i think that's the mantra of the restorer; to make progress you have to go backwards occassionally. to wit: the old muffler and exhaust assembly, all one big piece, came off remarkably easily, the 3 day soaking of the the nuts holding the compression plate against the head might have had something to do with that. one hangar bolt which came loose without too much complaint and the old rusty muffler was separated from it's home. took a shop rag to wipe out the exhaust port and seek the old copper gasket which was not to be found. eh, ok, no apparent damage there. next on the list were the three little items attached to the bottom of the original muffler that needed to be put on the new one, two bolt holes to plug and a small plate that looks like a back pressure restrictor release cover. of course none of these would have anything to do with moving except for starting to strip the heads, despite having had the St. Forty treatment for several days. an impact driver would ordinarily be next on the agenda, but the area around the cover plate has rust perforations; i don't think there is enough supportive metal that would survive a few slams on the impact wrench and that level of corrosion has likely welded the threads past St. WD Forty's powers of healing. besides, i don't want to totally trash this old assembly, i may try fixing it up with some JB Weld just to have an old ugly spare muffler around. ever the optimst, i e-mail the parts house for availability of an oem cover plate, and then off to the hardware store to glean raw materials if there isn't a real part. after some study, a section of brass flat bar can be cut, drilled and shaped on my jigsaw and grinder here if the plate needs to be fabricated. i'll wait on the parts house response before going off on that little tangent, but it's an easy solution. metric machine screws are easy to find, one or two of them may need to be cut shorter to fit the depth of the threads. none of this is awful work, just more time to finish what should have been a couple of hours. so the new and freshly painted exhaust and its re-chromed original heat shield are going to sit loosely in place on the bike awaiting 3 small parts i thought i already had in hand. at least it looks good, even if unfinished.
