Since my last update I have been "fiddling" with pretty much everything, just tweaking things here and there. There isnt much exciting worth sticking on here.  
   
After literally months of hunting down parts for the exhaust I used my noggin and called a local company called Malvern Tubular Components. They where very happy to do a "community service" and break away from the normal contract work to supply me with 10 identical Mandrel bent mild steel bends.
Now that I have the bends....(the exhaust parts not the medical condition....) I have designed roughly what I want the system to look like.
The first part to be constructed from my nice new shiny bends was the centre "collector" which mixes the gasses from each engine port into a single tube. This in my opinon is the hardest part of the system to get correct. It took me literally 4ish hours to cut, grind, weld, grind, weld and wire brush this part. I think its worth it...Its not perfect but it should do the job...I also cant find any holes which is a good thing :-)

Here is a closeup of the actual join. Its not amazingly neat but if I wanted to enter a beauty contest I would have paid a proffesional to do a perfect job in stainless.......

 

Oh and before you start critisising my welding....this is the very first thing I have ever welded in my life appart from a few random test samples of tube....all of which looked very bad!

  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, so I went down to the garage thismorning and as I lifted the door up I could hear things falling to the floor....On closer inspection it appeared that the entire "skim" of cement over the reinforcing steel had come down from the ceiling overnight and had nocked everything off the shelves....The concrete skim is really dence stuff as it contains steel fibres so this stuff had made a real mess.....It took me an hour or so to shift the damn stuff into plastic bags and make the roof safe by hacking off any odd bits still remaining......It was rather anoying and a waste of an hour!!

(photo shows the now exposed steel structure of the bunker like roof)

After a fair bit more hacking and welding I finished the header pipes. Again, its not amazing but it will do ...I cant find the picture of the headers so here is a picture of the Clarke 151EN gas/gasless MIG welder that I have been using....
Once the headers where compelte and bolted onto the engine it was relativly easy to form the rest of the system. The main challenge here was figuring out where to put the muffler. I am hoping that by putting the muffler this side it will counteract the inertia caused by the rotating prop and give a level hover.
A shot from the other side
This is as far as I have got at the moment. I have machined out a flange for the end can to bolt onto. I need to weld the flange onto the pipe and then figure out where to put all of the exhaust mounts.

Well a lot more hacking and welding has taken place and its looking rather good. It is finished infact :-D I even made up the mounts for the hull.

 

Look at that sexy carbon fibre end can! (thanks John)

A nice view from the rear showing the carbon can with stainless tip and the now completed variable splitter plate in the duct.

 

And finaly

Well, now the exhaust is completed I thought it was time to connect it all up and see if the engine would actualy start.... Well the first attempt wasnt good...I got the fuel inlet and overflow mixed up and consequently caused fuel to be sprayed everywhere under pressure...(including completely filling cylinder #2 with fuel!....) After a long conversation with Lazza I corrected my errors and was ready to start again..
To my suprise she fired almost imediatly and ran...Its very rough but thats just a timing issue I think...The main thing is that after all this work I actualy have something to show for it....Plus it sounds AMAZING!!!

Once the timing is slightly better I will make a video so you can all hear how throaty it is :-)