The Exhaust
Sure, I could
buy a stainless reproduction muffler, but it wouldn't have the Silentium logo.
Efforts to locate a muffler with the Silentium logo were fruitless.
Someone put a couple of Silentium mufflers up on eBay, but the mounting tabs
were positioned for either a different model of Ducati or maybe a Benelli.
There were a
few dents around the inlet port, and the chrome plating had been
compromised. Fortunately the metal beneath showed no signs of rust.
I poked at the internal baffling with a wooden dowel, and it was solid as well.
The job of
refurbishing the muffler went to Queen City Plating.
I knew that I had to have a muffler with the
Silentium logo when I was done. I didn't want to loose any of the
originality by having repro stuff that didn't have logos on it.
One option was to buy a new muffler from
Overlander in Australia, at a cost of about $125 US ($250 AUS.)
It is my understanding that these mufflers DO
NOT have the Silentium logo, though you may want to inquire on your own about
that. I asked after these mufflers through Road and Race in Australia
and was told they had no logo. I never contacted Overlander directly.
I thought that it might be possible for someone to digitize the logo from my
battered old pipe and possibly laser-etch the logo into the Overlander pipe.
I didn't pursue this idea very far. There might have been issues of
copyright and stuff to deal with.
Also, in some of the motorcycle magazines out
of the United Kingdom, magazines like Classic Bike and The Classic Motorcycle,
you'll sometimes see small adds for Silentium mufflers. The ads have a
phone number in Italy, but I don't want to call Italy at my expense and speak
to someone who can't speak English while I can't speak Italian. There
was an internet address given as well, but I could never get any response to
my repeated emails.
So it was that I found two companies that
restore automotive trim: One was Vintage Vehicles in Wisconsin:
The other was Queen City Plating in
Washington:
A guy at Vintage Vehicles (Bruce, I think)
really knew old Ducatis, and he did spend a lot of time on the phone with me.
I was going to use them when another Ducati owner told me about Queen City.
I talked with them and they too instilled me with confidence. I opted to
go to Queen City only because I thought I might help the other Ducati owner
out by bringing business to them through him.
I can't think of the guy's name at Queen City
that I dealt with, but I think it's a family business and you'll probably be
talking to the same guy that did my muffler.
It was expensive, about $500 to have mine
done. (That $125 for a new one started looking pretty good when I
got the bill for my old one.) Both companies have a thing where you send
them your muffler (or any trim piece) and they call you back with an
estimate to have it repaired. If you don't like the estimate, you just
pay to have it shipped back to you.
I did buy a reproduction header pipe from
DomiRacer in Ohio rather than spending any money having the original header
re-plated.
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