Not another 5G undertail exhaust.

[tok tokkie]

I have made a low level exhaust for my 5th gen. I will describe it backwards; first the end result, secondly how I did it & finally why I did it this way & what alternatives I considered. You can bail out as soon as you lose interest.

THE END RESULT

RH 1.jpg

Before

Done RH 3.jpg

Done RHR quarter 1.jpg

done LH 1.jpg

Done behind.jpg

.

I have taken the center stand off & cut the headers just before the catastrophic converter.

I have made a two chamber muffler out of 1.6mm stainless steel with separate right & left low level exit pipes which fits where the cat-con used to be.

I wanted my bike to sound like two-small-bore-Ducatis- running-in-tandem and I wanted to expose as much of the rear wheel on the right side as possible.

original & new 1.jpg

new from below 2.jpg

new from below behind 1.jpg

.

new from RHR quarter 3.jpg

[tok tokkie]

WHAT IS IT LIKE?

Wonderful!

It is noisier than I wanted. At idle it sounds perfect: no even regular boring purr of a ?stinky I4? (BLS expression, acknowledged) but all lopey, irregular and impatient ? just what I wanted. Give it some gas and it sounds like a box full of angry hornets ? there is a real prospect of carnage if it gets loose ? wonderful; yoohoo, here we go. Below 5000 rpm it is still somewhat civilized but above that it?s a barbarian. So I can ride in my dignified neighbourhood at small throttle openings & short shifting & not disturb the peace; can burble around town below 5000 rpm & not annoy everyone but get out of town & blast about so every motorcyclist in the vicinity will immediately stop what he is doing & try to find out what the fuc? is that?

I would like it to be a little quieter. But the sound quality is perfection, just the volume is a tad high.

I am delighted with the looks. To me there are 2 defining things about a VFR: SSA & V4. This exposes the rear wheel to the maximum & the sound certainly is distinctive ? just that a wild V4 on the loose is not usually heard. Swiffer coined a nice compound word: audio-cosmetic; this is just that ? I was not looking for performance, just sound & appearance.

Must be breathing easier as the idle speed has gone up from 1200 to 1500 with no other changes made & my seat-of-the-pants dyno says it has significantly more get-up-and-go. (I am running the stock Honda air filter.)

[tok tokkie]

Ah this is the piece that causes the bomb-out so I will split it up more until I find the error.

HOW I DID IT

I got a spare set of headers posted to me by Trace.

I was going to make the muffler out of 0.9mm stainless cold bent to shape. Fortunately I read the thread on de-gutting a 6th gen exhaust where I saw that those mufflers have quite a thick wall.

6th gen de-gut thread

Magellan & Lobster answered my query about the wall thickness so I changed to 1.6mm stainless.

Now I needed to heat the stainless with oxy/propane to bend it. I had made a bending jig of a piece of 40x40 square bar & 41mm heavy wall pipe bolted together with 2 @16mm bolts.

I have CAD/CAM & a cnc machining center so I modeled the muffler & cut the stainless to shape on the cnc machine. I scribed the bend start & finish on the inside of the blank, clamped it in the bending jig, heated it up & hammered it round the jig. Not a success. Gives a very beaten up looking bend. So made a paddle with a sharp edge & welded on 2 extensions to the jig so that I could lever the steel round the jig with the paddle. Tried again ? worked really well. Get very good conformation of the steel to the jig.

first bend & jig 2.jpg

The first bend has been made. The separating wall between the two chambers was welded in first. Note the port through the wall ? it gives a bit of cross-talk to complicate the sound. The black mark is soot from lighting the torch (looks like a hole)

bending jig & paddle.jpg

This is Ridwaan who did all the welding. Photo is not very clear. There are two pieces of square steel welded on sticking out forwards. The paddle is used to lever the stainless around the pipe section of the bending jig.

Originally I had allowed for a bit of spring in the material when I was planning on cold forming the thinner material. Now the bends have no spring in them so you will notice that the top surface of the muffler is not parallel to the bottom because the blank was cut too long (it allowed for spring at the bends which is not there with hot bending).

The divider between left & right does not run down the center line because the headers are slightly offset & the muffler is not centered either. I did not want to bend the headers.

