Jim, that's very good, and I think it's the ideal way to do it. Ron
Fournier in his Metal Fabricator's Handbook says the same thing,
explaining that the brazing at the flange gives a little bit of
flexibility there which avoids cracking. That's the way I approached
the eight straights on my Ardun, which hang from the flanges since no
other support is possible, except the regulation brace bolted across the
ends, to fillet-brazed tabs. So far no breakage, even though the pipes
are gas-welded out of several straight and curved pieces to miss various
things like the starter and steering box. Another tip an old racer gave
me that I think is valuable is to go over the pipes' weld beads after
you have them built with a wire brush in a bench grinder, and finally
soften all the beads to blueness again with your gas torch, by way of
normalizing them more like the parent metal. He said this would also
help avoid breaking. Apparently at 'full noise' an exhaust header pipe
is under a lot of stress from heat, vibration and maybe even the exhaust
pulses. It sounds like it anyway! Bill
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