Maintenance mishaps... Shotty spot welds?

So this is the second time I went to do simple maintenance, and ended up having to fix something.

The first time would be when I cleaned my spark arrester, and one of the nuts, holding the spark arrest/end cap on, that's spot welded on the muffler came off. I still have to fix that proper now that I have my welder back. I think all I did at the time was thro some epoxy on it so I could get it tight enough. The good there is it hasn't backed off yet. The bad is I don't know if it's going to loosen up or just spin when I try to take it off again. My plan is to have another bolt on hand so if I have to I can cut the old one off.

Today, I was finishing up some cleanin, and decided to clean the air filter while I was at it. The dimple/knob thingy that's on the cage and holds the it centered popped off. I didn't even touch it. This one I can say is a bad design. They tried to spot weld four layers of crap together. Wouldn't be that bad if two of the layers weren't chinsy wire mesh. I don't see a reason not to glue this on like they did the nylon on the edge of the cage. It would probably hold up better. There's a hole in the air filter that this part covers. It's not like I can say it doesn't matter n run it without... I had a good amount of crap in the air box. Grass seed and such that easily got pulled in there. So if I run it without this piece on there, there's less holding the filter in place and a quarter inch hole right through the air filter sucking anything that will fit past the cage in.

I wasn't on the exhaust bolt too hard, and I didn't even touch the dimple thing on the air filter cage. It does seen kinda stupid to complain about lil issues like this. At the same time it really sucks when you go to do a five minute job n it takes thirty minutes to two hours.

Theres a saying: 90% of your maintenance, is because of 90% of your maintenance...


Seems to fit in this case, im sure you will sort it out

Buy the GYTR air filter, it comes with a new plastic cage. That said I have cleaned the stock filter dozens of times and the stock cage didn't break.
I've never found a muffler that likes to come apart after its a year old, so I don't try to take them apart anymore. Was the spark arrester even dirty? it takes a lot of miles on a bike that uses oil to plug one up.

Jens Eskildsen wrote:

Theres a saying: 90% of your maintenance, is because of 90% of your maintenance...


Seems to fit in this case, im sure you will sort it out

Yea that does fit...

Biglake wrote:

Buy the GYTR air filter, it comes with a new plastic cage. That said I have cleaned the stock filter dozens of times and the stock cage didn't break.
I've never found a muffler that likes to come apart after its a year old, so I don't try to take them apart anymore. Was the spark arrester even dirty? it takes a lot of miles on a bike that uses oil to plug one up.

I have looked at the gytr filter.I can understand the exhaust breaking when I took off the end cap more than the air filter cage. The arrester did have some gunk in it. Part of the reason I pulled it was to see what the bike was like without it, and the only ones I've cleaned before are on chainsaws n weedwhackers. I don't think any of my saws still have one, but the weewhacker likes it clean. I didn't expect the broke off nut fiasco. Dunno if I'll do it again. If I do I'll probably hack it apart altogether and take some pieces out, Aftermarket beats doin that cause I'd still have a stock exhaust to throw back on, and I wouldn't cut off as much weight modding the stock can.