The muffler is bolted to the old center stand lugs. I had two goes at this. Initially I welded the flanges directly onto the headers (which had been elegantly cut by Trace just before the cat-con) but that presented problems with fitting the nuts and there is a lug under the engine that the cat-con was mounted to that sticks down lower than the center stand lugs. So I moved the muffler back behind the cat-con lug which allowed it to fit up higher from the ground. I also cut the headers shorter and fitted short stub tubes between the headers & the flange at the muffler. This way I was able to firstly weld on the lugs for mounting the muffler onto the center stand lugs (now free because the center stand has been ditched).

original & new 4.jpg

Note the little stub tubes between the headers & muffler

[tok tokkie]

With the muffler now bolted to the bike I was able to tack the stub tubes to the headers & also to the flanges bolted in place on the muffler. Big advantage as everything was aligned before final welding and there is no need to force things into place when fitting it all together ? custom made in situ. Had to trim the stub tubes off level with the flange when all was done (had cut them long so they were sticking inside the muffler when we tacked it all together.

welding in the sky 3.jpg

I removed the ECU & R/R completely from the bike & disconnected the battery before welding & always had the earth close to the weld.

The headers start as 32mm od pipe but change to 34mm od about half way. After the 2:1 join just before the cat-con they are 40mm od. I have used 38mm od stainless pipe because I can get short radius elbows for it; next size up is 50.8 which I felt was too big & there is a space limitation in front of the back wheel so the tighter smaller bend is a help there. 44.5mm pipe is available here but no bends.

I hoped the bike will sound like two v-twins running together. The headers are joined correctly for this; two left cylinders join up before the cat-con as do the two right cylinders which is what I wanted.

Because I wanted the bike to sound like a pair of twins running together I have made a small port linking the two chambers in the muffler to allow some of the sound from the opposite bank to get across to the other side; I was worried that the outlets face away from the bike so separate the two sound paths a lot. I reasoned that it would be easy to close the port if I was unhappy with the result ? in fact I am delighted ? you can hear there is more than just a potato -potato Hardly here; a much more complicated sound.

There used to be a Ducati in my neighbourhood which thudded past with a nice mellow tone. There are several Harleys with open exhausts which I detest. I have made the muffler without baffles but with tubes inside (there is a separating wall down the middle). These tubes are flanged from the outside so I can fit different lengths and also perforate them if needs be.

muffler & innards 2.jpg

For a start I made the ones in the photos. The muffler is 190mm long so I made the tubes 100 long so the inlets and outlets were just longer than half the muffler length. This means that the exhaust gasses have to double back to get out of the box. When I tried these the noise was too much. Magellan had shown in his write up of his 5th gen under tail exhaust that stainless pot scourers stuffed into the muffler helped reduce the noise so I bought some & rammed them in.

Here is one of my posting problems. I had a link to Magellans photo of a pack of pot scourers which causes this thing to bomb-out when I try to post.

Magellan's scourers. They are much fuller than mine. I had to ram in 12 per side to fill the space.

That helped as it lowered both the frequency & amplitude of the sound but I still wanted it quieter. I tried the perforated tubes on the outlets but that was marginally noisier than the plain tubes. I then made 150mm long tubes for both the inlet & outlet and rammed in as many pot scourers as I could. That is how I am now running the bike.

I made a pocket for the suspension linkage on the upper surface. It is 20mm deep but need only be 6mm for the way I have the bike set-up. I am a skinny rat & run the shock on the second softest pre-load setting.

I have made a one man paddock stand for oiling the chain & cleaning the oil off the wheel. (BLS, how are you doing with the belt conversion- still no reply from Gates?)

Edited December 26, 2009 by HispanicSlammer

[tok tokkie]

SPECIFICATIONS

Muffler : Length 190

Width 220

Thickness 75

1.6mm stainless steel

Pipes: 38mm diameter, 1.2mm wall stainless

Flanges: 3mm stainless

Bolts & Nuts: M6 stainless

Weights: Original headers, cat & O2 sensors 5.3kg

Original muffler 5.2kg

Center stand 1.5kg

New headers, muffler & outlets 5.5kg (that was with 100mm stub pipes inside & no pot scourers)

[tok tokkie]

MY QUESTIONS

How could I make this thing quieter? Staintune have a ?spud? that fits in the end of their pipe. Can I fit something like that here? What does it look like & how does it work?

