Sunday, March 19, 2017

EXHAUSTING


One of my apprehensions during this process of building a car has been about the exhaust.  The kit version wouldn't work with my engine and headers, so it would have to be a custom design.  My expectation was that the car would go to an exhaust shop to have the tubes cut, bent, and welded, 
  but after seeing a number of builders online who did it themselves, I was inspired.  So here is a bit of how that went:

The list of materials was pretty simple.  Two polished stainless steel glass pack mufflers and four 90 degree bend 3" diameter stainless tubes.  Below is the first one on the saw ready to cut.

This will be one of the turn out tips.  Lots of burrs at the cut to be cleaned up.

Next for the front elbow.

At this point the tip and front elbow were assembled into the muffler and held into place with a sophisticated system of spacers and masking tape.



Then there were some wedge shaped pieces to make a bend matching up with the headers.

First wedge taped into place.

Fitting the second wedge.

After it was all fitted and taped into place the tubes need to be welded together.
Now I don't have the right equipment to properly weld stainless steel so all I could do was tack-weld it all together and then take it to a qualified welding shop.  This was my practice piece and it wasn't pretty.

Except for a little hole melted in my shirt it all went pretty well.




Here is the nearly finished (lots of polishing to do now) product.

What I have been most interested in is, how does it sound?
The video sound is WAY OFF from the actual volume.  It's loud.  And the engine is still running rough but I think I like it.