1/11/02
Exhausting Work

The Y-pipes Stebro promised by Christmas finally arrived! I guess it’s better late than never. They followed the contours of the samples I sent them pretty well, and I’m generally pleased with the work. I asked them to tack weld the header flanges, and the large collector pipe on the other end so I could custom fit them to my car. If there was a flange that was off, or the pipes were too long, I could grind off the small welds and get them to fit perfectly.

The left side y-pipe fit perfectly to the exhaust header, but both collectors had to be shortened. Since the ends were shrunk to fit inside the first muffler, I had to cut the whole pipe off where they met the two smaller pipes and hammer it into the shape of an oval to connect smoothly. This process took a lot of cutting, fitting, filing, grinding, and re-fitting. Since my car is on jack stands, by the end of the day, my clothes were filthy from crawling in and out from under the car.

Eventually, I got the left side lined up perfectly, and cut down to size. With everything bolted up or supported by hangers and a floor jack, François help me tack weld the the left y-pipe. I then took it off for the umpteenth time, so I can get it TIG welded.

The right side proved to be a little more frustrating. With everything aligned like the left side, I could see one of the mufflers making contact with one of the frame rails. I was using the hang points that were on the car, but no matter what I did, that muffler would still bump up against the frame. I was tempted to just have the pipe welded, but François warned that this muffler would rattle so bad it would definitely drive me crazy. Unfortunately, with so many hangers and angles, every change to the height of the muffler would adversely affect the system somewhere else. Getting frustrated, I called it a day on the exhaust system!

Washing my hands of the exhaust system for the day, I finished today by installing all the knobs to the center console. All the knobs have been polished, and each letter was carefully brightened up with new paint. Although it’s dark in the this photo, I can’t wait to see how nice they will look in the light of day, especially when I’m finally driving down the road!

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