Topic: Don't want the pods!

[n9viw]

Okay, so my 'new to me' '76 CB550k has been "chopped"... yeah, go on, but for all the ugly welds it gives a pretty good stance, stock in front, lowered and sorta homebrew hardtailed in back. The engine was fitted with pods, and the carbs rejetted to match, and it actually runs pretty well. Thing is, I've been closely following TT's latest "pods 'r bad, mmkay?" thread, and would like to refit something akin to stock, but therein lies the problem.

The 'chopper' (the person doing the chopping, not the choppee, which is the bike) hacked off ALL tubes aft of the seat tubes (the ones holding the rear engine mounts). No seat rails, no braces, no rearsets, just the tubes angling down from aft of the gas tank to the rear axle. There's an old Persons sprung-solo seat mounted there, and a homemade battery box underneath it that eats up all the room where the old filter box went.

So, if a fella wants to eschew the pods, but doesn't want to spend the dough for a new frame just to fit the stock airbox, how can he proceed? I thought of trying to fab something up, like a combination of the stock intake rubbers (with that fancy radiused flange), a breadbox-style thing (minus the filter), and what for the runner? I thought if I could make a 'collector box' to fit back there, then run some 2" pipe FORWARD to a cone-style filter like the one TT showed from the K&N testing lab pic, it'd be like having ram-air! Eh?

Nick

[scottly]

The engine was fitted with pods, and the carbs rejetted to match, and it actually runs pretty well.

Nick

nuff said....

[Hush]

You should be able to fab something up, the originals took up way too much room really but that was Japanese engineering in the 70's.
The stock filter is simply an enclosed case where air can be made still before it is sucked into the carbs so a smaller version with pipes to the carbs should also work.
If the PO raised the tank (as most chopper choppers are apt to do) then yes you may have enough room under the tank and across the tops of the head to fit a backwards version, you'll have to accept trial and error to see if it works though.

[sangyo soichiro]

Send TwoTired a PM and tell him he created a monster.  I'm sure he was mostly aiming at the audience consisting of those that already had the stock airbox - trying to get them to not get rid of it.  However, maybe he didn't consider all the folks like you that inherited a bike that already had the box ditched.  What to do in your case?  Sounds like a job for TT.


 

[KB02]

Post a pic of your frame of area in question. A lot of us are more visually oriented people and might be able to post some better ideas once we see it.

[Kinch]

I think it was less of a "pods 'r bad, mmkay?" thread and more of a "here's how the stock airbox setup was specifically engineered to provide the steadiest and most efficient airflow to the carbs, which the design of the pods can't hope to match, mmkay?" thread.

If I were in your position I would keep the pods on there but then again the thought of trying to fabricating anything for my bike frightens me. If you have the ability and decide make a project out of it let us know how it turns out.