Back to the subject of the thread:
Today I removed the baffles of my Vance & Hines 'Short dick' exhaust, cleaned the filthy (carbon, brown discoloration) end caps with chrome cleaner and 0000, put in V&H re-pack since there was no packing in the exhausts and only the faintest traces of there ever being packing in it. (I guess they got these pipes back in '96) Getting the allen bolts that hold the baffles in was fun for the lower exhausts. Had to dremel a line in the bolts and use and over-sized screw driver because I EASILY stripped the 4mm allen bolts and then stripped them as T25's as well.
New bolts from Home Despot with anti-seize later along with a nice polishing of the back of the pipes and securing the lower exhausts more tightly, as it seem the PO didn't tighten those down as well as they could have been.
So, now the bike's still loud, and I knew it would be, but I did lose a few dB and the sound feels more 'focused' a more tight tone when I ran it to burn off the tape used for the packing.
If anyone care for the pictures of hours of work.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Lrj...usp=share_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b4d...usp=share_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13ky...usp=share_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14sN...usp=share_link
They're not brand new, there's some marks, but for a set of [probably] 20+ year old short dick pipes, they're looking as good as they ever have for a long, long time.
/end report