Worked on Exhaust Pipes

After exchanging a couple of emails with Joe Blank at Van’s, they determined that my lower cowl doesn’t have a long enough side flange.  They’re going to send me a new lower cowl, so I’m going to work on a few other things until then.

Since I marked the cut points on the exhaust pipes last night, I pulled the lower half of each pipe and cut the three longest pipes to match the shortest.  I then cleaned up the ends so that there were no burrs and reinstalled the pipes.

I then fabricated the exhaust hangers.  These are each comprised of two pieces of stainless steel tubing connected by a piece of rubber tubing.  I flared the ends of the stainless tubes so that they couldn’t slip out of the rubber tube.

Now that the exhaust is installed for good, I installed the heat muff around the #1 and #3 pipes.  This was a bitch to get on since the fit is really tight.  I moved it almost as far forward as possible so that I can get maximum heat transfer as well as provide the most room for the aft SCAT tube.  I could have moved it forward another 1/4″ or so, but I wanted to be able to inspect the weld on the #3 pipe during annuals.

Despite moving the heat muff forward, the right exhaust hanger is still going to interfere with the aft SCAT tube.  I’m going to have to shorten the exhaust hangers which will have the effect of moving the upper attach points farther out.  Hopefully that will give me enough clearance that the SCAT tube won’t rub on the exhaust hanger.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.