Topic: Smoking Pipes

[young blood]

I just finished putting my bike back together after replacing the gaskets and o-rings in the engine and when I started my bike up the exhaust started smoking right around the exhaust flanges. Should I be worried? I don't remember it smoking whatsoever when I bought the bike last year. This is the second time I "finished" my bike, the first time I didn't get into my engine, doing mostly cosmetic work, however I did put new exhaust gaskets in and it smoked then too. This time I repainted the exhaust and again replaced the exhaust gaskets with the crush type ones. The engine looked good to my completely inexperienced eyes when it was apart so I'm not shure if I should be freaking out or not. I have read that new paint tends to smoke, but i smoked the last time too so I'm not sure if that's it. The other reason why I'm nervous is the first time I attempted to put my exhaust back on I didn't realize the old gaskets were still in and I ended up stripping the bolts so now I'm nervous to over-torque them (its tightened to 1.2 m/kg).

[Frankenkit]

did you use grease to stick your exhaust crushwashers in? If so, it can smoke pretty good the first couple times until you burn out the grease.
 When you stripped those bolts, did you strip the bolt or the holes, and if the holes, were they helicoiled?  'tight enough" usually seems to be when you hold the wrench with one hand, practically right over the socket and tighten down until it stops, then give another little bit with just your wrist.  At least that's how I measure it.  (things break when I use the end of the wrench... )  
I've screwed up in about every way imaginable, so I have adapted decent diagnostic capabilities and a healthy fear of touching anything.

[young blood]

No, I didn't use any grease, didn't even cross my mind since it fit snugly in there. Good advice on the wrenching technique, thank you for that, I just hope I can get over my paranoia of things coming apart cause they're not tightened enough and use it.