The Exhaust System

I decided to go ahead and work on the exhaust system today.  I'm ready to have a day off but want to get this done so I can be in the best position to start the motor next weekend.

The exhaust is a Flowmaster American Thunder H-pipe system (#17282).  It is designed for my model Mustang with rear pipe hangers which mount in the stock toe hook locations and with special rubber insolaters which mount at the rear seat pan.  The system is 2.5" mandrel bent tube and should mate up to most headers. 

The system came with Super 44 mufflers but after hearing them on a few other cars, I decided to sell them and purchased Dynomax  Super Turbo (#17733) mufflers.  These mufflers are fiberglass filled which makes them quite but they still have a low pitch.  The biggest part of this decision was that I want my two kids and wife to enjoy riding in the car with me and I don't know that they would with the original Flowmaster mufflers.

I started by aligning the rear exhaust pipes and the mufflers.  The tail pipes are held in place with rubber isolator mounts which are installed with the bolts which originally held in tow brackets. Therea re additional mounts at the back of the seat pan.  These use older style exhaust clamps which can crush the tubes when tightened so I don't particularly like them but I'll go ahead and use them for now. 

I then mounted the H pipe to the mufflers and installed the headers on the heads.  The passenger side header fits without any issues.  The driver side comes into contact with the equalizer bar which is part of my stock clutch mechanism.  The contact point was very minor so I ended up using a spacer on the block side mount for the equalizer bar and then used an angle grinder to remove some material from the equalizer bar itself.  

Flowmaster provided two 30 degree mandrel bent tubes to connect the H pipe to the headers.  Unfortunately, these were at least 10 inches from connecting the H piepe to the heads.  Unfortunately, just a few pieces of straight pipe would not be enough as the exhaust is nowhere near lining up with the headers. 

I stared at the bottom of the car for a while working with the two pieces Flowmaster provided and trying to decided what I was going to do in order to get it running.  I'd at least need some kind of exhaust in place to go to a muffler shop.  I decided I'd at least need a 45 degree bend to make it work.  Hopefully, I could find one around 10" long to fill the gap.

I went to a neighborhood O'Rielly and they had some 45 degree tubes in 2.5" diameter..  Unfortunately, these were not mandrel bent tubes.  They are crushed a little in the middle where they were bent.  They were only $5 so I picked up a pair so I could at least find out if it would work.  If so, I could then worry about looking for some mandrel bent pieces. 

I was able to use the 45 degree angle pieces to connect the exhaust together.  The tubes hang just a little lower than I would like and don't run as close to the center of the car either.  However, they will allow me to get the car started and then make plans for a better way to construct the exhaust. 

Since I don't know what I'll ultimately do with the exhaust, I used the clamps Flowmaster supplied with the kit to connect all the angled pieces of pipe together.  I tightened everything up but I'm thinking the use of these crappy clamps will likely result in some exhaust leaks.  This is certainly something I know I'm going to need to change up one way or another once I have the engine running.  However, this will at least get me going for now.