How about two more walls in the muffler to separate the inlet & outlet sections of each side?

I have had a look at How Stuff Works

Linky

Would it help to make something more like that?

Should I make two small straight-through mufflers with perforated pipes & fiberglass (I would suspect they need plenty of volume to be effective)?

How noisy is your under tail exhaust Magellan? Can you blast about your neighbourhood or do you have to use a delicate hand on the throttle & short shift?

[tok tokkie]

WHAT ALTERNATIVES I CONSIDERED

I have admired what Eric Buell has done. He may use a peculiar engine but he works from first principles to are at an optimum solution utelising modern materials. I have particularly liked his low level exhaust and belt drive.

I saw this photo of a racing VFR done by BLS:

That image also causes this to bomb out when posting. I obviosly don't know how to use the IMG posting button. I BLS's gallery there is a photo I wanted to post here.

There is no chain fitted and I assume the up pipe to the muffler is missing but I really liked the look with nothing behind the footpeg on the right side: display as much of the rear wheel without a swing arm as possible.

My original thought was to run two mufflers each side under the sump exiting at the front. That would have meant cutting the bottom of the fairing off ? I was prepared for that. I made a plywood template of the fairing so I could measure the space available. There really was very little space. At that stage my thoughts were of a muffler with perforated pipe & fibreglass packing ? the usual straight through exhaust design. I was worried that this would be very noisy because the muffler would be triangular 50x113 on the shorter sides with a 38mm pipe inside there would be very little fibre-glass.

I then thought about adding a chamber where the cat-con is so that the gasses expand into it & change direction before getting into the muffler section. Not too difficult as it would simply be cutting the headers apart & re-arranging the components before tiging them together again.

It was when I came to look into this idea properly that I saw that there would be quite a lot of space if I removed the center stand. I then removed the headers, hoisted the bike up in the air & measured things. I made a rough mock-up of the muffler out of particle board and checked things out. (To get the center stand off you have to remove the headers ? RH bolt can?t be taken out as it jacks up against the rear cylinder headers). It all seemed to fall into place when I did this. I modeled the thing in my CAD/CAM while I was about it ? lots of back & forth measuring things to get the model right. Working upside down means that what is measured on the right is plotted on the left so it is easy to make mistakes.

There are numerous advantages to this lay-out over the previous idea. The oil drain is not covered so oil changes can be done without removing the muffler. The muffler is behind the gearbox so there is no radiant heat onto the underside of the sump. It will be easy to change the internals of the muffler to experiment to get the sound I am hoping for. The exits will be further away from my head so I will not hear the drone of the exhaust so much. Finally I think it will look better especially if the pipes can exit at an angle so I can slash cut them to give an oval exit.

I had also thought about joining the front headers in front of the engine with a muffler down the right side exiting near the RH footpeg and joining the rear cylinders to a muffler running under the LH side of the engine exiting toward the front (Bimota had an under engine exhaust like that). This allows for larger mufflers as there are no headers running under the engine. Trouble is the front headers are much shorter than the rear ones so fueling will be different front to rear. Also it would now be a pair of 180 degree parallel twins to each muffler ? not the sound I was looking for.

[Veefer800Canuck]

MY QUESTIONS

How could I make this thing quieter?

Tok, I've got an idea.

border='0' alt='user posted image' />

tokkie exhaust 3.jpg

In the above photo, modify the perforated inlet pipes which are circled in red.

Weld a solid blank plate over the end of each perforated tube so that the exhaust is forced to exit through the holes in the sides and cannot go straight out the end.

That should make it quieter without stuffing steel wool into the muffler chamber.

If that doesn't quiet it enough for you, do the exact same with the 2 outlet tubes. Remove the solid outlet tubes, drill them like the perfed ones and blank off the ends.

Restriction should not be an issue as the overall surface area of all the drilled holes in one given tube should far exceed the cross-sectional area of the 38mm pipe itself.

Of course, you could easily calculate that given the area of one drilled hole x (the number of holes) as compared to 1133 sq. mm of one 38mm dia. pipe.

And for communication between the two chambers, I would probably have made 2 separate holes, each as big as one of the pipes, again 38mm. But that's just me trying to be all symmetrical and junk.

