Is it fair to say this exhaust gasket is toast?  Before removing it, there were several small pieces that dropped out.  Is this kind of deterioration normal?  Just curious. I obviously replaced it.  I ask because I couldn’t accurately determine if I had an exhaust leak at the head connection.  It may be my imagination and I haven’t taken a good test ride, but I’m hopefully optimistic this was part of my afterfire kaboom with the Jardine pipe.  As an aside, I cleaned the TEV part of the carb and I think it actually exacerbated the kaboom (not a real difference, again maybe my imagination, lol).

I recently removed mine when re-wrapping pipes and it looked exactly like this (2013 s40 with 7.5k miles.) I was having typical backfiring before this --  when I pulled the spark plug it looked perfect, as in, not over heating (except one instance when I did have a leak at this junction and my header got cherry red). Not sure what caused mine to do this, could have been that one overheating episode I suppose. After replacing the gasket, installing a VM36 Mikuni, new pipe wrap it seems fine since then. Occasional popping when I decel in second after WOT.

Be careful with those header bolts brother. Danger zone. They aren't supposed to bottom out, they are just supposed to be clamping it down form what I understand.

Thanks guys.  This one wins the prize for slinky gasket!  Interesting that Surviving Philly had also seen this.  And y’all are all right about cleaning up the port, not over tightening, and replacing bolts.  I actually dropped down to 30mm length from 35mm for fear of bottoming out and having snapped off a seized header bolt one time.  30mm works and some anti-seize hopefully ensures that doesn’t happen again.  I may be partially to blame when I did check/tighten the older header bolts when the bike was still warm.   Live and learn!