how tight are your nuts?
 

The exhaust nut on the right cylinder of my R100GS doesn’t do all the way up. After tightening the nut up there is always a few threads still showing, however my left cylinder does all the way up before I can get it tight enough to bring enough pressure on the exhaust gasket to seal it properly. The gaskets are both new and correctly fitted, I checked. Anybody know what’s going on here.
Thanks

There should not be any thread showing. Make sure the split ring is facing the head and that it is correctly recessed in the solid ring on the nut side. The solid ring in sloped on one side to accept the split ring. Also, make sure there’s no grit in either the head grooves or the nut grooves. Use some ant seize when you do them up as well.

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Kevin

http://www.nohorizons.net

Thanks for the advice, obviously my bike is not normal. But the gaskets are correctly fitted and the threads are clean. There is quite a bit of thread still showing, about 1cm. I'm starting to wonder if the head had some bodged work done on it some time in the past. Strangely enough it's the exhaust nut that does all the way up that I'm having problems with. The one with the excess thread seems to be sealing OK.