Pull the rivets (one at a time of course) and re-rivet them nice and tight again, then give the whole muffler body a quick sanding down and then paint it flat black with BBQ paint...

You could tape up the header pipe too, to match it in color and make it look ‘finished’ again.

Of course, if you like and want chrome, my suggestion isn’t going to appeal to you very much  


EDIT:
If you did strap on a staight pipe, you could try to fill it with a baffle and/or internal mufflerfiller yourself to make some back pressure for tuning and maybe just quiet enough that not every cop for 2 miles around you can hear it...

I had a JC fish tail straight pipe on for about 5 k miles. Without a  baffle you will have no top end. I started with  bolting in the JC two row beer can baffle, worked fine, fast and REAL loud, too much for me. I put in a 6 row baffle and another one with a wavy steel mesh in it. The sound was great, a nice putt-putt and a good snarl at speed.

However the metal got weak from so much heat and I pooped them both out the back end last week. I ordered a JC turn out with a baffle already welded in,
I'll see how that goes.

I would get H-D clamp rather that weld, Harley doesn't make much that I like but that clamp is a real piece of machinery.

Hey Mick, are you talking about a baffle like this:



http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/Product/tf-Browse/s-10101/Pr-p_Product.CAT...

or this one:



http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/ItemBrowse/c-10111/s-10101/p-100000143738/...

I also found this turnout muffler w/ a baffle in it:



http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/ItemBrowse/c-10111/s-10101/p-100000144050/...

What do ya'll think of those? I'm really liking the short 13" turnout up in my first post, but I'd have to add a baffle. The turnout in this post is 16" with a baffle, so maybe that'd be the way to go. Whatchu guys think?

Hey,

http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/ItemBrowse/c-10111/s-10101/p-100000142660/...

This is the pipe I bought to put on my 87, I put it directly on the head pipe and didn't like the sound at all so I took the baffle out and I still didn't like it. I found the longer the exhuast is the lower the tone it has which sounds much better IMO. So I ended up hacking up one of my dad's old python's from his harley and ended up with a much better sound. Also bought the small baffle from JCW and have that in the current exhaust. So if you want to use one of the shorter pipes I suggest getting a pipe made to go between the muffler and the head pipe to lengthen to whole thing.

JakeB

Hey Holodeck, what did you do with your old extended fishtail?  

I'm going to find another set of baffles like I had and have them welded into the fish tail, then I will look into having a ceramic job done.

I liked the look and loved the sound but the problem was the single wall contruction, it blued, burned and flaked off  the chrome. I tryed Blue Jobing it but it became a lost cause.

I will try the turnout for a while and see.

IMO the best part of a motorbike is the sound, and a big single is the best of the bunch. ( with the right muffler )

Yeah five points,
        It is like the top one except mine is at least a foot long and the slots are smaller

I removed the stock exhaust cause it's too heavy and tried riding with just the header. It was so loud the neighborhood hated me. Not that I care. I welded an 18" piece of pipe of the header (2") and the sound was awesome. You could still hear me about 10 blocks away, and my dog refused to get on the bike anymore. I'm going to try a weld in baffle to make a bit less loud. Just my 2 cents.