[tok tokkie]

incredible work.  have you looked at a flowmaster muffler internal?  they use angled baffles to dampen sound without any internal packing material.  some actually claim they flow better than a open pipe?  don't know the truth of that but ive owned several and the exhaust note is awesome

flowmaster

border='0' alt='user posted image' />

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Many thanks for the idea. I have looked around the site. The sound clips are great & just what i would like to replicate. Trouble is i can't find any diagrams of the internal layout of the mufflers. 'Picture' appears on screen but it never resolves into anything more. I would very much like to see what is inside their mufflers.

[tok tokkie]

Tok, I've got an idea.

border='0' alt='user posted image' />

tokkie exhaust 3.jpg

In the above photo, modify the perforated inlet pipes which are circled in red.

Weld a solid blank plate over the end of each perforated tube so that the exhaust is forced to exit through the holes in the sides and cannot go straight out the end.

That should make it quieter without stuffing steel wool into the muffler chamber.

If that doesn't quiet it enough for you, do the exact same with the 2 outlet tubes. Remove the solid outlet tubes, drill them like the perfed ones and blank off the ends.

Restriction should not be an issue as the overall surface area of all the drilled holes in one given tube should far exceed the cross-sectional area of the 38mm pipe itself.

Of course, you could easily calculate that given the area of one drilled hole x (the number of holes) as compared to 1133 sq. mm of one 38mm dia. pipe. 

And for communication between the two chambers, I would probably have made 2 separate holes, each as big as one of the pipes, again 38mm. But that's just me trying to be all symmetrical and junk.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks Rob, that is a great idea. I will try this idea & see what happens.

[tok tokkie]

Edit:

I agree, and can I make a suggestion - it would look fantastic if you were to extend the bellypan (either using ABS stock and Plastex, or just making an extension from aluminium and painting it red) so it was long like on the NR (and the CBR1000RR), and have the slashcut pipes coming out through a hole in each side...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You are right on it there. One of the other bikes that inspired me was the KTM RC8

Look Here

As for production: Ridwaan is fired up to make these things but lets get it sorted out first.

[HispanicSlammer]

Too Loud?

You might try that suggestion Rob gave you about welding on a cap on the end of the drilled pipes. Thats basically how a spark arrester is on a dirt bike, and it is much quieter than a strait pipe without losing too much flow, you will get a bit more back pressure but no more than the oem for sure. Or perhaps a small hole on the end, of course a dirt bike wraps with stainless steel screen. Nice fabrication there, I moved it to feature on the homepage tec.

This is sort of how the industry is going with exausts now anyway, starting with buell those belly pan mufflers are getting popular, lowers COG and is generally more effiecient, more cost effective. Looks like it don't stick out any more than the collector pipes do should not be a dragging issue there. I thought you modified a car muffler at first but then I read you fabricated it from scratch.

[VFRquig]

  Or perhaps a small hole on the end

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

HS is going the right direction with this, I believe. Going back to my Hardley days, the baffles were removed completely and replaced with a 1/4" bolt to provide sufficient backpressure- they still ran like crap, but boy were they load!!! :goofy:

Ok, I digress, if you completely block off the end, you will have too much back- pressure and the bike will not run correctly. If you drill a whole in the end, you may improve this, but you may also induce a whistling noise that is annoying at best. What I have seen done that appears to work well is to crimp the leading edge of the baffle. This splits the exhaust airflow, some will go through the baffle end, some is redirected to the outside surface where it will enter the perforated section of the baffle.

To do this, heat the baffle with the torch and bend the leading edge in to form more of a cone shape. Its kind of hard to explain without a pic, so think about it like this. Imagine what would happen if you squeezed the end of the baffle equally around its circumfrence (provided you were strong enough). It would taper down to a cone, which is what you want.

Oh, I forgot the most important thing- AWESOME MOD!!! :beer:

[tok tokkie]

OK. I did Veefer800Canuck's mod.

Stub tubes are 150 long. Firstly I cut the inlet stubs down to 75 & welded on 75mm cut off the perforated stubs I had & blanked off the ends. Fitted these back on the inlet side & left all the pot scourers inside. Result: significantly quieter & deepr tone.

Then I drilled 5mm holes over the last 85mm of the outlet stubs & blanked off the ends. Fired her up: a bit louder than with just the inlet stubs perforated & blanked off.

So I am now running with the inlets perforated & blanked off, the outlets plain pipe with open end & pot scourers in there. This is better.

