Right I know sweet F all about exhaust pipes and plan to build my own (front pipe down the right side, back pipe down the left)
Like any thing with this bike I learn after getting hands on lol
Been doing some research on this and found a site which said if one pipe is longer than the other you need a equaliser pipe or cross over pipe??????
How true is it? Does it matter if there is a difference in pipe length (no jokes please about pipe length lol)

 

Yeah, it's pretty much true.....I mean you can have a slight difference in pipe length, (couple inches maybe), but not a drastic difference. Otherwise, you'd have too much back pressure on one cylinder & not enough on the other.

 

My Martin Bros pipes are not the same, but it's less than 6", but thye are true duels. Unless you can bend the rear pipe so there is aobut the same amount of pipe for both cyl's i'm not sure how good it's going to be for the engine? mreed might need to chime in on this one.

 

The issue with different length pipes is because there's only one carb. You can tune it to be safe but you'll compromise performance to keep both cylinders happy.

You can also use restrictors in the shorter pipe to generate equalizing backpressure but each pipe will have a different sound when it's all said & done. And measuring backpressure can be tricky.

For your first set of pipes I would begin with something traditional to get your feet wet. Running a pipe on each side of a cramped Sportster is also tricky.

I've proven that I can make pipes from scratch...so these days I cheat. I use long tube and short tube header kits for the bends. I spend around 200 bucks on 2 boxes of bends & tube and can make about 8 sets of pipes with them.

 

Cheers guys for the info, so as long as I get them with in a few inches of each other it should be fine, this is going to be more fun than I hoped for lol
Will need to take a few measurement this weekend.
My worst fear is a cause damage to the engine by doing something really wrong.
I haven't checked my sideshot but by looking at the pics would say the rear is a little shorter than the front. That's why I asked the question to check these facts.
Guess I should have gone to the king of sporty exhausts first (mreed) lol
Cheers guys