Repack a muffler

[troy]

As it turns out, I had never repacked a muffler before. I have to admit I probably had never even heard of it until 2 years ago! I guess when you don't race or hang out with guys racing dirt bikes, there's just a lot of stuff you probably don't even think of. At least that makes me feel less dumb.

I've heard that a bike ridden regularly could need a repack every year. A professional rider giving it all in a moto can need a repack after a single race.

I've been riding my 2007 KTM 450 EXC for 3 years I guess and it was mildly ridden in its first few years of life. I figured it had to be about time, and it looked like an easy job and the packing material is not expensive.

So I watched this video and it was just that easy except for the part where I smashed my pinkie finger with the rubber mallet. So now I have a nice, newly packed muffler ready for another 2 or 3 or more years with the light riding I put on it...and a sore pinkie finger.

I have no experience with these things, but I know many of you are, here is a picture of my packing material. I guess it doesn't look as bad as I expected. What do you think?





From the burn pattern, it appears these burn from the tail end down--like a cigarette. I gather that the fact you can see a lot of the core at the end means that part of the packing burned up completely of blew out---so time for packing for sure. Correct?

The muffler feels a lot heavier than before. Gee, hope that doesn't slow me down.

The job was not nearly as dirty as I thought it would be either.

[Savage]

Well you're not alone now Troy. I re-packed my 1st muffler as well. All of a sudden I had the urge to try it this evening. Looked at my receipt and see that I've had the pipe on my KLX for 1 year exactly. It took quite abit of tapping to get it apart since it had never been, but I finally got it. The fiberglass looked to be in great shape but it was very hard, so by the time I got it out it there was no going back. The new FMF packing went back in easily.
I'll try it out tomorrow, but I don't think I'm going to notice any difference in sound or performance.

[xr-nut]

In my experience, the loose packing in a bag isn't as effective as replacing it with oem. I have repacked a few mufflers with the loose bag stuff and not had any improvement in sound reduction. Only when i switched to the OE style wrap did it get any quieter. I think we cannot get enough packed in there with our hands!