No - most manufacturers don't make baffles designed to be used in two parts - something you guys on this board asked for so we designed - if we were using a single baffle I might agree with you (though in fact you are still wrong and many other manufacturers don't "fill the hole" - I'll try and dig you out some pictures) - but we wanted to do a two stage baffle that could give a street noise level and a legal level without compromising power - the problem you get is that the reversion waves caused by the baffle are fine with one but you get a negative inversion with the second unless you can tune that out and to do that we increased pressure through the side plates of baffle two (through it's design - note baffles one and two are different designs) and allowed it to seep by the edge of baffle one - that way the negative wave is disapated and the pulses still work positively to scavenge the cylinders with either baffle in place - the only other way round this would have been to find the tuned length for each artificial swept volume created by the baffles and try to put a reverse cone inside the pipes at the next shortest pulse length to try and create a positive inversion wave but this would mean lots of tricky maths and more tricky welding a couple of feet down a 3" pipe so we didn't go that way
We didn't put spacers all around because the packing acts as a spacer unless over tightened and holds it all neatly central - we did mess up by supplying two nuts designed to lock together instead of a lock nut which is fool proof and as I said we have now amended this.
I hope this will have explained why we did this the way we did and that it is indeed correct - I don't intend to get in to a battle over this - at one time or another most manufacturers have turned to my company for exhaust help (up to and including Honda R&D) so my reputation kind of speaks for the validity of what I am saying - if you really do know what you are at with exhaust design and can think of another way to tune out two differing waves then drop me a PM and we can discuss the finer points of gas dynamics and so on off the board so as not to bore everyone else.
For now let me say that what we have done works, it works well, it is the right design choice and so much of a non issue that I can't believe the column inches we're all wasting debating it - even the one guy who said it moved over and looked a bit ugly says he loves the pipes and is very happy so it's really just not an issue.
I hope I didn't offend anyone - I am always quite light hearted in the way I write things and no personal slight was intended against anyone.
