I have had trouble with leaking exhaust on my ironhead sense I bought it ,I have tried every thing to stop the leaking because it has a big affect on the bikes performence.I tried strips cut from beer cans and that did help a bit,springs,coopper coat, red silicone and cut more slits in them but nothing worked more than a couple ride arond the county so I made some gaskets out of copper and they are working great.I took about 10 inches of 3/8 copper line and split it up the middle,spread it apart with two pairs of plyers and flatened it out on my vise with a two lb hammer,both edges where a little raged so i trimed with tin snips to 5/8 wide strip,raped it around flange end of exhaust and cut to lenght,spread apart the coller with a screwdriver and slide it on exhaust pipe then place copper bettween pipe and coller and make sure that seam in copper and slit in the pipe dont line up and put it back on ,this has worked great for me so I thought I would put it out here in case someome was haveing the same problem..

 

Cool! Thanks for the tip man!

 

What year bike do you have and what type of exhaust clamps are you using

 

i will eventually try that.i dont know if i have eneough room to work with though.------another thing is i realized with my clamps there is just one way they can go so they are sealed.(well have a CHANCE at being sealed)---never thought of the copper tubing though.

 

its a 71,,,Iam useing the heavy 1 inch wide aircraft clamps

 

if it were possible to find a strip of lead that mite even work better(i guess it cant get better than fixed but..) i dunno where you could find that at though unless you were able to melt down a batt terminal into a thin strip..???? just me thinking outloud......

 

I think some of the larger auto lead wheel weights would work and you can buy 1/16 lead sheet for shower pans at pluming supply,I use copper because it was easy to work with and holds up to heat well.