Remus Y Piece & K & N (Std Cans)

Smoothy · Post by **Smoothy** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 9:37 pm

Waaahaaaa the beast is free at last!!

R1100S Twin Spark Remus Y Piece, Std Cans, K & N

I have been thinking about buying one for the last couple of years, and thought while its stripped out (battery Optimate lead fitted) spend yu money.
Few issues fitting the y piece. Had to cut the rubber mount bars down both sides, the bar was also bent incorrectly needing to be raised 6mm to align with the front pipes. Muscle power needed to bend the mounting bar to the correct position. Lamda was no prob with positioning ideal for standard cable length. Centre stand bracket required a tweek to pick up the centre stand buffer. Remus must have had a bad day.

K & N went straight in as it should.
Startup and all the problems faded away, nice deep growl.

Feels more responsive to throttle low and mid range with a big improvement toward upper revs.

Anybody thinking about it - GO FOR IT you won't regret it.

madman · Post by **madman** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 7:22 am

Remus had a bad day all the time! Ours were both the same so I cut the bars off completely. You will find that the rubbers don't stay where they are meant to and migrate inwards anyway. That means that metal is touching metal and causes vibration.
Ours have been fine without the bars for nearly 3 years now.

Smoothy · Post by **Smoothy** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 5:59 pm

Thanks for the advice, I think the hacksaw will be busy this weekend.

Neil178 · Post by **Neil178** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:14 pm

Pass the hacksaw over after .............. I'm halfway through a change from vandelinde to remus .............. once the trusty dremel cuts through the one bolt that wouldn't play the game.

Dog Tyred · Post by **Dog Tyred** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:41 am

Hmmm.......I too had an enjoyable Sunday wrestling with a Remus Y piece (must be something in the water). So armed with appropriate twatting tool I remove the existing silencers, followed by the cat. Why oh why did BMW put the oxygen sensor connector so far under the bloody tank???

Having read previous posts was expecting to have to modify the support bar length but in the end only had to cut 10mm off the LH end and it appeared to sit perfectly. When I say perfecty, thats not taking into account the fact there was a quater inch gap between the headers and Y piece coupling

Didn't want to disturb the main header fixings at the cylinder heads (important they line up properly) so with a bit of cussin and swearin I managed to stumble on the assembly sequence that allowed all connecting bolts to be initally located without crossing threads and then tightened up each one a bit at a time, pulling the headers in, until all were tight.

Then read the bit in the manual about ensuring the O2 sensor is inserted with an appropriate high temp grease (not dry) and so with visions of not being able to remove said item when I come to put the cat back on, dismantled the whole thing again, applied Copperslip and started the whole process again.

Fitted connector pipe followed by recently aquired Laser end cans (with aid of previously mentiond twatting implement.

Tightened everything up and fired it up. Water pissing out of both couplings so thightened even further. Still water pissing out!

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Remus pipe connector clamp design was sh*t and needed a shim to ensure a tight fit. Bugger, only got bottled beer in the house so a quick drive down the road so provided a couple of empty beer cans laying in the gutter (God bless the Great British public).

Cut shim from can. Cut finger on shim, bugger.
Eventually manged to slide a 2 cm square shim into joint at the clamp position and tightened her up. Hey presto, no leak.

Fired it up and well, the top clamp still blowing a tad but that will have to wait until I get back from hols.

The 'road legal' Laser end cans sound a little on the load side and have raspy, farty sort of sound. Quick spin round the block last night confirmed the noise

(I used to have a SV650 with a Viper race can on it which was'nt much louder than the Lasers???) but I like the occasional popping and banging on the overrun

Thoughts!

Yes, the manufacturing standards of the Remus Y piece are variable to say the least...so why do so mant of us buy them??

Laser end cans don't seem to be sitting completely square under the rear light?? Any thoughts???

How much engagment do the cans have on the support lugs under the seat? I have read previously of cans becoming detached due to insufficient engagement/short pipe connections!

Are the 'road legal' cans supposed to be quite so loud??

sproggy · Post by **sproggy** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 9:37 am

The manunfacturing standards of the Remus Y pieces are not variable - they are consistently bad! I had to spend a lot of time hitting/cutting/grinding mine to get it to work properly. I ended up without the cross-bar and had no problems. I found I needed to loosen the headers at the head end to get everything lined up without stress - the way you've done it it sounds as if there's a certain amount of stress built in to the system which can't be good.

Yes, the legal Lasers are quite loud but you get used to them.... And that's with the baffles in - I didn't try mine without baffles. Lots of popping - you can make it happen by running down from high revs and then cracking the throttle slightly

But they do it without assistance too.

The Laser cans don't sit as far under the tail as the standard ones but they shouldn't be touching the black plastic undertray - there's only a couple of mm clearance, though. Mine sat centrally - if yours don't perhaps something's not quite right.

