One of the million little things surrounding the engine that I've been needing to figure out is the exhaust pipe supports, sometimes also referred to as exhaust hangers. These are made from two pieces of stainless tubing that are each flattened at one end, joined by a piece of rubber fuel hose that's clamped in between. Here is the single page of xeroxed handwritten instructions that was included in the kit, so you can get an idea of the end goal:
The idea is that these will support the cantilevered exhaust pipes, while also providing some amount of shock absorption. I temporarily used clear vinyl hose while fitting them, so I could see how the separation between tubes was working out. You don't want the tubes to touch, since it would negate the vibration-absorbing properties of the hose; you also don't want them to be too far apart, since the hose will collapse when the airstream tries to push upwards on the exhaust. I shot for a gap of 1/4"-3/8" per advice from Larry Vetterman.
To help prevent the hose from slipping, I roughed up the ends of the tubes with a file, and lightly expanded the tube mouths with my flaring tool.
I put the lower cowl on so I could move the pipes around on their ball joints to center them in the cowl outlet and get 3/4" of clearance all around:
It's hard to photograph the exhaust hangers since there's so much other stuff in the way. It's also hard to install them when there's so much other stuff in the way! My throttle cable was in the way of one of them, and since there's no way to move it, I had to anchor the exhaust supports to the engine differently from how it's shown in the drawing.
A view from the floor, looking up at the bottom of the engine, while fitting the transverse support tubes. The exhaust hangers are supposed to go straight up, but with the throttle cable in the way I had to angle them inward to provide adequate clearance.
Closeup of the top end – little steel tabs attach the tube ends to convenient bolts on the oil sump:
This photo of the finished transverse support also shows how I had to bend the tabs on the pipe clamps to get the angles I needed:
I wish I could have supported the pipes farther aft, but this was as far back as I could get the clamps to go without causing the starboard support to hit the throttle cable, or creating a big gap between the tubes that made the hangers too floppy. Longer tubes would have helped here – perhaps I'll make some replacements someday, but for now we'll see how these work.
