Trouble installing Muffler

Heyo, I've had some trouble over the past few days trying to installing the mufflers on my '86 700. I have the mufflers slotted onto the front exhaust pipes with new gaskets, and despite my best efforts I can't seem to get them far enough on to attach the mounting bolts near the rear tire. I have included some photos to help show what I mean.

The frustratingly close mounting bracket:





The pipes themselves, both sides look like this:




Both the left and right sides won't budge past this point - it's right there too.

Has anyone had issues like this? Should it be this difficult to slide the muffler pipes on? Should the pipes be even further over the gaskets, or is something else at play here?


If I can get these back on I can ride again.

 

It looks like the exhaust assembly was made wrong. It should have been shorter. Do you have the original one to compare the lengths and then can you complain back to the seller?

 

What are your best efforts?? Have you tried a hard rubber mallet/dead blow hammer driving them the needed 1/2"? Looks like that's what they need. Kind of shows in pic #4, you can see both ends of the gasket and there is still room to move towards the header. Possible gaskets are wrong and are a tad to long/wide??

 

That might be the case, but these are the OEM mufflers. So not a possibility!

I have used a rubber mallet, to minor effect. And the gaskets are OEM so unless I'm extremely unlucky they should be the correct ones. I'm going to enlist my friend tonight to push while I try to install the bolt, but first I need to park up against something hard so the bike isn't thrown off it's stand.

 

I am thinking the subframe is the issue here, you may want to loosen the mounting points before going further.

 

Just because they are OEM parts doesn't mean they were made correctly. From the views above it looks like the welds will have to be ground off and the ends repositioned making it ~ 1/2" shorter.
I doubt adding force will do it. I do like the approach of loosening the subframe as a next attempt.