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Ever since I started hitting the desert a little more frequently, I have been trying to be as legal as possible.  I use the word “try” because I can’t guarantee that ever trail I have ridden is a sanctioned BLM or State Trust area.  That said, I am trying to be good.

With my new purchase of a YZ250, I needed to get a required spark arrestor to be legal.  I bought a FMF silencer that is also a US Forestry approved spark arrestor.  Got it and in about ten minutes, it was installed.  The YZ is legal. 

I decided that I would add the spark arrestor end fitting on to my YZ426’s Supertrapp to make it legal while I’m at it.  I bought the Supertrapp because it was the same price as a spark arrestor insert that uses the OE silencer.  I figured why not have a spare pipe if I needed it.

I got this pipe about four years ago, so I had to dig out the disc stack out of the parts boxes.  The stack came with an open ”race only” end disc, and a baffled “spark arrestor” end disc.  Of course (of course) I installed the race only version.  Its faster.  Unfortunately, the s/a end disc was nowhere to be found, even though I found the standard disc stack - they should have all been together.  I looked everywhere on Saturday.  I then looked in that same everywhere again today.  Nothing.  I gave up and started to contemplate how I get another one from Supertrapp, and the difficulties of doing do.

Then a light bulb went off during some good old fashioned couch time.  I had in mind that the s/a was the actual silencer tip that you remove to repack - WRONG!  It had been four years plus since I installed the pipe, so nothing was fresh in my mind.  I went out and grabbed the disc stack again and discovered that the last disc was in fact the “race only” end disc in a new / unused condition. 

DOH!

I walked over to the bike and looked up the tailpipe and saw the s/a disc happily installed at the end of the disc stack.  I have had it in my head to change over to the s/a now for at least a year.  I would have bet, and lost a testicle that the race version was installed.  Heh - its faster damnit.  I pissed away no less than three hours searching for that disc.  The sad thing is that had I a run-in with the law and been checked for a spark arrestor, I would have stated that I did not have one. 

I guess the lesson learned is to check the easy and important spots first.  Now if I could only find my 5mm hex-head T-handle.  Given today, my guess is that its in the metric hex head drawer of my tool box.