I will read & consider the end hole suggestion & the tapered end suggestion. I don't follow them after a quick read. I am pretty certain I will fabricate another muffler with 3 chambers each side along conventional lines except the stub tubes will still fot in from the outside so i can adjust them. But the bike is usable as it is & there are other things (non biking) that need to be done.

Any more advice or suggestions will be much appreciated.

[tok tokkie]

Tok,

If you get the decibels down to a mellow volume approximately that of a Staintune's, you'd better get ready to take orders. I may even play with variations on your design myself (just for me).

I won't copy it directly unless I just want to buy one of your T.T.S.S. (tok tokkie super sport) production units. I have too much respect for your work!

Out of curiosity, what would be a fair price for one of these with shipping from S.A.?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There is no patent or copyright on this thing. Anyone is free to make these things for themselves or others. The more the merrier as far as I am concerned.

Ridwaan, who did all the welding for me is a tennant in my building. He has just split from his wife & lives right on the premises. He has also just started as a one-man business doing high quality welding (aluminium cylinder heads etc) but is scratching for work. He is keen to make a batch of these. The problem is making the connection between the existing headers & the new muffler. This requires welding on site. That is going to be a big discouragement I feel as it is not a simple bolt-on (or slip-on) mod.

[tok tokkie]

I went for a decent ride in the mountains today. The dog-bone link just above the new muffler gets very hot. It is not a complete surprise. The cat-con has a heat shield which has a very small air-gap. I will make a heat shield that fits inside the depression on my muffler. That is partly why I made the depression so big. I also considered fitting the heat shield to the dog-bone itself.

I would be interestd in knowing if the linkage gets too hot to touch on the standard set-up as I never checked that out before doing this mod.

[Guest scooter996]

Tokkie that is fantastic bro :pissed: Shit wish i had the fab abilities you do. Something i loved about the new suzuki 750 was their shortie exhaust, and well youve done a great job on the 5th gen. Sound file forthcoming?  :beer:

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So others too agree with me

http://www.vfrdiscussion.com/forum/index.p...topic=17881&hl=

[tok tokkie]

That is awesome    Me thinks that you have a large customer base for that mod.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ok. I would be happy to have this thing spread around.

My intention is to make drawings for a muffler with 3 chambers each side similar to the one shown in the link I gave to 'HowStuffWorks' near the start of this thread (it will not have the resonator chamber). The other change is it will have 3@22mm tubes between the first & third chambers (not the ports shown in 'HowStuffWorks). Also, it is not necessary to angle the center dividing wall as the muffler can fit in slightly closer to the headers coming down from the rear cylinders. I will also fit a heat shield to protect the suspension dog-bone bearings (getting hot with current set-up).

With the removable inlet & outlet tubes I believe we will be able to tailor the noise volume as we choose by adding holes to these tubes in the first & third chambers (both tubes need to have holes in the second chamber if there is to be any gas transfer there). You can even cut the tubes out completely if you wish.

I will take the drawings to a couple of laser cutting places to get quotes for all the bits. Riedwaan wants about $80 for bending, welding & polishing. I will charge cost of materials + 10%. I had headers airmailed to me by Trace which cost $53 so I expect it will be similar to that. I will make up my one & check it out before assembling the rest (possibly leave out 1 or more of the 22 tubes). I will supply with 2 extra internal tubes with flanges so you can experiment with different sounds.

Please be aware that you will have to cut your headers just after the 2:1 join, fit in the stub tubes I will supply & weld the stubs to the headers & flange. You must remove the ECU & R/R from the bike before welding and disconnect both leads from the battery.

WarriorRacer#13 is wanting to offer an exchange program on headers to fit this muffler. That has not been finalised yet.

Magellan is, I think, also wanting to make similar mufflers so they may be available ex the US. I have absolutely no problems with anyone using this idea and offering to make similar mufflers. I see VFRD as a co-operative site where I have received lots of advice & help so I am pleased to be able to make a contribution in the same spirit. Anyone wanting a copy of the drawings (as a plot file) is welcome.

I would like some indication of how many are interested so I can get quotes for that number of components & come back with firmer pricing.

[tok tokkie]

border='0' alt='user posted image' />

Mark 2 with baffles.

