This afternoon I was back in the garage. At least it warmed up to -1 out there by noon so it wasn’t too terrible. First up was figuring out the angle to cut off of the two 2×3 tubing pieces to get the desired 45 degree angle I was looking for.
Next I thought I would see just how hard it was going to be to bend that 3/8″ rod for hangers. With the help of my vice and a lot of pounding with the baby sledge it ended up bending not too bad at all. I didn’t even need to apply heat. I also welded on a ridge close to the end so that it doesn’t pull back through the insulator and then ground down the end to a nice tapered angle.
The next step was to figure out just how long the 2×3 tubing needed to be and what space was needed between the frame rail and the exhaust. I used two jack stands and an extra piece of 2×2 tube that seemed to get the exhaust sitting right where I wanted it.
Next up was drilling a hole and welding in the bung for the O2 sensor. After the bung was finished I welded the tube to the 90 degree bend that will be attached to the collector flange of the headers.
Once I had the 2×3 tubing all lined up with the 45 degree angle piece I could line up the bend coming off of the header collector. I needed a straight line here because this is where I’m joining the two sections with the Magnaflow hi-flow metal-core cat. In the picture below the cat is just hanging in place since it is slightly larger than the 2.5″ OD tubing which creates a lap joint.
Finally I needed to finish up the round-to-rectangle transition on the pipe. I just used some scrap metal that I had around from cutting the one side of the 2×2 tubing. I also added my hanger to the exhaust and hung it from the frame rail with a second hanger.
Last was hanging the rectangle tube back in place and loosely connecting the header collector tube by sliding the cat over each round end. I don’t want to weld the cat in place quite yet.
The lap joint of the cat gives me a little bit of wiggle room that I’ll need when hanging the rear of the rectangle tube. Hopefully tomorrow I can get the muffler hung and get everything connected. I’m still not sure how I want to route the exhaust over and behind the rear axle. There’s not a lot of space back there. But I’ll deal with that challenge once I get both sides finished.
The Fab 12 
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