All right, getting my welder hooked up. Jumping right in to my first little project. Exhaust.
Here I set the amperage high and the feed speed lower and did some really flat tacks on it.
It worked pretty well, though at a couple points it was spraying, so I’ll need to adjust settings a bit. It might be a bit hard to make out here, but the weld is at the top here. It was very flat but still had good penetration.
Next I set up the welder at recommended settings and just ran a straight bead. You can see here it had great penetration, but almost in the excess. That is eating into the interior diameter and creating a slight bottle neck.
Another shot more edge on. Zoom in as needed.
And some shots of the other exhaust that I’ve already welded up. This was a bit different as it’s slip joints and flanges. Where as I was practicing butt joints above. Started with some tack welds, my first try at them. Much better than my flux welder.
Welding some of the v band flanges.
So here it is side by side with the old setup.
My only complaint here is that the old one did tuck up under there a bit better. It is a smaller system though, I can work with it.
Crammed it in there. It’s a little tight, I need to try to readjust the radiator a bit right now it’s hitting the fan housing just barely. Might tweak that a bit.
It comes through nicely though. No really clearance issues right here.
Hanger for the old pipe. I removed it entirely since it was a separate piece. Along with another unused hanger at the rear that was hitting where I was routing the exhaust.
Here you can see it hanging down.
Hanger ended up sitting right on top of the resonator. No real bother to me though it was only a $40 resonator.
Welding up the rear muffler section.
Low hanging fruit. I am fixing this ASAP. I need to weld in a new hanger up there in the tunnel and raise this up. The length of flex pipe I got is allowing for a good bit of sag. I can raise this probably 2 if not 3 inches before I run into any interference. Apologies for the blurry pics it was around 1am when I was taking these and the phone camera doesn’t behave well then. I’ll get out there with the iPad shortly and take some better shots.
Muffler on. Yay!
All right, next day in. nabbed another rubber hanger and welded up a rod onto the cat to get some ground clearance back. Sorting out that low hanging fruit mentioned before.
Fortunately the rods I ordered were plenty long so I was able to put them at strange angles to get the effect I needed. There was no hanger mount this far forward since the new header doesn’t bolt up to the bottom of the engine like the old one does. Also since this was sagging due to the length of the flex pipe that wouldn’t do me any good anyway. So I took a hanger off the rear that was no longer in use and was actually interfering with the new pipe and welded it onto the car itself.
With that done the only thing left, besides minor fiddling is the tail pipe. I was unable to find an exhaust tip I liked, and DrFink said he was a fan of a simple turn down, so I figured the hell with it, why not. I have some extra bends laying around anyway so I cut myself a little turn down.
Tacked it on to the rest of the tail pipe scavenged from the other part of the bend, that I also put a V band on, because why not V bands are awesome! And that also lets me position the tail pipe as I see fit.
Up Periscope!
Some things that need sorted, the header comes in slight contact with the fan housing. I’ll need to deal with that. I’m thinking I might wrap it as well because things are still getting a bit warm under there. A shame to hide my lovely black jet-hot pipes, but if I can drop engine bay temps even further, well then that will please me just fine. Then just some cleaning here and there. Since it’s mostly all modular I may disassemble the entire thing and paint it with some exhaust paint. Undecided on that though.
A couple people have asked about the sound, and I definitely need to get a sound clip. My phone wasn’t having it though, it would up the recording volume when there wasn’t sound, then when I’d rev the engine it would start clipping. I’ll see if the iPad does any better, if not might have to bust out the proper camera on it with a better mic. The tone is definitely deeper, but it’s actually quieter, which is what I was going for. Granted my basis for comparison was the shit old exhaust that had a leak at every weld seam due to them having the entire thing solid with no flex points. So it sounded like a swarm of bees inside a coffee can. It’s got a bit more volume up til about 2200 rpm then it quiets on down. So while I did pay for the header and getting it coated just for experimentation sake, the rest of the exhaust was cheap and sounds great in my opinion. Thrush 30″ glass pack as a resonator in the middle, followed up by a Thrush Turbo muffler. Both parts I think were under $40 each. Then probably 4ish feet of straight tube. Various bits from two 45 & 180 bends, another thanks to DrFink for the suggestion on that. A cat and a length of flex line from siliconeintakes.com the flex was I think maybe $18. Then the V band clamps and flanges, also from Silicone intakes. They were just mild steel as I’m not set up to weld stainless yet. So I’ll need to monitor em for any rusty nonsense. The clamps are stainless as that’s the only way they came. I love having modular exhaust though. Not that I plan on changing anything out any time soon, but I like that I can pull it apart and put it back together without needing gaskets and without having to worry about leaks.
I’ll stop the rambling now though and just say if you’ve not done your own exhaust, and have some access to a welder, have at it. It was a great learning experience and I think I did all right for my first time welding one up. You can do it!