Quote Originally Posted by Don Shillady
This mainly a progress report to IC2. It may fit in here right after the picture of his neat chassis layout showing his exhaust system. I am stumbling forward in my buildup and learning what I don't know at every turn so I just copied IC2's recommendation and went to a local muffler shop (Economy Mufflers at the Hanover Air Park) and had a system installed with turbo muflers and 2.25" tubing with an H crossover. With a chance to get underneath I also saw some aspects of my chassis that are very low and I may change some of that. As IC2 said, the muffler shop politely declined to use the pipes that I purchased from Speedway and welded their own setup in a few hours. Although the shop is called the "Economy Muffler" shop it did not seem economical to me, but then I remember when a Pepsi was five cents and gas was $0.259/gal. so I am out of tune with todays's costs. The whole system was just under $600 but I also had to pay towing to and from the shop. Hopefully this is the last time I will have to use towing! Turbo mufflers are about half the price of performance mufflers so I saved there and the shop said the turbos would be quieter and that will lessen complaints from the wife and yet still provide pretty good flow. One good thing is that this shop has worked on a lot of performance cars so they knew just what I wanted and actually there is no way I could have maneuvered the pipes the way they did around the SBC oil filter and my master cylinder. Using their pipe bender they made spaghetti out of those pipes! Another problem is that I have large brackets for the rear bumper so they could not put the pipes over the axle even though I have set the coilovers on the highest setting so they bent the pipes under the axle but still within the clearance carved out by the four bar brackets under the frame. If the fourbars clear the pipes will too, if not the four bar brackets will bottom out first. This was a major step forward for me and now I can spend time on the wiring. Thanks again for much help from folks on this Forum!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder
Don,
From what I can see it appears to be a very nice looking system. As far as $600 - probably about right with the current price of steel. My +/-$30 ten foot length of tubing is about doubled in price. The mandrel bent U and J bends I used have gone up a couple of dollars each. My $85 each Flowmaster mufflers are now ~$100. Then the cost of labor. And yes, I do recall gasoline at 5 gallons for a buck, then getting upset when Coke went to .06 (gasp!!) then looking at the bottom to see where the bottle really originated