October 24, 201510 yr I have seen several posts on repacking mid mufflers, Gas Gas or Sherco. I decided to give it a go on a Rev3 and cut a couple of windows in the pipe. The packing right at the windows comes out OK but the stuff in the back is very difficult to get out. The center, though pipe, is not a lot smaller than the Aluminium housing so there is much less room than what I have seen for Gas Gas and Sherco. To make it worse, the through pipe is made of two pieces like the front exhaust pipe so has a lip where tht two pieces meet. The steel wool packing is wrapped pretty tight. The best method I have found is pullin with one of the hard wire hooks used for installing springs followed by ripping and tearing with long needle nose pliers. This is a very slow porcess. Is there a better way?
October 25, 201510 yr I was watching Wheeler Dealer, which is a "repair an old car and sell it on" programme on Sky Discovery Turbo. They recommended using acetone for removing burnt on, crusty oil deposits from a cooler. They had a gallon container of the stuff. First, one end was plugged, then they poured some acetone in. After that the other end was plugged and then it was shaken, then left, then shaken again and left. I guess this was repeated over several hours. Because it is volatile, when you pour it out, you just leave it for a while and the acetone will evaporate away. Anyone tried this method for decoking a mid silencer?
October 25, 201510 yr Author The only way to check condition was to open it up but a burn out may have worked. The inner tube and inner portion of steel wool was coated with what looked like tar, basically sealing the inner tube. On this muffler, part of the inner tube was a constant ID. The other has a bulge sort of like a powerbomb shape.
October 25, 201510 yr In my experience acetone doesn't work. ....just doesn't seem to possess the dissolving properties needed for this task (at least in the product available to the public, commercial/industrial acetone might be different?) I've burnt about 15 of the Rev3 header pipes and central mufflers. ...the header pipe can be heated inside until the carbon is glowing red at which point removal of flame and gentle introduction of compressed air will allow self combustion. ..note, this will destroy the external plating... The central muffler needs to be kept cool externally while performing the same process. A water soaked rag draped over the outside works well and keep dousing this with water. Introduce flame at one end until self combustion can be maintained with compressed air...the muffler will burn itself out to about the half way point, then do this again from the other end until most of the carbon is gone. The only negative to this process is that the fine steel mesh inside does melt a little if you concentrate the heat for too long and this reduces its ability to muffle sound (it becomes a bit louder) but the performance gains are well worth it. this needs to be done about every 80-120hrs in addition to decoking the combustion chamber....more often if you're running rich oil/fuel ratios and or rarely get the engine/exhaust smoking hot. ...
October 26, 201510 yr If you have a local automotive machine shop, you may ask if they will dunk the stuff in their cleaning tank. Most have some pretty good stuff. Second thought is a bucket of Berrymans carb cleaner. It is nasty stuff, but it works at stripping hard carbon pretty well.
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