If you want a Panhead to work properly and last, you must take your time with the exhaust sealing at the heads. A loose seal will kill performance and burn valves. I generally wrap the spigot with a strip of aluminum beer can, then work the pipe up over the flange and cinch it down.

I've often cut additional cinch grooves in the header, and with channel-lock pliers pulled out each tab so that the header would slip over the exhaust flange. Be careful. If the fitment between the pipe and the spigot is loose enough, I use thick exhaust gasket material from an auto parts store. In this case, the spigots had been replaced by Baisley's with heavy-duty aluminum tubing and carefully welded. Nuutboy cut the dead Coke can into 5/8-inch sheet strips of aluminum gasket and we slipped one around the front header. The rear was very tight and we were unable to work the can between the head and the tight pipe. I always use top-quality Custom Chrome stainless steel clamps to pull the pipes into place, but only after the head has been torqued down.

We happened to have a set of Gardner-Wescott chromed allen head bolts and washers. I wouldn't recommend using these unless you have some special, easy-to-use Allen tool. They're a bitch to twist into place with standard Allen tools, even socket allens. Part Two

We installed and adjusted the pushrods, then went to the fun side of the bike.

We had the Mikunis and some S&S style flanges. We had scoured several auto parts stores to find hoses, but discovered the rubber flanges would work perfectly without any extension, if we could make a bracket that would hold the carbs to the top motormount. We also discovered that the push cable bracket was going to hit the tank. Nuutboy had the bright idea that if we could muster a shaft long enough to go through both throttle mechanisms, it would allow us to use one throttle cable and we could disconnect one of the throttle springs for an easier pull. Lee Chaffin from Mikuni recommended that we speak to Nigel Patrick of Patrick Racing for the shaft since Nigel has a manifold for dual Mikunis.

After digging through the junk drawer for an hour, we had a formula. The flanges fit perfectly on the head spickets and are sealed with hose clamps, then the carbs fit in the other side of the compression fitting, which tucked the carb up against the heads as much as possible.