1970 CL350 Restoration

Forks reassembled by driving the seal with a 1 1/4 inch section of PVC pipe (not a sprocket that wouldn't fit over the tube, duh).

On to the exhaust; original is beautiful on the outside but upon disassembly found JB weld covering the bottom corner of the upper canister (surprise number 4). I removed the old JB Weld to find a sizable hole as shown.
 

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Talk about bad design. The drain tube is located on the uphill side of the muffler when the bike is leaned over on the kickstand. So here's the question; can this thing be repaired? Would I have to cut a section out and re-weld and then rechrome? How about a molded sheet metal patch, JB welded in place? Any other ideas?

Here are some pictures of an alternative approach. Trouble with that is I'd be cutting up a pretty good exhaust for the sake of keeping the good headers. And the original exhaust for all its weight and design faults is pretty cool looking.
 

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take it to the local muffler shop guy that does custom work ,those guys are usually quite skillfull
i have a local guy that does my stuff ,i could do it myself but considering what he charges,and the quality of the repair, i just pay to have it done
just paint it afterwards nobody should even notice.,if they do kick them in the ass for lookin' ;D
 
Like xb already said, paint the mufflers black, once they've been repaired. I have a set of 360 scrambler pipes where just the mufflers are painted black, the chrome shields look good with the black behind.
If you want chrome, you will have to have the entire exhaust replated.
 
Great suggestions. I had a muffler repair shop weld over the rot for $50 and I painted the area of the repair and hidden part of the muffler with black metallic high temp paint.
 

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The black paint protects the welds, gives a nice "shadow" effect behind the polished heat shield and, together with some new stainless hardware, looks sweet.
 

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I am digging this. And man I've gotta say... that 400f makes me melt. I hope mine turns out half that good when I do her resto. Mad props.
 
Zinc parts back from the plater. I do love shiny parts. Should be getting the frame and other parts back from the powder coater in a few days and then its re-assembly time.
 

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Finished with the brakes!
 

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Woo hoo! Parts back from the powder coater. Head and cylinders went to engine dude for final reassembly. The rest is here. $315 for everything seemed OK.

Also said goodbye to an old friend; sold my RS250 today :-[
 

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Mk1 RS250. Really nice. Amazing bikes. 65HP from ours after blueprinting it and selective assembly from 3 plus motors in parts to get the best parts in one motor.
 
Wow, that's a big upgrade. A little off topic, but have you heard of the Australian TSS 500 conversion? Now that would be a handful.
 
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