Building your own exhaust

fturner

Registered User
Ok, I know several of you have bought up mandrel bent tubing etc and showed off your work in building the exhaust for your car and I am impressed.

I'm about to attempt that myself... imagine, a computer geek programmer welding his own exhaust together, "Gotta measure the bits involved in assembling a weld factor to assimilate two tubes together so they copitulate together to allow a smooth bit transition from one medium to the other" :D

Anyways, all joking aside, for those that have built their own by ordering up pre bent tubes etc, what do you think is needed to do a good job for the following. I have the cats already and the "resonator".

2-1/4" off the manifolds to cats, 2-1/4" from the cats to the resonator (in this case its a 2-1/4" duel in to a 3" exit 13278 magnaflow muffler) a 3" center section through a newer style gas tank setup to mate into the stock older style split.

I guess I'm after what I need to order up pipe wise to meet the above needs, knowing I need to cut, trim, and weld pieces to make it fit.

Thanks
Fraser
 
Fraser,
when I did mine on an old tank I used 10 feet of 2 1/4" and about 6 feet of 3"
I had 3 90deg bends for around the tank I would say you need 2 for a new tank then for the 2 1/4" I had 3 Ubends and 2 90deg bends.

One thing i would use is Vband clamps for the center joint point and if your going to use SS get it tig welded not mig welding thats what I did now I need to fix some of the welds because the home mig welders will not give you the output you need.

fell free to PM me
 
I built my own exhaust... it works really well, but man it was A LOT OF WORK!!!!

Mine is similar to yours: 2 1/4" Stainless down pipes (catless), dual 2 1/4" in -> 3" out Borla S.S. muffler (as resonator) and then regular 3" all the way back. Single 3" out; no rear muffler.

FYI: The setup really moved the power band around... I went from totally stock to this setup. Doesn't have nearly the torque off the line, but now it pulls hard from 3.5k up where before it fell on it's face. Going the stock boost gauge (not accurate I know...) I "lost" about 4 psi of boost. Sounds good too. Very V8-ish rumble @ idle, moderately loud under most conditions and really screams when you put your foot in it!

Because my car is lowered 1 1/2" and the fact that I couldn't find anyone locally to do mandrel bends on stainless, I did all the stainless "by hand" (mitered cuts and then welded with a TIG). I tucked it up REALLY tight. It worked really well, but as I said: lots of work.

I had the rear section bent up by a local shop...

Vince
 
Stainless Steel!

Don't bother unless you're going to use stainless steel, it's alot of work, you only want to do it once!

I bought 304 stainless steel 16 gauge U-J bend combos on eBay (pic attached). 6 - 2 1/2" and 2 - 3". Not a single piece of straight pipe.

I used Bassani 2 1/2" stainless steel ball and sockets (just the sockets actually) to connect to my SCP/Kooks headers and another 3" one after my dual 2 1/2" in - single 3" out center muffler. Bought stainless steel O2 fittings (installed 2 in each downpipe) and stainless steel 3/8" (3) and 1/2" (2) hangers. Also found a good price on a stainless steel 2 1/2" Y-Pipe to split the rear. Borla Pro-XS stainless steel mufflers. Metallic Cats.

All told about $750 in parts. I tack welded everything with my MIG, and had a local welder finish it with a TIG. More pics and details in this thread:

http://www.sccoa.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104380&page=2

You also might want to consider the stainless steel dual 2 1/2" mid pipes I bought for my LSC, details in this thread:

http://www.sccoa.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104772
 

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