The Dark Wob

Got a new exhaust bent up. All 3 pieces (requested in bits for ease of adjustment and assembly) there in comparison to the old exhaust. Old 1 3/4", new 2 1/4".
Quality tube. I was expecting thin stuff. Tube, 3 clamps and it all bent and flared to custom specification $55
All fitted up in place. Went in well.

[youtube][/youtube]

Bit echoey in the garage but sounds right.

Phil

What a great car and great work.

It still amazes me how easily you can get bits of materials and parts over there! That exhaust looks very thick wall, I doubt you could have bought one section of a pattern one for what they cost!

Echoes my thoughts too....And the make-up cost seems very reasonable by our standards. Bloke in our local car club has a 66 Mustang and gets far better quality parts sent over at prices comparable to what I pay for crap Morris Minor monkey metal parts.

This was something I happened on by chance. I decided to go to the little Napa store that's not too far from the house here to see if they had preformed lengths of pipe, something I could butcher to make fit, and the guy said back in the day they kept stuff in but modern car exhausts tend to last so they no longer bother holding stock.
However, he said that the store about 25 miles up the road stock tube and have a bending machine.
So, I gave them a call and they said to bring the old exhaust up as a pattern if I had it and they'd see what they could do.
All very helpful, left it with them because it was close to closing, discussed where I did and did not have clearance and where it needed to be accurate.
Guy said that they keep the tube and machine in because they get people with fan boats and trucks and hotrods wanting exhausts made up to custom spec enough to warrant it. He said a guy came in with a form made from baling wire and he made an exhaust to that shape, so working from the original he said was easy.
They normally keep 8' lengths of tube in and charge per length. In this case he had a couple of offcuts because he said he would probably have to use a couple lengths of tube and cut them down because of the way they had to grab in the machine to bend; they charged me a single length because he did it with under 8' of offcut even though it was more than that before it was trimmed down.
I was surprised at the thickness of the tube. He said they don't keep the thin stuff in because once bent it has a tendency to split and crack if taken through a tight radius.
I had taken the car outside and run it up and down the road a couple times but it started to rain and it was getting late so I packed it in before shooting any more film- once warmed up it sounds just like I had wanted it to. It's somewhere between Morris Minor and Willys Jeep. It gets a real nice gentle thrum when it comes on cam. If it doesn't rain (it's forecast to) I'll get it warm and make a short movie outside so you can hear.
As for parts quality, there's a lot of really cheap toot available here, but there's enough of an interest in some things that people get really particular about them- Mustang parts are a good example where the hobby is large enough for that single model that the demand for well made bits is big enough and the willingness to pay a little extra to be guaranteed you're not buying crap is there. As for raw material yes. People still fabricate stuff here by themselves, or have a local shop do it. This is an area of makers- predominantly welders for the shipyards so the places that stock the metal have learned not to carry recycled Chinesium because they'll get it thrown in their face.
It also goes very much by word of mouth here too. I'm well known around here in general (first, I speak funny, second I try to stop in and be personable and that goes a long way around these parts, third I am on the TV around here quite a lot in commercials for work). So, people I talk to have begun to recommend the people they trust and who trust them. That helps a lot. When I first moved here finding anything was difficult because I didn't really know anybody.

It's all good. Either way I'm happy to have checked that one off the list.

Phil

Aye, it's nice to be nice.....Look forward to the next instalment video!

A clamp and a nice chrome end for it.

[youtube][/youtube]

Phil

That sounds how I think it should now, nice.

What funny is if I fit a quiet muffler I could make that car almost silent.

Who'd want that with the sound a straight 8 on offer?