Exhaust. The original was in a bit of a state, the silencers having been badly repaired at the header joints, with gaffer tape being used as a gasket. These were promptly removed & dispatched to the metal bin in the local recycling centre. However the headers despite being so tarnished they were almost black, appeared sound. This is where the fun started, the nuts holding these to the head were seized solid. Being mindful of the horrors of replacing a broken stud 6 were carefully freed from their death grip with liberal doses of extreme heat, penetrating oil & swearing, but 2 refused to budge despite extra doses of swearing. Unable to use a Dremmel, nut splitter or other device in the cramped area, I had to resort to the hand file. Slowly but surely one side of each nut was filed away until the threads just began to show, these were then tapped off with a hammer & cold chisel. I do plan to replace the studs when I (hopefully) strip the engine next winter.
Cleaning the header pipes. Proprietary cleaners are abound for this job, mostly at ridiculous prices so after a bit of googling & you tubing I found the perfect cleaner- Harpic Max Strength toilet cleaner
& it works & its cheap. Not to sure but I suspect it is mainly caustic soda, so if you use it protect your hands & avoid getting into contact with aluminium. After further polishing the pipes are as good as new, but beginning to yellow after running.
Silencers. It was a toss up between Delkevic or Black Widow & Black Widow won on price. I opted for the 230mm Round GP Style Stainless Steel Silencers. These come complete with link pipes & all fittings plus you can keep the centre-stand although I have removed mine. No gaskets are needed to fit the link pipes to the headers as these are a close fit and only require a smear of jointing paste (supplied) on the joints. One side fitted easily enough although the other side was somewhat more difficult as the downpipe had somehow enlarged slightly & required dressing down with emery cloth to make it fit. This is the end result:
They also sound fantastic & are road legal in the UK with the baffles in. The only thing I will change is the way the brackets fit onto the rear foot-peg hangers, they would be better fitted to original silencer hangers & I will modify these in due course.