Pea shooters on ebay

Has anyone bought any of the cheap commando pea shooters off of eBay for about £90 a pair ? Seems too cheap to be any good!!?? Cheers baz

Talked to a buyer of these at a NOC day in August. They looked fine but without the quality appearance of a Toga for example. Not sure whats inside them baffle wise as Commandos are supposed to seriously underperform without the correct design of reverse flutes. Not sure how much power/torque is affected but is a view held by AN's boss. They certainly sound OK, not too raucous unlike my 14 yr old Togas's which seem really loud these days.

Keith1069 said:

Talked to a buyer of these at a NOC day in August. They looked fine but without the quality appearance of a Toga for example. Not sure whats inside them baffle wise as Commandos are supposed to seriously underperform without the correct design of reverse flutes. Not sure how much power/torque is affected but is a view held by AN's boss. They certainly sound OK, not too raucous unlike my 14 yr old Togas's which seem really loud these days.

Click to expand...

never knew about the reverse flutes in the silencers i suspect the cheapo ones just have a perforated tube cheers baz

I've heard that the flute style/ design can have a radical effect on performance too.

Seems hard to believe To me though as, fundamentally, they are both straight through systems. Anyone have any first hand experience, or even better, Dyno results?

The Vincent gang make a big fuss about the original design of 'spiral baffle' being a big influence on performance. Then others claim that the best option is a silencer with straight through perforated tube. I've tried both, back to back (not on the Dyno though), and can't tell any difference (it was on a mildly modified motor though).

So flutes vs perf tube seems an even more unlikely differentiator to me.

I've used both types of baffle over the years. Can't say I noticed any great power difference between them but, & it's a big but for me (does this mean I like big butts?), is the sound. The fluted type sound fabulous whereas the perf. type just sound okay.

I bought a pair of Commando specialties pea shooters and headers recently. They are not the larger sized units as I feel all bikes especially twins and triples need a little back pressure to retain low end torque.
I'm happy to unwrap them and try to answer any questions. I have header pipes for the mk3 style head.

From what I recall they do appear to be a little light on refinement and quality but I didn't unwrap then entirely and clean off the oil on them. I did my best to check for damage and then rathole them to keep the missus in the :roll: dark

Yes I have experience with pea shooter mufflers on the dyno.
I have 3x sets by three different manufacturers , one set is a TOGA ,the one set that gives the best performance and doesnt rob the midrange power and torque , are a set that have no baffles and are probably Taiwanese as the distance between the weldments is metric and the thread in the weldments was metric also, although tapped out to UNF to match the rubber mount hardware.
I was sharing these between the race bike and the road bike as they gave the best performance all round.

I cut the ends off the TOGAs and removed the fluted baffle and sound absorbing lagging, welded the ends back on, these now match the performance of the Taiwanese units.

REgards Mike

Brooking 850 said:

Yes I have experience with pea shooter mufflers on the dyno.
I have 3x sets by three different manufacturers , one set is a TOGA ,the one set that gives the best performance and doesnt rob the midrange power and torque , are a set that have no baffles and are probably Taiwanese as the distance between the weldments is metric and the thread in the weldments was metric also, although tapped out to UNF to match the rubber mount hardware.
I was sharing these between the race bike and the road bike as they gave the best performance all round.

I cut the ends off the TOGAs and removed the fluted baffle and sound absorbing lagging, welded the ends back on, these now match the performance of the Taiwanese units.

REgards Mike

Click to expand...

You're running the peashooters totally empty Mike? So they're really reverse cone megas then!?

I take it you don't have noise limits in the race classes out there!?!

I run a Mk III currently fitted with pea shooters without any baffles whatsoever (they are from the Commando that became the Phantom) , when I purchased Nellie the original black caps were fitted & I also ran a set of RGM 'straight through' black caps.

I've not noticed any real difference in performance (on the road) between any of the pipes (though the RGM pipes used to trigger the car alarms on my street) & I prefer the sound of the open pea shooters, I've never had a problem with noise at the mot (& my neighbours to date have been very understanding).

Mike

Mike Sullivan said:

I run a Mk III currently fitted with pea shooters without any baffles whatsoever (they are from the Commando that became the Phantom) , when I purchased Nellie the original black caps were fitted & I also ran a set of RGM 'straight through' black caps.

