Hi guys, i am brand new to both the forum and a brand new owner of a 94 magna. I got her for 2500 with a tear in the seat less then 10k miles and some rust which most of it came off with a wire brush and some cola 8-). I tried to do the muffler mod and had 3 drill bits break off in the rivets got the rivets fully punched out of 2 mufflers the other 2 have broken bits stuck in them. Am i screwed on continuing the mod or is there something i can do to finish it. I will only be doing the first 2 steps i wont be putting anything back on just leaving it open. And my tachometer stoped working the other day as well it will sometimes come back on if i get the rpms up high enough while cruising at arround 50. How can i fix this?
By the way here are some pics of her.
(http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w164/briandirtydenim/IMG00074.jpg) (http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w164/briandirtydenim/IMG00071.jpg)
Nice bike! You will love it.
Where are you riding out of?
The tach could be a loose or poor connection.
I am actually riding in florida, haha not quite texas but this is the best magna resource ive found so i feel at home here. Which connection should i check for looseness, and any advice on the mod?
Good looking Magna!
On the muffler mod, use a 3/16 drill bit, drill straight in and then use an awl to get the rest of the rivet out by just barely inserting the awl tip into the center of the rivet and then angle it over to just catch the inside edge of the rivet. It should pop out.
Once you have all the rivets heads off you will need 2 vise grip pliers, one to clamp onto the exit pipe at its split (its an easy location to clean up) then the second attaches to the first pair at a 90° angle to give you something WACK with an hammer to dislodge the endplate.
With endplate in hand you are in business to go about your mod!
Thanks Greg, I love the magna. Such a sweet ride and so much power behind it. I have many things in store for her haha. I dont know if u read about my tachometer issue, i just took her out for a little ride and its not working at all now. Where do i check the connection for being loose. I dont know my way arround the magnas at all, my last bike which i still have is a 73 cb500/four.
The FAQ Section may have a Service Manual download for your bike. You can look at the schematic to see where the tach hooks up.
Other than that I would manually trace the tach wire back, probably somewhere under the tank back to the coil area, and giggle wires while watching the tach to see if it comes to life as the motor is running. I may be in he tach....clean all your connections and see what happens. Keep us posted as more ideas might come out as you search for remedies. If you had another tach you could tie in to tell if your tach wire is getting pulses.
I have not seen this problem on here before.
Welcome to the forum...We are glad to have you...! Very nice looking bike. Hope all goes well with the muffler mod. Please do not hesitate to ask for any help or advice
The tach problem could be your ingnition modual its under the battery box another member replaced his tach with two others that both wouldn't work and then replaced the ignition modual and that fiixed it might be something to check.
could it be that something is loose connected to the ignition module or it needs to be replaced. What else should i look for to know that its going bad
Tach came back on today durring a turn. I have no idea what caused it to go out. Problem now is the neddle wont drop below 2k even when i turn the iddle screw. So i cant tell when its at 1k for proper idle.
Another question about the mod, if i were to only get to of the end caps off will it damage anything riding like that or do i have to remove all 4 for it to run properly.
If you have a small grinder and are careful you can grind the head off of the rivets that you have broken bits in and go to a larger size bit to drill the top half of the remaining rivets off , don't drill all the way thru, stop as soon as you go thru the outside head of the rivet. The inside of the rivet will pop off easily. I personally wouldn't run it with just two off , no facts for that, just my opinion :-?. Good luck..
Quote from: Charles S Otwell on June 16, 2008, 09:32:09 PM
I personally wouldn't run it with just two off , no facts for that, just my opinion :-?. Good luck..
Yep, better to have equal pressure. May be fine but agree with above.
Thanks for all the help guys, i will work on it tomorrow and see what happens.
Any mods you do to the flow rate of the muffler will cause the carb tuning to change. I personally would not run them without endplates, but that is my preference.
If I were to do it all over again I would drill the actual baffle plate that is about 15" up inside the muffler housing (you can see a chrome rivet on the muffler housing about halfway, that is the actual baffle plate) instead of the resonator bulb attached to the endplate.
