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[fastbikedroid]

First of all, I have to say (as many others have) that Steve is great to work with and very helpful.  I ordered the xpipe and the cores, and they're on a UPS truck somewhere.  A little help from everyone encouraging UPS to actually show up early today for a change would be great ...

My experience so far;

1. In preparation I took the mufflers off.  To get the mufflers off you pull the bags , loosen the heat shield and the clamps, and remove the bolts under the bags, then work them off of the header.  Once they're off you can finish removing the endcaps and heat shields.  Other than having to work to get them off of the pipes it went just fine.
2. Removing the old cores:  I had a local welding/machine shop pop the welds and drill the holes with me (I got to help).  For a whopping $20 it was well worth it to have a more experienced set of hands.  You do have to be pretty darn firm to ram the old cores out, I'll try cleaning up the inside of the pipes a bit before I put the new ones in.  As far as punching the 1/4 hole goes, as others have said: punch, start with a small bit and work your way up, and most of all take your time - it seemed like it took forever to drill through, but the slower speeds made it much less risky.
3. Removing the header is very straightforward, remove the rest of the heat shields, the bolts at each cylinder, the incredibly stuck bolt mid-frame.  The only wrinkle here is getting the upper heat shield off.  I found it easier to remove the right floorboard, it then came right off.
4. Wait for UPS to change form "Out for Deliver" to "Delivered" ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Here's what it looks like so far (yes I've cleaned up the mess since I took the pic!) ........



 ar I've pulled the bags, heat shields, the pipes,

[cahdbiker]

dll, If you don't already have one buy a exhaust pipe expander. I got one from my local Harbor Freight Tool Store for about $9.00 dollars. Slip it in the front end of the muffler and expand  it  just a little. I have used this tool on my Heritage and my 09 SEUC. It will make installation of the mufflers a snap. Good Luck CAHDBIKER

[fastbikedroid]

dll, If you don't already have one buy a exhaust pipe expander. I got one from my local Harbor Freight Tool Store for about $9.00 dollars. Slip it in the front end of the muffler and expand  it  just a little. I have used this tool on my Heritage and my 09 SEUC. It will make installation of the mufflers a snap. Good Luck CAHDBIKER

Thanks for the tip!  UPS finally arrived and everything went together smoothly!  It's @$%#$ raining so I can't really get a feel for it, but a couple of quick revs in the garage and all I can say is it's a whole new bike. 

xpipe -- Overall it's a very easy job - very few screws/little pieces to keep track of, not a ton of room for error.  The heat shields are by far the biggest pain in doing the install.  I'm amazed at how much lighter the xpipe is than the stock, the whole UPS box with the new inserts was only 17lbs .. I'd bet the stock pipe alone weighs more than that.