phone, when they'd receive the email. So much for post-sales customer support. My advice? Buy anything other than Hindle, this company's product, business standards, and apparent attitude just is not worth the aggravation. In retrospect, i should have cut my losses before the mods began, and sent the exhaust back for a different manufacturer's product - but hindsight is 20-20.
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