Replacing Bonneville Exhaust

I've adjusted the chain on my T120 for the first time. Annoyingly, this involves removal of both exhaust "peashooter" pipes to access the chain adjuster nuts on both sides. Removal was pretty straightforward, as was the chain adjustment, however rejoining the pipes back on proved to be a mare. The section that they join up to consists of two parts; an inner pipe and the outer chrome sleeve that I imagine also serves as a heat shield. The peashooters have to slide over the inner pipe and under the outer chrome sleeve BUT they have to go in with a clamp that fits under the sleeve and then tightens up to seal the join with the inner pipe. The gap all this has to feed into i.e. between the sleeve and the inner pipe is barely large enough to accept the end of the peashooter plus clamp.The inside of the peashooter at the point of the join has a kind of gasket material, a bit like compressed wire wool. If you misalign the peashooter as you feed it in this causes the gasket material to expand making it impossible to refit so then I had to remove it recompress the gasket and try again. In the end, the only way I managed to fit the pipes was by fitting the clamp so that it overlapped the end of the peashooter by about 1cm tightening it to the point just before it compressed the pipe end then levering the sleeve slightly using a long flat ended screwdriver as I fed it in. Once the pipe was in position I then slackened the clamp, shimmied it into its position under the sleeve and only then could I tighten everything up and attend to the remaining fittings. It was an hour and a half's work of which fifteen minutes was the actual adjustment! I feel sure there is an easier way to get this done and thought I'd put this thread out there for any suggestions please?

 

Please don't be put off by what I wrote. Chain adjustment has to be done and on most other bikes is straightforward. I agree that torquing properly afterwards is really important and for that reason alone, removal of the right hand exhaust is essential. Cranked spanners will work on the left side as there is only one spindle nut. I don't have any so I had to take both peashooters off. The method I eventually tried worked, the key was to smooth down the gasket material first (using the rounded shaft of a screwdriver) and then to ease the pipe on with the clamp sitting just proud of the neck so that it slid in under the heat shield. I found that levering the shield slightly as I slid the pipe on helped. It is of course possible that on my particular bike, the shield on the right side is slightly misaligned as I had less trouble to refit on the left. Please don't be put off. If you find a better way to do the job AND properly torque the spindle nut, please let me know.