Full exhaust removal and refit. Easy or Hard to do?

[VTRDark]

Heat resistant Silicone is better as it remains flexible. Exhaust paste, Gun Gum or whatever will crack and fall apart especially with the pressure waves of the big v twin. Even the exhaust bandage stuff (Gun Gum coated bandage) does not work. Exhaust paste will dry nice and quick but will go brittle, crack and fall apart and will need re-doing constantly. It's not so bad on the insides while assembling but still not as good as Silicone.

But Ziggy is right you will need to take things apart and put it all back together. Just replace assembly paste with Heat resistant silicone and Bobs your Uncle.

(:-})

[sirch345]

In the end the only way I managed to stop the air leaks entirely was to wrap the joints externally then clamp over the top. I bought some exhaust heat wrap stuff, and put a layer of paste over the joint, wrapped it in the heat wrap tape, then another thin coating of exhaust paste. Can't remember the exact make of paste, but it was the type used for car exhaust repairs. It sets hard with heat. I heated the pipes up with the engine for 20 minutes to harden the paste and then left it to cool. After that, it had no more air leaks and didn't backfire or pop at all.

Now that's what I call dedication A belt and braces job,


Chris.

[Keith]

The bike is a 99 pre pairs system I believe. The silicone sealant arrived in the post today so will remove the standard silencers tomorrow and coat the graphite seals in it. I did actually find a small leak in the RH silencer joint to the header pipe so hopefully that is the cause. It was not noticeable before but starting from cold I can find it but as soon as the pipe gets warm its masked by the heat coming from it. I am taking everyones advice and won't remove the pipes from the head at all unless I have to.