After many frantic phone calls this morning, I have a difficult task set before me this weekend. Installing my headers/exhaust. After selling my JBA longtubes, I've put in an order with Anthony of Stainless Works for a set of 2"/3" Longtubes shipped 2-day to arrive in time for a Sunday installation.
Since I'm prototyping a new exhaust for Flowmaster, They've sent me two boxes. One containing the cat-back piping for the American Thunder 3" system, and the second box contains the Hushpower muffler axleback kits. Flowmaster prides themselves on creating performance and a tuned sound from stock vehicles. This provides me with 2 issues.
A) The American Thunder 3" cat-back system necks down at the factory connection point, so it won't connect to 3" catted mid-pipes
B) The Hushpower mufflers neck down at the connection point to the cat-back piping (which is 3").
This means 100% that I'll need to cut and weld a 3" stainless pipe at the tip of the piping from the muffler to the cat-back piping. I figure I can make a sleeve or expand the front part of the catback piping to connect to a 3" catted mid-pipe.
Problem solved
With the addition of the Stainless works headers, another wrench is thrown into the plan. The Connection point of the catted mid-pipes now is moved to a few inches in front of the X-pipe. This means that I may be able to Sawz-all the cat back piping right in front of the X-pipe and just use a band clamp to connect the headers to the cat-back piping. Anyone know if this will work or if I need to expand one of the pipes to create a slip fit set up? The band clamps are about 2 inches wide.
My plan for this Sunday is to install the headers and see if I can use the sawz-all approach. If that doesn't look like it's going to work, I'm going to drive home open headers/cats. Then I'll drive to blu808 in Campbell to have them take care of the x-pipe and fix the mufflers.
If it does work, then I'll only have to get the mufflers fixed and installed at Blu808 on Monday.
That's what I've been contemplating and trying to learn about today as I've never had any experience with installing exhaust.
Any thoughts?