What's the best way to spend the weekend when your wife is out of town? How about fabricating a stainless steel exhaust for your car - that's what I did. The weather was not going to be very nice anyway, and all the parts had finally got to Lethbridge.

First things first, I had to take a very full truck load of crap to the dump to even get my car in the garage , then it was off with the intake and on with the J-bends. I have a couple of dual down exhaust manifolds lying around the garage, so I ported one and gave it a squirt of high temp paint (my car had the terrible single down pipe system).

First get the manifold in place (I have a very fancy ceramic coated number that I'm using on the B20 - this is just for a short time).



And for those wondering, I did give the ouside of the manifold a light polish - I'm a little retentive.

On with the fun - box full of J-bends and a lenth of stainless pipe (all 2.25") a couple of mufflers and some sexy laser cut trick muffler hangers. I started at the back of the car to get the exit of the exhaust right under the rear over rider on the bumper. Then started to fabricate forward to the dual downpipe off the manifold. The first bit of fun was getting over the axel. With Greg's help and his extra axel stands I was able to get my feel wet doing this sort of plumbing (definately better than the other kind). Here's the over axel part tacked up and ready to go back in for test fitting.



Next was the join from the main muffler to the down pipe - it needed a tight turn to get it in the right place and keep the muffler tucked up. The turn was tighter than the radius of my mandrel bends, so I sectioned them a little closer than normal and then bent and welded them back up...I'll let the pictures explain.







Installed.



Next on to the front - I installed an O2 sensor bung (twice - don't ask) and fit up all the trick hanger brackets.





Here's the over axel segment. I went out on the wheel side of the panhard rod - the stock set up goes through the gap between the axel and the rod.



Here's the final under car shot - the 4" round. I brushed all the pipe (emery cloth) and painted the welds with high temp silver (they are welded with stainless wire, but they always seem to rust a little).



Here's the final shot - I've only run it around the block, but it sounds perfect and the neighbours won't be too offended. Total time wasted...about 12 hours (not including the cleaning and putting the engine back together)

please put a motor with >50hp in that car soon. You are an amazing welder!

Awesome work Craig

oi beauty

Not bad for the first try! Those hangers are sexay.

Thanks Raz...If my cylinder head ever gets in I'll be doubling the current output!

I forgot to mention that I used Dale's photographs as a "cheat sheet" for this project. I don't think there is much angle on the O2 sensor (I did try to grind it down more on one side when I was fitting it to the pipe)...hopefully that doesn't matter too much.

Oooooooh purty!!!
Nice work Craig! Can't wait to hear it!
I'm curious how close that quick bend before the muffler gets to the E-brake cable? Oh yeah...also curious why you didn't go over the panhard as well as the axle?
Sooooooo nice.

There's about 1/4 inch between the e-brake cable and the pipe, and I found that if I made a little turn towards the outside of the car at the main muffler (and flip the muffler outlet to be towards the outside of the car) I could go over the axel at an angle and then miss the entire panhard rod assembly. I've got about 2" of clearance around everything at the back. I had all the parts cut and tacked up by 6pm on Saturday (spent more time thinking about it). Then left it overnight to try to figure out why it wouldn't work - couldn't come up with anything. My total turn raduis (the number of bends) is 540 degrees compared to the stock system at 720 degrees. Less turns is better I think. Also the over axel looks much larger in the pictures than it is in reality. The axel would hit the bumper before hitting the pipe - but just by a little.

As for the sound, it is a real improvement over the stock system, more of a deep rumble at idle and not to bad at 3500 RPM (only went around the block). The only differnce is my engine tick is louder as it is no longer muffled -