Thruxton Tec Tracker 2-1 Exhaust For Thruxton 900

Thought I would kill some time and do a little write-up of installing this exhaust from TEC.

I'd spent a year deciding what exhausts I was going to get for my Thruxton to add a bit of 'umphh' to the sound. The stock exhausts are in my opinion really quite quiet. I've even compared the the stock Thruxton to being as quiet as a Toyota Prius (I hate that car by the way ...) and it's the one thing I've wanted to change on the bike since I got it over a year ago.

Here's my bike with stock exhausts:



I'd always planned on getting the shorty predator exhausts from British Customs - but at over £600 they're a bit pricey.

Recently I've been looking at lots of bikes with 2 into 1 pipes and thought they looked great, so when I found TEC's offering for the Thruxton at just £229 it wasn't hard to make my mind up.

Here's the link - https://shop.tecbikeparts.com/products/2-1-tracker-exhaust

The exhaust gets very good reviews and you can get it for EFI and carb model Thruxon's/Bonneville's as well as the Scrambler, although fitment for the Scrambler requires some modifications.

When the parts arrived I was surprised at just how good quality they felt, the workmanship/welding all looked top notch so I was eager to get them on the bike.

The installation instructions are a few pages long and there's also a YouTube video that shows fitment:



Bearing in mind the installation video is under 4 minutes long I didn't think it would take me pretty much 3 days of work (on/off) to get everything done on the bike; but it did and here's why.

First off I am in no way experienced doing this kind of stuff and have only done relatively basic jobs to this and previous bikes.

The bike they do the video tutorial on looks extremely clean and is probably also quite new. Try working on a bike that isn't 'that' clean and various nuts/bolts have rusted in a way that feels like they've molded to one another and you'll soon realise why the job becomes a little more testing.

Although straightforward to remove the stock exhausts it took me hours, I had to remove both oil cooler pipes from the engine to be able to get at the nuts holding the header pipes in. I also had to remove the chain guard and rear foots pegs to get the exhaust off. O2 sensors had removed as well and later the radiator and horn had to be loosened a fair bit to give me room to work on the O2 sensors.



Anyone fancy some stock exhausts and pipes let me know?



With that lot off it was onto getting the new pipes in.



Remove the old exhaust seals and pop the new ones in (provided and a dab of silicone paste helps hold these in place whilst working). To be honest the fit of the pipes was that good that getting this lot fitted together was pretty simple. Start from the header pipes and work backwards to the exhaust itself, only tighten loosely at this stage so you can still wiggle things about. I used some silicone paste at the various joints along the pipes.

I ran into problems with the length of the cables for the O2 sensors. It's worth mentioning that none of this is mentioned in the instructions provided by TEC. Well, they say that you may need to 're-route' the cables but they don't discuss doing what I've had to. There's a video by Delboy on YouTube where he has to extend the O2 sensor wiring for this exhaust to fit his Scrambler but I shouldn't have had to do for the Thruxton.

Although with a bit of playing I could get the sensors to fit in their slots on the exhaust, a lack of length meant that they ran very close to the header pipe. It just didn't feel right for them to be sat that close to all that heat, although I could have left it and they 'might' of been OK, I could just sense that it would lead to problems later on. So I decided to snip the wires and add in some length. That way it would give me enough room to run the cables safely away from the pipes and in actual fact I was able to fit them in their original positions.

This was discussed in further detail in a thread I made here - https://www.thetriumphforum.com/threads/adding-extra-length-to-some-wiring-advice-needed.13510/

But for purposes of this thread there are 4 wires that make up the O2 sensor so you'll need to snip each one and label it at both ends so you know what goes to where.



Add in some length:



And then reattach:



With that all done it was time to start from the exhaust end and work backwards tightening everything up as you go. I can't remember them all so worth checking the torque settings when doing this.

Give the pipes a rub down to remove all the dirt and grease and then you should be ready to go! Providing it all works of course









Here's a video I made of the bike running with the new exhaust. Obviously being a video taken on a phone it doesn't convey the actual sound very well, but perhaps will give you some idea.



I've only done about 20 miles riding with the new exhaust and it sounds lovely. Perhaps not as 'loud' overall as I'd expected but whilst accelerating through those lower gears there's a really nice deep growl that definitely catches peoples attention and it suits the bike far better than the originals. I also think that it's made the bike feel a bit 'sharper'. It feels a little more responsive and was like riding a slightly different bike than before. Of course this could all be in my head as I'd spent a week riding a 50cc scooter to and from work but I'm sure the exhaust has made some difference to performance.

Hope someone, one day finds some of that useful. If not, well I killed some time at work

 

Cheers Crispey, and yes let’s sort something out over the summer. We’ll get @MattGaydon out too.

Was a bit disappointed to get off the bike after the ride home to find oil over my pipe. It’s stained a bit but hopefully I can rub it out. A quick look around revealed a broken oil seal

 

Just updating that you can now buy an even shorter ‘hi-flow performance’ baffle for these and similar pipes from TEC.

https://www.tecbikeparts.com/product/hi-flow-performance-baffle-for-tec-brand-exhausts/

 

Short video of the exhaust with TEC hi-flow performance baffle.