After lunch today I headed out to the garage to get a start on the exhaust. My steel order arrived yesterday and I had picked up some exhaust bends on Friday. First up was a quick change on the headers. The old headers just weren’t going to fit after the cabin was built. So I spent the extra money and also got a ceramic coated version of some block huggers to help with heat and corrosion.
Next I needed some 2×3 rectangular tubing. This rectangular tubing is going to run directly under the side frame rails. However when I called about getting that tubing they only had it in 1/8″ wall thickness which was going to be way too thick. So I ordered a couple 20′ lengths of the 2×2 tubing that had a thinner wall.
To start I needed to cut off one of the sides of the 2×2 tubing and then cut the other 2×2 tube right down the middle.
What’s left was to clamp the two pieces together and weld the seams. This took quite a while since it ended up being about 20′ of seam welding. I had to turn the heat down a bit so that the but joints didn’t burn through while welding. I also did the welds in a few different sections by alternating both sides and ends to try and reduce any warping from the heat.
After all the welding was done, I decided to get the car up off of the ground. I’ll need some room to roll around on my creeper to hang the exhaust. This actually took quite a bit of time. I was figuring out where the exhaust was going to run and also leave myself room for both the jack and the jack stands.
Its going to take a bit of time to feel comfortable rolling around under the car up on its jack stands. I know that I’m safe under there though. I’m using a set of truck jack stands that hold 2000lbs per corner 🙂
Tomorrow morning I have to go and pick up the exhaust hangers and flanges as well as some Flowmaster 40 series mufflers. I wanted to use the existing mufflers from the car but they turned out to be in pretty bad shape after closer inspection 😦
The Fab 12 
Leave a comment