I was very blessed when I built my Commando/Featherbed back in the early 80s I had an old exhaust shop family owned and the 2 brothers were both experienced with making one off exhaust systems as they had an old school mandle bending machine and I took my Noroton over there, Ian said it's been sometime since he made headers for a bike and he wanted to do it, he did everything by eye, bend, fit, bend, fit after I told him how I wanted the pipes tuck right into the bottom frame rails, I watch his handy work and was a great experience watching a true tradesman at work, I wanted the pipes bent close to the frame rails and up swept at the rear.
He only took 15 minute to bend the shape I wanted and he made the pipe where it fits to the flange out of bigger pipe with the flang put on my flanges, fitted the bent pipes inside the flange pipe and welded it on to the flange pipe, so after 30 minute he had made my full straight through exhaust system and both pipes at the last upswept bend were both in line with each other side, it was such a pleasure for him to make them he charged me $20 to make and next door to his shop was a just open electro platers so chromed next day at a cost of $20 to me, I rode the bike for a week with the straight throughs till I got a set of mufflers then cut the pipes down after the last up swept, the mufflers were also up swept.
Well that was over 40 years ago and I am still running those header pipes, but had gone through 2 sets of mufflers since, I am running cocktail shakers from Lowbrows with min baffles, they are short mufflers and upswept just the way I like them and the bike runs so well with them and put out a great sound, the mufflers cost more than the pipes to get made.
Ian also made a set of SS exhaust header for my old 81 Triumph Thunderbird and a exhaust header for my mate's AJS 500, Ian has since past away but the exhaust shop is still owned by his family, they since got rid of that big mandle bending machine long ago and lost a true exhaust bender who knew how to bend pipes.
The headers are old and have brazed up one small rust hole in one but they are still hanging in there, but if I got a set made up today the cost would be high and finding someone who knew what they were doing and the machine that didn't crush the pipes while bending, but really the best thing would be to have the bike there and get the headers made for the bike, then there be no problems with fitting.
Pic of both bikes with Ian's handy work, $20 for the Norton headers and $40 for the Triumph headers as they were stainless steel pipes.
Ashley
