Thanks for the quick reply and useful info. Glad to hear I'm not the only one to have issues with that. I've also got the same problem someone else had in there being a bit of excess metal from welding on the inside of the link pipe where the lug for carbon heat protector is. This means I'm also going to have to file that out - at the moment its stopping the secondary front pipe from sliding into place.

As for the leak where those two pipes connect - did you use some silicon sealant? I plan to do that once they actually fit together... am wondering if that will make a difference (?)