As noted elsewhere, this truck was a little lacking in the exhaust department when I bought it. The pipes behind the mufflers were ragged and falling off, so the guy who sold it to me cut them off. The left muffler broke off the pipe ahead of it within a mile on the drive home. Luckily, the bent tubes coming off the headers were reasonably solid until they faced rearwards at the same height. So I cut them off evenly, clamped on a pair of Walker mufflers, about 20" of straight 2.5" pipe I already had, and a pair of random ells chosen at Carparts of Epping to bring out the pipes just ahead of the tires - this is a work truck, and I plow my parking lot, so I want the pipes safe from glacier injuries. A single hanger on each side, bolted to existing frame holes, keeps everything in place.
It is a bit hammery and barksome, I was hoping for stealthily silent, but they tell me that takes more than a couple of inexpensive mufflers and a few feet of pipe with a V8 running headers. Replacing a leaky header gasket on the passenger side did help a lot, though! Update: after about a winter and a half of plowing, etc., the rest of the exhaust has started falling apart. The collector flange on the right header broke off, the "bent" pipe on the right side developed a nice big hole, and also the foremost downpipe on each header started rotting out. I replaced the colelctor flange with a short reducer, had a piece of pipe bent up at Meineke to replace the shot section, and heavily kludged the headers enough with window screen, muffler bandage, "liquid metal", and some random industrial epoxy I had around to get past a state inspection.The plan now is to "upgrade" to a stock exhaust. A buddy next door has promised me a pair of manifolds and a Y-pipe off an engine he is selling, as soon as the snowbank it's in melts away. Then I will just get all stock aftermarket pipes and mufflers to finish it off. Then if I ever have exhaust troubles again, I can just order off-the-shelf replacement parts. |
