Before you spend any more time on those, make sure the retainer nuts will thread back into the top. I tried welding a strut tube up once and pulled it slightly out of shape. Not visible to the eye, but enough that I couldn't get the top nut back in.

I'll give it a try. I think the nut will go, it's just getting it past the weld area that I've got to work on.

Leave the nut on while you weld?

Nut works, struts now go in all the way to the bottom and the nuts are fine. I've had to work the weld line for about an hour each to get it honed out to the right size. I sure wish I had a long-nose die grinder. Anyway, I'll get them painted on Saturday and see if I can get the head etc done for Sunday and try my best to get that damn car in the garage for Monday/Tuesday next week.

Nope, things are NOT getting out of control...two coats of epoxy primer and two coats of Eastwood's chassis black. Nothing out of control here.

This is just a winter car. It doesn't need fancy parts.

No new lowering springs. No new SKF strut bearings.
No new wheel bearings.


At least the Bil's are used .

Oooooo....purdy! Damn, that looks really nice.
Yes, the Bils are well used.

That's what your telling the missus, anyway!

She gave up a long, long time ago. As long as I'm smiling when I come in from the garage, she doesn't mind.

Small problem...my used M46 was taken apart last night for a set of gaskets and O-rings in the OD. When I took the bridge plates off in the OD, only one of the 4 nuts would come loose. The rest just spun - someone got things a little tight. Now, I could have waited for the OD to come out of the 242, but I thought, I can fix that.

So I ground off the stripped threads and welded up the studs. I didn't take any before pictures as we've all seen a stripped bolt before and grinding them down to 0.25" was just a lot of work.

Here they are welded and ground (8 - 12 ft lbs only - no tighter).


Here are the new threads cut - everything should go better now as I put it back together with all new seals and O-rings.

damn, that's impressive, how many die sizes did you have to use before going to the final thread?

I went straight to threading them - no die sizes...I was raised in a machine shop - I should have put a "don't try this at home" as the subject to the post.

The story continues. Dale was down in the blizzard last week to drop off the old exhaust. It's a "coat of many colours" affair, having once been on Brad's car, then on Dale's silver wagon and finally on my car. It was in good shape, but was fighting some structural issues. Most of these stem from the mounts and methods of repair/structure over the years. I'm not sure I made things better, but it needed more repair.

The flange where the inlet connected to the main muffler was cracked about 110 degrees around and the welds holding the support rods had fatigued the pipe and cracked them basically off. So I cut them off and attempted my version of the repair. The theory here is that I don't think the previous main muffler support (only one O-ring) was holding the weight sufficiently. The rods were a good idea, but didn't address the messing around someone had done to the inlet pipe.

I strengthened this area by reinforcing it with 1/8 angle after welding it up correctly. I then added 1/2 tube reinforcing bars that joined at the pipe connection. This should hold.



Once that exhaust was structurally sound - I installed the Stahl header for the first time. One bit of shinny in the ugly engine bay.


Then had to modify the exhaust to remove the resonator and install a new one further back to accommodate the length of the Stahl header. The header had been "repaired" - I wish I had checked this before getting it ceramic coated. The repair area didn't have any up-turn and it needs some to hang correctly in my view. Oh well, this isn't a show car.


The header flange also came out at the wrong angle...so I had to get another mandrel bend and fabricate this bend to connect the V-band.


Today I got the rear muffler installed. With a single Dynomax and the resonator, this exhaust would have been too loud - so I've added a big Magnaflow at the rear. I hope this makes it sound good.


Close up of bracket - the entire system uses all factory mounting locations.


I haven't welded it on yet - as I've got to repair the undercoating etc before final install. Here's the pipe joint.


Stainless tip in place - the valence panel is going back on as well. Looks good to me. Oh, and the picture looks like the bumper is on the tip...it's got a good finger width or so of clearance - no problem.

Is that the exhaust that was on my 240 for a bit as well?

But how does it SOUND?!

Was it? We pulled it from your attic, but I don't remember if your black car was wearing it. I know my blue car was as well. It's got a bad reputation, that exhaust... Naughty, naughty exhaust.