Richard's ST2 pages - Staintune silencers

Information on this page last updated 08/17/01.

Staintune make various silencers, the ones I have are the polished stainless steel ones. These weigh about 6 pounds each vs. 11 pounds each for the stock silencers. They still retain the novel ability to raise or lower the silencers to accommodate the ST2's luggage. They are quite a bit louder than stock, but not quite as loud as the Gio.Ca.Moto carbon silencers I had on my 907. The latter were a straight-through design, where the Staintunes have some baffling. The Staintunes also use stainless steel wool packing and are supposedly maintenance free, i.e. no re-packing as is required with silencers that use fiberglass packing. The US distributor for Staintune is CBT Imports but you cannot buy directly from them. I bought mine from Koups who charged about $700 and had them shipped directly from CBT to me within a few days.

Sometime after I bought these, around early 1999, the design was changed to include removable restrictors that will lower the volume (the photo shows a restrictor in the right silencer, no restrictor in the left silencer.) CBT sent a pair of these to me at no cost, they are easily retrofittable to the old silencers by drilling a 5mm hole on the underside of the exhaust outlet. The restrictors slip in the outlet and are retained by a bolt passing through this new hole. Not much to the restrictors, just short (a few inches?) inserts that take the outlet diameter from 50mm down to 29mm or so. I like these a lot, the quality of the sound is very much the same, but there is a big reduction in quantity, still louder than stock though. Now I will not be so worried about short-shifting in residential areas or around The Man. And long rides should be a little more comfortable on my ears.

A note on installation - the silencers I received were slightly undersized where the silencer pipe joins the header under the engine. This joint is a slip-fit that allows the silencers to be raised or lowered. I took them to a Muffler shop and the guy there was able to increase the opening by 1mm which allowed them to fit perfectly. Before doing this they would not go on the bike at all. At that time I reported the problem to CBT Imports, the Staintune importers for the US. They responded back saying that Staintune have since changed their manufacturing process to avoid this problem. Apparently the head pipes were sized and then polished and the heat from polishing would sometimes affect the fit. They are now polishing them first and then sizing them afterwards to assure a proper fit. Several others on the mailing lists have since bought Staintunes and have had not problems with the fit so it would seem that this is no longer an issue.

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