For the life of me, I can't believe how easily those three nuts came off.
I heated the snot out of them with the torch and they turned off like nobody's business.
I cut the old exhaust pipe off the flange, cleaned it up and used some 2.5" mandrel bent tubing I'd been saving for just such an occasion. I used about 5" of straight 2.5" exhaust pipe and migged it to the cut mandrel :
I didn't have any M10 X 1.5 nuts lying around so I ran a die over the studs and a tap through the nuts and for now I'll just reuse the old nuts. I was even able to reuse the old gasket. Talk about luck ! All in all, not a bad Saturday morning.
Dave