Quote from: Greg Cothern on June 17, 2008, 02:22:03 PM
If I were to do it all over again I would drill the actual baffle plate that is about 15" up inside the muffler housing (you can see a chrome rivet on the muffler housing about halfway, that is the actual baffle plate) instead of the resonator bulb attached to the endplate.
Can you elaborate why you do this instead? You would leave the end-plate in tact as is and drill the baffle plate, correct? Would you modify the endplate at all?
Yes please elaborate i am also a little confused on the process u are speaking of. Maybe i could do it as i still haven't gotten around to pulling the end plates off of mine yet. What are the benefits of doing it the way you are speaking of and how would we go about doing this.
I have yet to accomplish this particular mod, but believe it would give a good result. I would personally leave the endplate completely stock, but still have to pull it to gain access to the baffle plate, which is about a foot away inside hehehe.
I believe with a drill bit extension one could drill the baffle plate out. I have reached it with a long 1/2" extension and gave it a good wack!!! IT is in there! LoL, but a drill bit would take care of it.
Back to my tachometer issue, its working fine now hasnt gone out on me. Came back on out of nowhere but i cant get it bellow 2k. Even with the engine turned off the needle drops just bellow 2k. I even adjusted the idle screw to the point where she almost shut off on me and it still stays at 2k. Whats wrong?
Defective tach, bad ground - poor connection. I have not dealt with this problem, I would eliminate the issues stated previous before I look for a tach. If you disconnect the tach it should be at Zero, if it doesn't drop down to Zero you might be able to disassemble the tach and see what ails it.
Hey guys i am trying to remove the end plates and the round tube like pat that i am attaching my vice rips to just bend when i wack it it isnt comming loose help! haha
Forget it, mission accomplished i got them off, it sounds nice and mean now. WOOOHOOO mod 1 complete, what should i do next haha.
Ride and enjoy!!!! :P
Took a butload of work to get those suckers off. I prety much destroyed them to get them out lol. Has to use a flat head screw driver and hammer it into the edges to loosen it up enough to pull them out. Withought doing that they wouldnt budge. i took it arround the block to try and blow out any extra little frafments that were in there and it seems smooter then it was before i finnished the mod. Before i finnished i just had holes drilled thru most of the rivets but not all and she seemed to ride rough. Seems to ride smooth now, maybe that was causing my problem. But i finnish one good thing and now my tach is out again lol. I cant figure out where it plugs in to tighten the connection up. Seems as if all the banging and drilling loosened the connection on me again. Anyone know where it connects to?
Alot of the connections are in the headlight but not sure about the tach !!!!
I went through an ordeal with my tach so I know a lot about the workings of it & let me say, it was confusing. There are 2 wires that operate the tachometer. A common ground that is used for various instruments, lights, indicators, etc. The other wire comes from the ignition module. My problems started when I got the bike. It had been laid over and the tach and speedometer was missing. I ordered a used tach and speedometer from Ebay. When I finally got the time to get them installed, I got it all back together and everything worked but the tach. I took it all apart and traced wires and tightened connections. I was getting a voltage reading from the wire that was coming from the ignition module to the tach and it was changing with RPMs so i thought that was alright. I came to conclusion that I must have gotten a defective tachometer. Oh by the way I tested the tachometer by attaching it to a 12 volt battery momentarily and the needle jumped. I was very confused at that point but still thought I had a defective tach so I gave up for the time being as the bike was still rideable without the tach. So some more time went by as I rode with a defective tach and I came upon a fellow MOOT member that was parting out a bike and his tach was known to be working when he removed it from the bike. I got it from him and when I installed it on the bike I got the same results as the other tach. I was pretty upset at that point and almost gave up altogether. I couldn't believe that I had gotten 2 defective tachometers so I decided to try something else. I got the ignition module from the guy that was parting the bike out. I installed it on my Magna and VOILA! my tach was working.
