buttoned up the exhaust today. as suspected, the mac muffler was in the way of the rearset, so i cut the muffler off at the weld in order to use the foot or so of pipe. found a simple, 2 1/4 exhaust tip at pepboys and cut the set screws out of it. slid it over the pipe, and put the whole thing back on the header.
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in this picture you can see that i now have enough room between the brake arm and the tip. it doesnt look like much, but at the angle the lever is at in the photo, would be physically impossible to get my foot to angle down that far.
took a baffle out of an old muffler i had and cut it in half. stuck one end down into the mac pipe piece and the other into the tip. packed some corse steel wool around them and used some safety wire to hold all the steel wool in place. the set screw that holds the tip onto the pipe, also holds the baffle in place as well. i cant say it does much for quieting the bike down, but i imagine it give some sort of back pressure. somethings better than nothing i suppose.
and a side shot.