Vulcan Redux Part One

It never ceases to amaze me, the many ways our creative customers come up with to use the parts we sell. That’s really saying something because I’ve been repurposing hotrod parts from Speedway for years. In this case it was on an old, clapped out ’04 Kawasaki Vulcan motorcycle that I picked up on Craigslist. She was pretty rough, with lots of extra “stuff” that really took away from the cool Indian inspired design. I had a vision and set to work right away.

In my opinion, motorcycles almost always get cooler as soon as you start unbolting parts from them. This one was no exception. I’m also keen on finishes that give more thought to the design than just chrome plating everything. I feel that a variety of textures and subtle colors can speak much more to the detail and thoughtful execution of a plan.

The first thing I tackled was the exhaust. It already had a set of Vance & Hines shotgun pipes installed. It had also been tuned to that backpressure. So, I wasn’t really looking to replace it, but I wanted to redress it to be more fitting of the ’48 Indian persona I wished to accentuate. I removed the chrome shields from the pipes and re-contoured the rears to sweep up and follow the freshly slimmed rear bumperette.

After that, I cut the front sections of pipe off at the lower bend and slipped flexible stainless exhaust tubing onto those sections to emulate the original 40’s style Indian pipes. I added pencil tips to the rear (after I decided that fish tails were too over the top) and finish welded the modified sections.

To hide the fact that the pipes had been so severely modified, I wrapped the dull sections in our Black 1” Exhaust Wrap fabric. Some stainless clamps finished the look. Sounds great. Looks great. Now, about those lights...