I recently spoke to Emmanuele Nicali of Lesto Racing at the Monza World Superbike races about the company’s motorcycle race products. Lesto supplies both road and race motorcycle exhausts to a number of teams involved in various Italian national championships, including CIV (Italian Superbike championship) and the Superstock 600 and 1000cc series. It also plans to have its exhaust systems on race machines at the Isle of Man TT races in 2011. Fig. 1 shows a race system fitted to a race Suzuki.
The company uses racing as a way to improve its products through the increased speed of development, and the teams it supplies are an active part of this process. It names CDS Racing Team and SGM Tecnic as teams with a lot of experience that, according to Nicali. “help us test our product on track and boost performance under racing pressure”.
At the recent Monza World Superbike round, I asked Marcus Eschenbacher, crew chief to Cal Crutchlow at Sterilgarda Yamaha, about their choice of exhaust configuration. As many who work in Formula One or study it will know, the exhaust systems on each side of the engine are arranged in a ‘four-into-one’ collector with four primary pipes coming together in a single collector on each side. The arrangement is often abbreviated to ‘4-1′, denoting four pipes converging into one larger pipe. 
Diesel fuel is extremely popular for automotive use, particularly in Europe where, for some manufacturers, diesel vehicles account for more than 50% of sales.
In previous articles, Wayne Ward looked at processes by which we might produce bends with different geometry than we can form using simple tube bending techniques, and here we briefly covered hydroforming and the manufacture of pressed bends. If we really need to cram an exhaust into a very tight space, these might offer us some advantage by allowing a very tight bend. However, we should question whether gaining this advantage comes at a cost. In some circumstances the answer to this question is ‘yes’. 
In the previous RET Monitor article on the subject of 
In previous articles, we have looked at why we might choose to insulate the exhaust system of a racing vehicle, the various methods by which we might insulate the exhaust and what the consequences of doing so might be.
For those of you following the ‘Focus’ articles in Race Engine Technology magazine, it is clear that recent changes and improvements in manufacturing technology have improved the products being examined, and this is undoubtedly true for most machined parts, and also for parts produced by casting and forging too. Clearly the CNC revolution has not left the world of fabrication untouched with many operations controlled by computer being more accurate than the average man could ever be. We will not include those who make motorsport exhausts as ‘the average man’. Thankfully, we are a long way from being able to replace these craftsmen by robots. 
Last month we looked at the problem of how to contain excessive heat given off by hot exhausts. The problems this heat causes affect not only the engine, but also other systems, particularly electronics. In addition to wrapping or coating the exhausts, we looked at the concept of bagging or blanketing. Heat shields were mentioned and in Formula One at least these are commonplace, being lightweight and effective in shielding the engine from radiative heat transfer. The problem with wrapping or bagging of exhausts is the additional weight which would affect the reliability of the exhaust system 
Some of us have the regular chance to see an engine running hard on the dyno, and in many cases it is visually obvious that there is a lot of heat being radiated from the exhausts. There are many 
In previous articles on exhausts, we have talked about how these systems are composed of smaller parts, then welded together to form the whole. We further assumed that these smaller component parts would either be small cast pieces, simple bends or perhaps pressed sections. Pressed sections offer the possibility for different shapes and tight bends where required.
