I’ve been working on the Cb450 as a gradual rolling restoration type job – with sound advice and help from a few of the lads on here. The bike’s running fairly well now – but I’ve noticed the sounds from each pipe are slightly different. The left gives a nice deep ‘wuffle’, the right always sounded a bit harsher. Spent ages trying to tweak the slow running settings on the carbs, before it dawned on me that it could be the internal baffles – and true enough, a quick probe with a bit of scaffolding rod confirms there’s something solid about 5″ in on the good pipe, and nothing on the other. The baffle must be damaged or gone awol.

New back silencers are firmly in the ‘if you have to ask..’ price category, and even pattern ones are c.400 euros. I’d prefer not to go with other aftermarket silencers at this stage, because it seems nigh on impossible to get ones that are the right combination of length and shape, and/or are just loudmouth things that you’d tire of fairly quickly :rolleyes2:

The original pipes are sealed – seam top and bottom, with the baffle welded in. The original baffle looks a bit like this as far as I can tell.

I was wondering if trying to get the old sealed silencers opened up somehow, and fit a universal baffle, like this, is doable ?

Not sure how you’d go about it, but I have found what could be one less than tidy attempt:

Worst come to the worst I could probably live with it, as it on the inside of the pipe, and in truth it’ll never be a show bike, but I would like to find a way to do it a bit more professionally than that if at all possible. Any suggestions ?