Drove the car around the neighborhood one last time on Thursday night with the old exhaust system. Then I removed the water pump pulley and main crank pulley as well as the rear diff cover. I dropped off the two pulleys and the 12-bolt aluminum diff cover at a local powdercoating place in Rockaway yesterday. They will get sandbalsted and powdercoated in a "like chrome" coating for $120.
So,
I broke the exhaust system down into thirds, so I knew how I was going to handle each segment.
1st third: Headers only (ebay stainless steel kit)
2nd third: header collectors, cutouts, and 3"-4" merge pipe (to be determined)
3rd third: main pipe, over axle pipe, muffler, and tailpipe (mufflex 4" system with magnaflow muffler)
My headers arrived in the mail on Thursday. the box was beat up, but fortunately all of the pipes inside the box were in good shape. I bought this $212 ebay kit knowing full well that I would not be using the 2.5" collector pipes or the 2.5"into3" merge Ypipe. After discussion with the guys at Thirdgen.Org, I determined it would be perfectly ok to cut-off the necked-down 2.5" diameter section of the header collector and leave it at 3" diameter. The flanges are not warped at all and are thick, The welding on the inside of the primary pipes is pretty decent too surprisingly. There is 1 bung/port for an oxygen sensor, but I had planned on welding in my own instead so this port will stay capped closed.
Yesterday, despite the morning snow storm, I drove down to Mufflex in Trenton, and purchased their single 4" system for $702 out the door. I decided ont he straight through design of the magnaflow muffler, taking into account everything you guys said in these past two thread pages. I'm sure some of you had the same reaction to seeing a 4" diameter exhaust, and man this pipe diameter is big! It is an aluminized system, with the stainless steel magnaflow muffler. It came with a bunch of band-clamps, hangers, and hardware. I spent a good amount of time chatting with Denny at mufflex and he gave me a heads up that this exhaust might cause my AFR to lean out a bit; so I should beware that I might have to add some fuel into my fuel tables. Good to know! Any of you guys have similar experience with a free flowing exhaust making the afr lean out a little bit?
Got everything unpacked this morning and laid it out in the driveway, putting my old exhaust system next to it. I measured the lengths of the primary header pipes on both the new ebay headers as well as the old DynoDon's headers. I started drawing out what my middle section might be comprised of, based on our discussions above and some photos that others have posted on previous threads on TGO. I knew that it really would be better for my visualization if I bolted stuff on the car, so after lunch I started bolting stuff on (see next post).
Below are just a few photos showing the similarities/differences of the dynodons vs the ebay headers.
.