Dropped a few things off this morning for ceramic coating. Going with a matte black finish for the exhaust tubing which I think should look pretty good.

Should have probably waited and mocked up the exhaust before dropping the parts off, because it looks like I'm going to need to get a 12" patch piece in order to fit the Borla muffler to the rest of the gibson catback piping, so that's my project for tomorrow. Also ordered two more band clamps.

I knew the Gibson muffler was going to be a large case but I wasn't expecting it to be 24" for just the case . It's also really heavy compared to the borla, so that's a nice weight savings. The nice part I guess is that if I ever get tired of the borla or think it's too loud this big gibson should quiet things down and still flow well given the straight through design.

Side by side:


Gibson interior; straight through with louvers and a slightly smaller diameter core piece with two open chambers separating the center core and each louvered end piece. If nothing else, should flow well, quiet things down and I already like the sound of their mufflers:



Borla XR-1 interior; not much to it, perforated interior piece, 3.5" ID throughout, less packing and weight compared to the bigger gibson:

 

On Tuesday of this week I ran around all day trying to get a patch piece of stainless tubing. After calling around to several different metal suppliers I finally found a place near my house that had thin wall 3.5" OD 304 stainless tubing in stock that would cut me a 12-inch section for my patch piece for the exhaust. So after about 10 mins I have pipe in hand and I'm thinking I'll just head over to a Midas muffler shop and have one end expanded so I can slip-fit the two pipes together. I stopped by this place yesterday and was assured by the chick at the counter that of course they could do it, so I thought no sweat. So I go to a different Midas that's across town from me but close to where the GF works, have coffee with the misses and walk into the Midas. "Nope, can't do any bigger than 2", but try the place down the road". So I went to that place and no, they can't do it either. I can't remember where I went after that, but I stopped at two other Midases, a couple metal fabrication shops, called places in Stittsville, Gatineau and Metcalfe and nobody has the dies to expand anything >3" of tubing. So much for supporting local industry, I should have just called American Racing or Burns and had them fab me up a piece. I ended up saying fuckit, and ordered a v-band clamp.

Just goes to show that nothing is every easy or simple. Just to change a muffler I'm going to have to weld the v-band flanges on, and the real nut-kicker is that I'm going to have to grind off some of the powdercoat on the exhaust piping I dropped off yesterday to get the one v-band flange on

And to make matters worse, I nearly hit a family of ducks trying to cross the highway, and it made me sad cause I'm sure those little ******* weren't going to make it across all 6 lanes

Ok, :endrant, here's some pics of nothing interesting at all:

 

Little more productive today. Got a call from my friend at the bodyshop (that has an account with Keystone) that my two clamps were in so I went to pick those up and while I was there he said one of the bodymen can TIG weld, so that's going to save me a trip somewhere else to have the v-band flanges welded in.

So after I got back to house I got a call from the powdercoating shop that my exhaust tubing was done, so off I went to go pick that up. The pipes look great, I'm really happy with them. I'm annoyed that I'm going to have to grind off a bit of the PC to get the flange welded in, but the flange is SS304 and I'm getting the guy to use stainless wire to TIG with, so I might just touch it up with some POR-15 or similar high-temp rustproof black paint instead of getting the whole piece re-coated. I'm having the shorter pipe that goes over the axle welded, so if I do end up re-coating it it won't be as much as the longer headpipe, but I still don't want to pay to have the same piece PC'd twice. The small 12" patch piece that I'm having the other flange welded onto will be ceramic coated the same as the rest of the exhaust pieces, and I'm even debating whether to get the borla muffler done as well.

Here are some pics.

The two clamps I ordered; I already have two other lap-joint band clamps from dynatech, but their website's domain expired and I wasn't sure if this meant they were closing shop or just unmindful of their IT assets, plus I would have had to wait to find out if I ordered another set from Summit, so I just had my guy at the bodyshop order me one from Walker as well as the V-band from Vibrant performance:



The V-band is a really nice clamp; the two flanges are machined asymmetrically so that one side has a ridge and the other has a groove to center the two halves of the joint:







On the other side of the flange that gets welded to the piping, there's another groove that seats the end of the pipe for a really nice connection:











Closeup of the clamp assembled:



Here's a couple pieces of the exhaust ceramic coated black. Really glad I decided to go this route with the exhaust:





I had the billet antenna I had made by a member on GMFS (jrluz14) coated in the same finnish:

 

Looking good. Interested in your results!

 

Nice solution to the 3.5 connections.

It's a little late now, but I had the same issue trying to connect 3.5 inch stuff.

I ended up butt welding the joints and then welded a few short pieces of rod along the seam for support.

 

I think it's the best connection next to welding. Still gives me the ability to take the short borla and patch piece out and swap in a longer case muffler if I ever want something quieter, which is the flexibility I wanted right from the beginning. I wasn't going to trust a butt joint band clamp not to leak. I think it'll work out pretty well.

 

It gives you the option of taking things apart, which welding doesn't.
Just took a few drives around the county to get what you need.
Best

 

Question for you guys: To take the tranny lines out of the radiator, you can just unscrew the quick release fitting from the radiator right? This is probably easier than removing the ring from the fitting and separating the hardline and the threaded fitting right?

Pic to show what I'm talking about:

 

I just remove the clip with a pick, then pull the lines out. Leave the fittings in the transmission and/or radiator.

 

Absolutely not, remove the eclip and pull the hardline. Do not try to remove the fittings, chances are you will crack the rad.