I've not noticed any real difference in performance (on the road) between any of the pipes (though the RGM pipes used to trigger the car alarms on my street) & I prefer the sound of the open pea shooters, I've never had a problem with noise at the mot (& my neighbours to date have been very understanding).

Mike

Click to expand...

Jus tryin' to understand here Mike(s)...

Peashooters do not have any baffles anyway. As supplied by Norton, they had no baffles. Baffles are things that interrupt and divert the gasses.

Peashooters are straight through, they had a straight through tube inside that had 'flutes' allowing some noise to be absorbed by the glass fibre packing around it. Some pattern ones use a perforated tube instead.

So ALL stock peashooters were without 'baffles' as such.

But an EMPTY peashooter means (I assume) that even the fluted / perforated tube has been removed, so it is not a peashooter any more, it is a proper reverse cone mega.

Are you guys both running totally empty peashooters?

Hi Freddie, some twenty (ish) years ago , Fair Spares ( aka Norvil ) supplied them in UK, so as I was younger and brave , I bought a pair to fit on my 920 Commando , I cannot use them too long due to the noise ( on the street), but yes they were empty and were real megaphone, and Les advised them to me in order to tune my bike , those days we were both younger , and he was very helpfull..........

Picture of original 'Peashooter' off a 69 'S' the one in my avatar, I think these are called baffles or maybe flutes? Pic from the input side. Unless my interpretation of 'Peashooter' is wrong. I actually haven't looked in the replacements I got from Xanders many years ago.



And actually the output side had a real baffle near the widest spot in the tube.

DogT said:

Picture of original 'Peashooter' off a 69 'S' the one in my avatar, I think these are called baffles or maybe flutes? Pic from the input side. Unless my interpretation of 'Peashooter' is wrong. I actually haven't looked in the replacements I got from Xanders many years ago.

And actually the output side had a real baffle near the widest spot in the tube.

Click to expand...

Well, the first pic is definitely my understanding of a 'fluted' tube.

And the second pic is my understanding of a (rather nasty looking) baffle!

I didn't know the factory fitted baffles like those, they look like HP killers to me!

Fast Eddie said:

I've heard that the flute style/ design can have a radical effect on performance too.

Seems hard to believe To me though as, fundamentally, they are both straight through systems. Anyone have any first hand experience, or even better, Dyno results?

The Vincent gang make a big fuss about the original design of 'spiral baffle' being a big influence on performance. Then others claim that the best option is a silencer with straight through perforated tube. I've tried both, back to back (not on the Dyno though), and can't tell any difference (it was on a mildly modified motor though).

So flutes vs perf tube seems an even more unlikely differentiator to me.

Click to expand...

Nigel, I think the claims about the Spiral baffle are quite inflated, if not pure bogus. My Rapide had a very quiet restrictive muffler fitted when I first started riding it. The bike was gutless, top speed 85 MPH, so I welded a 1" steel drill bit to a piece of 3/4" hot rolled and gave the muffler a bafflectomy. All of a sudden I had a proper Vincent that would do an indicated 115 MPH and pull like a loci.
Later on I read all of the club stuff about the almost magical effects and superiority of the club "Spiral baffle" over all other designs so I decided to fit one.
The bike with spiral baffle slicer fitted had exactly the same performance as it had with the drilled out cheapie muffler. Longtime Vincent engine builder john McDougall told me that when the spiral baffles finally come loose and blow out, then the bike really takes off!
So it seems that for general road use whether it is a Commando or a Vincent, a really quiet exhaust =gutless above about 3500 rpm, moderately loud = reasonable power to maybe 4500 and a good loud exhaust =full power.
I'm sure there is a little more to it than that if tuning to extract every ounce of power, but for general road application this has become my guide. Along with "always wear earplugs" :mrgreen:

Glen

Hi Nigel, yes I understand what you are saying , although the dyno on both bikes did prove without the flutes, both motors would rev up quicker and no mid range loss. My road bike wouldnt rev over 5000 rpm with one set I used at a trackday I tried jetting and needle changes thinking it was a fule problem, fitted the Taiwanese units, and with the original carb settings, away it went , rev'ed more freely and up to 6500 rpm no issue.
I did post these dyno graphs sometime ago.

PM re 2 into 1 that I am testing under race conditions this coming weekend.
Regards Mike