fabricate an exhaust

grumpyvette

grumpyvette

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face it, many, maybe, most muffler shops want you in and out of thier bays as fast as possiable and want to use the least expensive components they can find , and want to take the least effort and time they can, yet derive the most proffit, from the work. you can totally avoid that by either buying top quality components and paying big bucks, or...if your budgets like mine....
if something BREAKS , well,thats a P.I.T.A., and probably a badly designed or improperly installed component, but thats what WELDERS are designed for.....learn to weld and things like that are at most a minor repair that will usually take well under 30 minutes and its almost certain that you can put some thought into the repair and make it darn near "bullet proof"
and very unlikely to re-occure:thumbsup:
no part is immune from a bad installation.
in fact! once you learn to weld and you can weld up a totally custom exhaust that will exactly match your design and application goals for far less than you can buy one for, in cheap aluminized steel or the far better stainless steel

http://store.summitracing.com/egnse...+kit&searchinresults=false&N=700+115&y=6&x=32

http://www.jegs.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/category_10001_10002_11525_-1_10245

http://www.magnaflow.com/02product/universalsatinxl.asp

http://www.flowmastermufflers.com/mufflers.html


http://www.borla.com/products/universal.aspx

you can build your own stainless steel exhaust system and personally install it and its very unlikely to cost nearly what youll pay a muffler shop, and if you shop for components carefully youll find that a stainless exhaust will cost only slightly more than the muffler shop charges for inferior aluminized steel
if your going thru the work do it correctly, buy and install decent components so your not back doing it again in a year or so!

careful measurement and planing, and component sellection, will help a great deal in keeping costs low!
 
My 3" header collectors are down to 2.5" pipes and a H in behind the tranny, with stock muffs and stainless tips....

up north, I would have had a COW doing that simple thing because there wasn't a damn shop in the DC region that made/bent their own pipes of any type.....it was the likes of Walker, or die.....I went Walker and did my own work for years....

NOW just down the street here is Jr's Muffler shop...Ricky can bend anything, and has done many a job for me, I just use aluminized on bare steel headers....been fine for years now....

he bends it all right there, it's not Mandrel bent, but it works well and is a clean welded install....

:2nd:
 
I bought the Summit kit and X-pipe for my aluminized 3 inch system. (The alum. system will out-live me...lol). It is my first system build from scratch. Bought a cheep-azzed Harbor Freight 14 inch chop saw for $69. There is some trial and error, but with patience and careful cuts, the end results are excellent. (IMHO)!
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Chop saw smop saw :) I have one and hardly ever use it. I cut pipes and bends freehand without even marking a straight line. Practice makes perfect :D

Here's how I built a dual 2.5" stainless system for a 67 plymouth barracuda. I don't have a pic of the system when it was all done (and the guy sold the car already so no way to get them also :( )


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Im impressed with the quality of work and obvious, thought and effort, that went into the construction, but why would anyone go thru that much effort and retain the stock exhaust manifolds rather than adding headers, so that effort spend on the exhaust is not mostly going to waste, vs helping the headers scavage the cylinders, more effectively

btw I would have installed an (H) pipe just after that trans mount to further reduce flow restriction
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btw I would have installed an (H) pipe just after that trans mount to further reduce flow restriction
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That right there above cross support is about the same, but much neater looking as what I did to my '72 stock cross support....but I had to put flanges on the cut ends as it was a stickshift car....PIA....

:drink:
 
I don't do H pipes, don't believe in them and they're ugly and clutter up everything. They also make removal a PITA.

The car was originally a 6 banger, the manifolds barely clear the steering box, there's simply little or no room for headers..

The main reason for the exhaust was the fact that it was a blowing out of the original rear single pipe for the 6 banger and someone just simply fabricated a Y from the front that ran into it.
The exhaust was more for quality and looks and a little sound. It's a 273 ... no power whatsoever anyway.
 
Dont know if you remember TT the guy at cf who has a light blue 67 with some insane hps, Steve 632C2
I remember his exhaust system had 4 mufflers. Maybe too much mufflers but he had oval pipes that looked awsome.
I like oval pipes with our ground clearance.
 
Yes, I know who you mean. I had the same size oval pipes for the 82 including oval mufflers but those sections of tubing are crazy expensive, and then I needed some bends, the price on those is jsut insane so I scrapped it an am now doing it a little different.
 
That's the same machine as in the pic with the girl holding the exhaust only from the back, what you see there is a miller plasma cutter. :) The air line going in with the filter/dryer is a dead giveaway that it's a plasma cutter :)

There's a MIG machine in the girl pic on the right, it's the grey machine. That's a Hobart Handler.

I don't see the actual TIG machine in any of his pics unless it's the one under the plasma cutter. The big square blue one with the large handle.
 
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ITS fairly hard to ignore the TIG TORCH in his hand , picture
 
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