This is Exhausting

"MM54" (mm54mk2) 10/05/2017 at 21:05 • Filed to: '71Chevelle, Puns!

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Not all clamps shown; they will be installed after all the everything else is aligned and tight.

After yet another very long (but not quite as shitty) day at work, I worked on the Chevelle again. Yesterday I picked up a couple ball flanges to deal with the pipes from the muffler not being square with the headers and started fitting one side. Today I finished fitting those parts up... and hit the next problem (though this one was predictable had I thought about it).

Angles are exaggerated and the pipes between the H-pipe and muffler are actually sort of S-shaped, but it’s paint so cut me some slack.

The diagram above shows the phases of exhaust issues. In A the mufflers are right, but the header flanges are not square with the pipe and thus cannot mate/seal. In B the flanges are square, but it puts the mufflers passing through eachother (and the differential/driveshaft). C is how it is going to be, with the mufflers in a physically-possible orientation and alignment corrected by ball flanges. In A-C the H-pipe is ignored.

My new problem is shown in D. The T-shaped pieces the H-pipe goes into on the sides are square, and since the pipes don’t run parallel this means the pipe cannot be square (this is like 6th grade geometry so I hope you follow without more pictures). The solution is shown in E, which requires me to run back down to Summit again to pick up another ball flange and a couple more clamps so that the H-pipe can ‘hinge’ in the middle.

That’s all the further I could get it to go together before realizing the issue

This is how much it’s off by. I considered beating it into submission and making it work, but at this point I know I’m not going to be done before the weekend, I have plans all day Saturday, and it’s supposed to rain from Sunday through Wednesday so I might as well get the parts to do it right.

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > MM54 10/05/2017 at 21:31

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Wanna do mine next?

Just need to move the glasspack up ahead of the rear axle instead of hanging from under the rear bumper.

RacinBob > MM54 10/05/2017 at 23:00

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Looks clean. Bravo.

BTW, you want the joints anyway as it this way, when your engine rocks, the header doesn’t have to lift the weight of the entire exhaust pipe back to the muffler.

uofime-2 > MM54 10/06/2017 at 10:00

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Probably to late now, but what if you attached the headers and H pipe then cut for the ball joints downstream of the H, back towards the mufflers themselves?

MM54 > uofime-2 10/08/2017 at 12:20

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I did consider that, though the angles work out better to do it right at the collectors instead. This also cuts down on mild-to-stainless joints which I can’t weld in the spring.