Top Fender Exit Exhaust? (Not Downpipes)

[johnny.3sgte]

Damn you grenaded the clutch with a stock motor. Wth were you doing?

I accidentally went from 2nd to 1st Gear twice, but I caught them both barely clutching in when the Speed surge happened.

Did another 40 roll against an SS 1LE, got locked out of 3rd — finally got into 3rd gear (still clutched in, it didn’t feel right), so I let the RPMs drop around 3k and put it in 4th and went in without a problem, then BOOOM! Lost my clutch.

Very Very poor driving on my part. :headbonk:

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[johnny.3sgte]

Update, 04/02/2018

Didn’t bring lunch, so I thought I’d slap in the JLT intake during lunch. Turned out nice, I’m happy with it.

Here’s some photos of the BBK headers installed, couldn’t really get any good angles and the collectors end where the stock manifold would end. So it looks stock, minus the wrap. You can see the wrapped headers from the engine bay too, which is cool. But you’d have to really look, otherwise you wouldn’t even notice it.

Passenger side:

Driver side:

 

[ahl395]

Cool project, subb'ed for updates!

 

[Bahndvr]

And the mid pipes bolt right up?

 

[johnny.3sgte]

And the mid pipes bolt right up?

There won’t be a midpip, the exhaust piping will just make a u-bend from each of the collectors up towards the k-member to feed through the fenders.

But if you were to reuse your OEM or any exhaust system, you’d have to cut your driver side catalytic convert off and weld it to a flange to be able to reuse your catalytic converters in order to use a mid-pipe. Cause the driver side catalytic converters and manfiold are all on piece, the passenger side catalytic converter is bolted on to the manifold collector flange.

 

[Bahndvr]

There won’t be a midpip, the exhaust piping will just make a u-bend from each of the collectors up towards the k-member to feed through the fenders.

But if you were to reuse your OEM or any exhaust system, you’d have to cut your driver side catalytic convert off and weld it to a flange to be able to reuse your catalytic converters in order to use a mid-pipe. Cause the driver side catalytic converters and manfiold are all on piece, the passenger side catalytic converter is bolted on to the manifold collector flange.

Oh thought you were keeping the kitty cats.

 

[johnny.3sgte]

Oh thought you were keeping the kitty cats.

No sir! Spoke to John from Lund last night, and he said the tune should pass emissions where I’m at in a Texas without cats. So we’ll see this year when I got in for an inspection.

 

[johnny.3sgte]

Update (04/06/2018)

Clutch assembly got here yesterday, installed it all after work. Got the transmission stabbed and torqued along with the driveshaft as well.

Replaced the pilot bearing along with the hydraulic throw out bearing from McLeod — their clutch line was about 1/4” short and didn’t sit in the plastic housing on the transmission where the clutch line connects to from outside the transmission. So I had to reuse the OEM line off the OEM throw out bearing.

But overall, the McLeod RST is a work of art. The alignment tool that came with the clutch didn’t sit in the pilot bearing all that great. It did come with 3 new dowel puns to guide the floater plate into place as well.

INSTALL TIP: if you have an MGW shifter and don’t want to remove the assembly, remove the four 4mm allen keys and pull the threaded shaft that the shift knob thread onto off. Otherwise it’ll keep hitting the shifter hole when trying to stab the transmission in. Then angle the transmission with the bell housing side tilted up.

The plan today is to bleed the clutch, upload the tune, and pull the car out of my shop and park in the hot rod shop’s lot. That way we can work on the exhaust fabrication tomorrow in their shop and Sunday. The car is on open headers right now, I’ll try to get a video of it idling, it’ll also give me an idea of how loud the exhaust system is going to be.

Here are some photos of of my blown friction plate and assembly lol

 

[johnny.3sgte]

Update (04/07/2018): Shit's going DOWN!

We got the passenger side done, we started around 12:30pm and ended at around 8:30ish — that’s us bullshitting around the shop and a Domino’s Pizza break. We’ll be finishing up the driver side tomorrow morning. We ordered some thick gauged aluminum to make the finish panel with, but it wont be at the shop till next week. The plan is to make a finish panel with a flare dye hole for the exhaust pipe conturing the body line and curvature and have them riveted in with aircraft rivets. We'll also be making custom aluminum hood air vents as well with flare dye holes, so stay tuned and look for another post about that.

I’ll be posting a photo and then explain what’s going on. I’ll try my best to keep it in order, some photos were taken after and not during the process.

