Well, turned out there were a few issues with the Raask pipe. I'm not blaming Raask, mind you...it's been on the bike for 8 years or more.
How I diagnosed it was like so; first, I went with the assumption that I was probably going to wind up replacing it with something anyway, so out with the cutting wheel for some exploratory surgery. I removed the header end of the outer casing (that outer casing on the header end turns intro the actual pipe about halfway down the length). That got rid of a small part of the rattle, but wowzers did I notice the heat difference with the exposed inner pipe! Next I removed the inner baffling and found the true cause, things just generally getting old and falling apart inside.
Luckily, the inner pipe was completely solid, so I had the bright idea of cutting it to length to use as a header for a Harley mufler. A trip to the local H-D dealer netted me a pair of Dyna mufflers still in the box - apparently used very little if at all - for $20. I lined one up with the mount extension the Raask pipe uses and marked the Raask to indicate the MAXIMUM length the header needed to be and cut the Raask at that point. This left me with a chopped down Raask pipe with the inner pipe exposed down to where it joined the outer muffler bit, which was about 8 inches long or so and much larger than the inlet of the Dyna muffler.
Off I went to the local Monro Muffler shop with pipe and muffler in hand. We decided the best thing to do would be to cut off the rest of the external pipe on what was left of the Raask, make an extension, weld that to the Raask and clamp the Dyna muffler to it. $80 later I had a nice solid header. I wrapped the header with tape and bolted it on, then bolted the muffler to the Raask support extension, then clamped the header down on the Dyna.
Works a treat, the end of the Dyna is where the end of the Raask originally was - well past the rear hub - and it's an almost straight line. Again, sorry for no pics just yet. I plan to tweak it bit more yet, the pipe support needs to be lengthened/tweaked just a bit to suit my idea of where it needs to be and the automotive pipe clamp is kinda fugly...but it works! It quieter than the Raask by large amount but as near as I can tell there isn't a significant performance hit. I did get some funny looks until the header wrap stopped smoking, though
The upside is I can hear the sewing machine singing much more clearly now (and the durn speedo has has begun to buzz).
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