If you have any questions about this feel free to ask. It has been over a year since I worked on this so I don't remember all of the details but I can tell you these few things: The wiring coming from the tach and all of the instruments is connected under the small plastic cover on the right side of the bike just ahead of the gas tank. There are a lot of wires under there but once you get them pulled out they are pretty easy to trace. everything on the front of the bike uses the same ground wire and it splits off at several locations. The ignition module is underneath the battery box. it has one big plug at the bottom. If you can figure out which wire feeds the tachometer, you can test for continuity between the plug and the tach. There are few things that can go wrong with the tach but for me at least, it was hard to troubleshoot. You can have a burned out tachometer, a bad ground, a loose connection between ICM and tach, or a bad ICM. Good luck and hope this helps.
Kale Tifft
MOOT # 475
99 Magna
It goes out and comes back on out of nowhere while im riding at higher speeds. It was working till today when i finnished the muffler mod. I guess all the banging and shaking nocked something loose. I dont know. How much is a new ignition module.
It is certainly possible that you need a new ignition control module, but it seems unlikely that it would be intermittent. A more likely culprit, in my mind at least, is a connection somewhere. I would try unplugging the ICM and plugging it back in -- maybe a few times, even, to scrape through any layer of corrosion that may have accumulated on the contacts. IF the contacts are such that you can carefully clean them, I would try that too.
It is also possible, but unlikely, that you have a break in the wire that makes connection when it is pushed or bent just so, but doesn't in other positions.
In any case, if it were mine, I would invesitgate these other possible causes, which are cheaper to fix, before replacing either the tach or the ICM.
Thanks Iragan i will do that.
So you didn't put the endplates back on? Or did you? :-? Gregg, are you saying that people don't put the endplates back on after they do the muffler mod? Just trying to understand more before I go on and do this mod in the future.. I have just heard of people cutting of the baffle, what do you mean by drilling out something?? Thanks..
I left the end plates off, and i drilled out the rivets that were holding the end plates on.
Too bad you tore up the end plates. You probably could have sold them. I paid $60 for a set with baffles after my 2000 came with nothing (no balffles, no end plates). The noise drove me crazy. Hope you have a good set of ear plugs.
Its actualy not loud enough lol. I like it at lower speed but when u get to higher cruising speeds u cant realy hear it anymore unless u open up the throttle and get moving. I may get myself a parit of V&H or some drag pipes. I like em loud.
When I tried mine with the end plates out I was wearing a half helmet and I thought it sounded kinda cool ,but when I started wearing a full helmet due the cooler weather, it like to have drove me insane the constant drone in my eats was unbearable . I was about twenty miles into a ride with some friends when I had to come home and put them back in. Cutting off the resonators (the part attached to the end plate) makes it a little louder but still leaves it with kind of a tinny sound (to me) . I agree with Greg, opening up the backpressure at the baffles and leaving the resonators in place to do there job (IMHO) would create a less raspy sound . We will never find a sound that pleases everyone , we just have to find the one that best fits our individual taste.. To address a problem several have mentioned about having trouble pulling the end plates after removing the stock rivets, I will offer this suggestion, after you remove the rivets, ream the holes out with a 1/8th inch drill to remove the lips on the edges of the holes created by the factory rivets. I have removed mine several times without having to beat them out , we even removed Willie's when we did the mod on his, with no problem.
PS save those parts some will eventually need them 8-)..
When i moded the pipes on my bike aka. cut off the resonator, I re attached the end plates using #12x3/4" hex head zinc coated screws and they worked great, i can pull the end plates on and off at will no need to mess around with rivets. I also left them unpainted, the screws haven't discolored yet on me I've put about 2000 kilometers on it since doing the mod.
Quote from: Justin on June 23, 2008, 06:34:50 PM
I re attached the end plates using #12x3/4" hex head zinc coated screws and they worked great, i can pull the end plates on and off at will no need to mess around with rivets.
What type of thread, machine, sheet metal, etc.?
Here is the write up on the main MOOT site under the Tips and Tricks page. http://www.magnaownersoftexas.com/tips.htm#A1.3
I would also suggest a 3/16" drill bit and drilling out the rivets, then follow the rest.