About your exhaust tubes:

if you cut them or bend them too much, the bottom of your plane will get oily...it's kinda like 6 of one, half dozen of the other. But if you do decide to bend them, use a nice tubing bender, otherwise they will collapse in a hurry! If you don't have experience with bending tube, try to talk to some friends that have experience in that area. I'm far from a good fabricator and ask for advice and help from friends for doing stuff like this. Lord knows i'd kink those tubes beyond recognition!!

BTW: great job on the cowl cutting!! I've seen my fair share of hack job's when people take the time to do it nicely and it really detracts from the look of the plane...

I wonder if cutting the pipes tike shown in the pic would help things???