Here's a video with the car on a cold start with the open BBK Shorty headers, not as loud as I thought it’d be — it’s actually REALLY tolerable when warmed up at idle.



Pre-Fabrication

We laid out everything I purchased and compiled together to fabricate this exhaust, nothing too fancy.

• Speedway 2 1/4” mandrel bent steel piping kit
• Vibrant 2 3/4” 2 bolt flanges
• Vibrant o2 sensor bungs
• Vibrant 4” flex pipe
• Amazon V-Bands
• 2 1/2” to 2 1/4” reducer pipes
• Custom SpinTech bullet resonators

We had to notch 2 frame pinch welds for the piping to sit as close as possible to the body while still giving us room for the fender liner to sit and give us a little more clearance. It’s about a fingers width. Because we know if we can clear the fender liners, we can clear the tires at full turn.

Part 1: We expanded the 2 1/2” side of the reducer to sit inside the 2 3/4” flange — the vibrant flange bolt holes didn’t line up very well with the BBK flange. So we had to oval out the holes on the BBK flange for a 3/8ths bolt to go through. From there, we took a u-bend to make the bend up over and through the k-member, then a 45* cut to connect the flex pipe.

Part 2: Once part 1 was tacked together and in place, the next step was to get into the fender. We decided to put a v-band at the end of the flex pipe for quick and easy assembly for servicing or whatever. Once the v-band was tacked, we used a 90* bend and shortened it a little to for the muffler to live within the fender. We also added an “exhaust hanger” bracket to make the pipe that lives within the fender and the pipe that’s horizontal with the ground stationary. It’s pretty fucking stout, we shook it after everything was welded and it shook the whole car on the rack. Giving the flex pipe to the header the only place where flex is allowed.

Part 3: Drilling a hole into the fender, it’s easier to guide the pipe into a direct hole rather than a general idea of where you wanna be. So we drilled a pilot hole, then followed with a 2 1/4” hole saw. From there, we used a 45* angled pipe to be the pipe for the fender exit pipe. To connect the exit pipe with the resonator, we cut two 45* in an “S,” because it’s easier to tack at the lower end rather than at the very top of the fender. I didn't get any good photos of the piping itself, but you'll be able to see it in the video at the end. But nothing like drilling a hole into a brand new Mustang lol

Here’s a video of it fully fabricated, it looks ugly right with all the grinding and welding.



That’s about as far as we got today on the passenger side, all we have left is:

• weld the o2 bung
• trim the pipe that protrudes from the fender to where it’ll only protrude 1/4” or 1/2” (undecided)
• clean and ceramic coat it with VHT header paint
• wrap the exhaust

SUPER pumped to finish the rest tomorrow and see what the final start up will sound like

 

[F1scamp]

You should put a flamethrower kit in.

 

[johnny.3sgte]

Update (04/09/2018)

That’s a wrap! Sort of, we’re waiting on 16gauge aluminum to make the finish plates for the fenders. We’re gonna flare dye it with a 2.5” flare dye hole to sit around the exhaust exit pipe.

But everything was like the passenger side that you saw in the post above, same process. Only thing that had to be done was to DEI gold reflect-a-tape the fuel and brake lines on the driver side fender well. We also found some scrap aluminum heat shield, so I formed it to sit with the curvature of the lines and between the flex pipe and lines.

Once all the fabrication was one, I pulled off both exhaust pipings and painted them with VHT grey header paint and wrapped them in DEI’s titanium wrap. I masked the flex pipe, v-bands, and the Spintech muffler off before painting them.

Look at that symmetry!

Trying to fit the plastic fender liners was a dome scratcher, we had to place it up and trim accordingly to the pipe. But I think it turned out great, you can see the piping from the fender well lol which is badass. With the car on the ground and turning the steering wheel at full lock, I still have 1/2” of clearance between the piping and tires.

Hope you guys enjoyed the photos, my buddy is gonna edit and send me the video of how everything was fabricated along with how it sounds.

 

[Grimace427]

This is wild.

 

[ahl395]

Damn! That is some serious shit. Awesome work, cant wait to hear a video of it.

 

[GTBOB]

I really, really want this to work for you:cheers:. But you are going to kill yourself:doh: with the a/c on. Fresh air gets drawn in right there at the bottom of the windshield cowl. The exhaust fumes is going to roll in, especially without cats. So right before you lose consciousness, you are going "roll" the windows down, and draw-in even more fumes.

 

[FrancoP]

Hope this isn't a daily driver between the fumes and exhaust soot that will cover the side of you car.

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