Very unhappy customer

Welp, that's one pipe filed and fitted, on the timing side, then rain stops play â outdoors for now that is, I'll just get on and file the other pipe, at least I can do that indoors.

I gauged the width of the flange from inside the pipe to the outside circumference, made it to be 7.5mm, and used a file to reduce it by 1mm. It wasn't too hard to get through the chrome, after that it was pretty easy work. The circumferential finish of my work is pretty coarse, although I did run some emery (!) paper over it, but there's not much I can do about that, anyway I doubt it matters. The pipe went in easily, to the extent that I'll first try taking just 0.5mm off the other one, to see if that'll do. Maybe that's a lesson learned, honestly it's been so long since I tried anything like this ... But the pipe's nipped up good and tight, that's the main thing. I protected the pipe itself from the file by taping the cardboard core from a loo roll around it.

I wish I'd taken a photo of the clearance between the old pipe and the frame, though â the old pipe used to run quite close to the frame, down at sump/gearbox level, to the extent that the frame has a (very old!) witness mark from the bolt that goes through the pipe/silencer clamp. Now there's lots of air between pipe and frame, and it looks flabby. Fortunately the kickstart still clears the exhaust by about ?" â that's the later 850 lever, by the way (06.6397). I'm not going to swap pipes again for the sake of a photo, I'm much too fearful of ruining those exhaust port threads â they're why I use lockwire on the roses instead of those dreadful tab washers. But I'll take a photo of the other pipe before I take it off.

Who knows whether the old pipe or the new has the right bends, but the tighter gap between pipe and frame looked sexier (if you see what I mean), so I'd be prepared to take a guess. Anyway the old pipe was old and scruffy when I bought the bike in 1998, so finally I have a new, shiny one. I don't think that's extravagant, after nearly 20 years! And I'm not sure anyone else would notice the difference in the gap, at a glance anyway. FWIW, one thing I did find was, whereas previously I'd used only copper-impregnated grease on the exhaust port threads, adding GT85 (like WD40 but with Teflon) to the mix made things go much more smoothly.

Neil, yes I think you're right, Hemmings vs Emery over the Norvil name â from what I know of both men, I have an opinion on who made it a fight instead of a collaboration of some kind.

anna j, interesting stuff, thanks.

p.s. Jeez, this website is slow to load ...!

Ok, both new pipes now fitted, the flange on the second, drive-side pipe was filed down by a nominal 0.5mm and went into the port fine. The 1mm removed from the other pipe was nominal too â it's all been filed by hand, with not a machine in sight, just a gauge to tell me when I've taken off enough.

I'll attach some photos: one shows the gap between the new timing-side (offside) pipe and the lower frame, you could get a bus through there; the others show the old and new drive-side (nearside) pipes, again the clearance is greater. The old drive-side pipe was probably about as tucked-in as it could get without fouling the sidestand fittings, but still ...

Good to hear you have original MK3 balanced pipes, I can probably guess what happened to the balanced pipes on my MK2A, but at least yours prove that they can hang on.