To prevent loss of the cans you need to have the coke can (or similar) shim in the clamp that attaches the cans to the up-link pipe. Either that or remove the metal 'wedge' that sits in the clamp to prevent over-tightening. To start with I found that my cans weren't as well attached as they should have been, there being no metal safety strap as there is on the standard setup.

You can get the system set up so it doesn't leak at the joints. You'll have to loosen everything (probably including the header bolts - be careful!) and then carefully align the system to ensure good overlap at the top and bottom joints on the link pipe before tightening everything back up. It took me three attempts to get it right, the third attempt also involving removing the cross-bar on the Y-piece to reduce vibration. Removing the cross-bar also allows the back of the Y-piece to come up a bit, I think (assuming the header alignment allows this), improving the overlap at the joints further back.

It's worth persevering with, but as for why everyone keeps on buying Remus Y's I'm not sure - because they're cheap and easy to find?

oyster · Post by **oyster** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 5:40 pm

I had a Seebring two part Y piece originally. This allowed good movement while aligning all the joints before the final torque. The support rubbers rode out of the frame sockets, so I used stainless wire to hold them in place. The support bar lined up quite well.
I now have the Laser Y and silencers. The Y went on o.k., some manipulation at the headers and balance pipe needed. The ends of the support bar have screws through the frame and welded washers just in-board. The silencers were a real pig to get on. Silicone grease on new rubber mounts and much persuasion with a rubber mallet did it. I also fitted the Laser support bar at the other end of the silencer, just in case it wanted to part company with the Y pipe. No noticable vibes. No leaks.

winger · Post by **winger** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 6:44 pm

Buy a SJ air filter,for no other reason all the crap falls to the bottom,were as both standard and the K+N,all the crap just lies on the top and goes down hill very quickly.

bcr_rep05 · Post by **bcr_rep05** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 9:40 pm

It sounds like that the Laser Y piece is a better fit than the Remus one ?
I'm hoping to replace the cat with a Y piece this month.

Boxered · Post by **Boxered** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 9:07 am

bcr_rep05 wrote:It sounds like that the Laser Y piece is a better fit than the Remus one ?
I'm hoping to replace the cat with a Y piece this month.

Yep, My laser y piece was prettty straightforward to install, no cross bar to meddle with, but you will need the shim at the cans end because the diametre of the y piece is less than std.

Steve

bcr_rep05 · Post by **bcr_rep05** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 7:34 pm

Thanks for that, point noted. So like a metal sleeve you mean ?

Boxered · Post by **Boxered** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 8:56 pm

Yes, I believe a pepsi max can is the ideal diameter!
I used a slice from a coke tin and hermetite gasket sealant!

I also fastened the end cans to the frame by means of a clamp around the link pipe at the rear of the laser end cans and a bracket bolted to the frame through the under seat tray, as I had heard tales of the end cans coming adrift from the Y piece.

Steve

Dog Tyred · Post by **Dog Tyred** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:28 pm

Boxered wrote:Yes, I believe a pepsi max can is the ideal diameter!
I used a slice from a coke tin and hermetite gasket sealant!

I also fastened the end cans to the frame by means of a clamp around the link pipe at the rear of the laser end cans and a bracket bolted to the frame through the under seat tray, as I had heard tales of the end cans coming adrift from the Y piece.

Steve

Now that sounds like a sound idea

Neil178 · Post by **Neil178** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:30 pm

With some swearing, sweating and cajoling I got the full Remus system on this evening.

The cross bar jobbie lined up fine. No cutting or bending required.
As I don't have a centre stand I wish I'd cut the bracket for it off, as it made fitting the sensor just that bit more awkward. Too late now!
I didn't have to touch the headers either.

All in all a very straight forward job once I worked out the best way to go about it!
Nu2 - my boxes have the support pins about 95% through the rubbers if that helps.
The sound is nice. Quieter than the Vandelinde. Should keep my neighbours happier when I start up at 5am! Not been out on the road yet though to suss out the power loss.
So, Tripping me up in the garage are an original low mileage system and a VdL (with chip) with 6k, so if anyone is interested please pm me.

sandbar · Post by **sandbar** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 7:38 am

Nu2beemers wrote:
Boxered wrote: I also fastened the end cans to the frame by means of a clamp around the link pipe at the rear of the laser end cans and a bracket bolted to the frame through the under seat tray, as I had heard tales of the end cans coming adrift from the Y piece.

Steve
Now that sounds like a sound idea

I don't get this. BMW went to a lot of trouble rubber mounting the rear cans and the suggestion is to now to make a rigid mount from them to the frame. It does not seem to be a good idea to introduce a possible source of vibrations under the middle of your *rse!

If the join from the up-pipe to the cans is a good one then the cans can't fall off. The rigid bracket idea was from Laser who never seemed to understand the reason why their cans (and as far as I know, it was only Laser cans that did it) fell off. The bracket was a last resort - they had tried other ways before. As mentioned above, the reason was, IMHO, that they could not be bothered to make the diameters of the up-pipe and the cans compatible and also could not be bothered to provide a suitable clamp for that joint.

Just my opinion.

sandbar