..

border='0' alt='user posted image' />

Gas Flow Options

I have made the new design. I have ended up using gas flow path shown in lowest sketch & am entirely happy with it - not too noisy at all. I have also plugged the cross-talk port & prefer the more v-twin less stinky I4 sound.

Riedwaan, the welder, has taken a fabulously paying job on oil rigs in Nigeria & will be away for 30 days so I wont be making any more. (I just need to polish the one for VolatileVFR & it is done).

Drawings are available to anyone who wants them.

[tok tokkie]

about what size are the holes coming in and out of the bafles

as many have stated this is by far the switest exhaust iv seen for the vfr

what did it do along the lines of power

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Header pipes & 2 big ones inside each side of the can are 38 OD. Three little ones are 22OD.

If you mean the perforation holes in the pipes; 5mm

I really don't think there is much power difference but the idle speed went up from 1200 to 1500 initially.

[magellan]

What are your impressions after living with the system on your bike for a while now? Is the Db level comparable to an aftermarket slip-on (you have Mark II on the bike now, right?), or louder? Any clearance or fit issues? Are you content to be without a centerstand while far from home? And of course we'd love another pic or two...

[tok tokkie]

What are your impressions after living with the system on your bike for a while now? Is the Db level comparable to an aftermarket slip-on (you have Mark II on the bike now, right?), or louder? Any clearance or fit issues? Are you content to be without a centerstand while far from home? And of course we'd love another pic or two...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I am delighted with it as it now is- Mark 2. I have not heard the bike go by as only I have ridden it. Only clearance issue is left side outlet I have dragged a couple of times - I have a shorter outlet pipe which I will fit (muffler is offset to left) - remeber we also ride on the opposite side so this is when I am riding on the inside lane of a bend. I only go for day rides so centerstand is no issue - I have the paddock stand at home & chain block at work.

With all those baffles inside I would make the body of 1.2mm stainless instead of 1.6mm if I did it again (as long as your welding technique is up to it) as it would make it quite easy to cold bend the body around the walls & baffles tacking it in place in stages.

border='0' alt='user posted image' />

Mark 2 with baffles.

Picture of walls & baffles before starting to bend & tack body around them - but fit the big tubes into the holes before tacking the guts into place so it is all correctly lined up - no need to ask why I say this.

I wish Jet Hot was available here as the headers are crying out to be shiny silver to finish the job off.

[magellan]

Life has a weird way of changing one's expectations.

I don't weld stainless, so I called a friend of a friend yesterday to see when I might schedule an appt. He asked, "What are you doing this afternoon?"

So, much to my surprise, we spent all afternoon and evening welding up and polishing my Tok Tokkie Special . It's a beauty!

2006_0715_192406AA.JPG

2006_0715_192438AA.JPG

2006_0715_192346AA.JPG

This is Fred, the evil welding genius.

Now all I have to do is cut the cat off my spare headers, weld on the flanges that mount to the muffler, line everything up on the bike, tack it all into position, and do the final weld-up. I think I can do it all this week with only several hours of downtime.

[JoeAsheville]

Looks fantastic!

[magellan]

Well, if you've been desperately bored enough to follow the story of my difficult choice of headers ('98-99 larger diameter pipe vs. '00-06 smaller diameter pipe but perfect alignment of pipes for tok tokkie style muffler), I can finally say I've gone for the easier fit of the late-model cat-equipped headers. My catless exhaust may very well be sold this weekend (if I can bear to part with them).

As it stands, Fred has my muffler tonight and is slightly adjusting the position of the mounting brackets. Everything went smashingly until we realized that the inside of the rear headpipes was rubbing against the engine casting where it curves under to join the front head pipes. I also wanted to more precisely center the muffler with the bike's longitudinal centerline. Anyway, it should be done tomorrow (fingers crossed).

Interesting note: I cut the loop the cat bolts to off the bottom of my block (yes, it's on the '98s too. Mmmm...), seeing as how my bike didn't have one and won't be needing one. Removing this obstruction allowed the muffler to be mounted further forward than tok tokkie's (he left the loop in case he ever wanted to go back to the stock exhaust), so I didn't need stub tubes to be welded to the headers. I simply welded flanges to the carefully flattened end of the headers and voila, I'm ready to bolt on the muffler.

Weld like the wind, Fred!!

2000_0310_011620AA.JPG