Welcome back to Chuck's Garage and our LS engine swap on a budget, last time Chuck installed
the accessory drive system and today for part 5, we tackle the exhaust system.
Hi welcome back to Chuck's Garage, you know, it's been a long time since the last time
I saw ya, but we've been busy, it's been a busy summer for us, we've been going to car
shows and working on other projects here, plus we've also been sizing out all the stuff
that we need to complete our LS engine swap and move it forward here.
Now what we're going to be working on here today is the exhaust system, since we're using
the Hooker motor mounts there, rather than using the Hooker headers, we've decided to
use the cast iron manifolds here, now these are a pretty new design, but I want you to
check these out.
We're not going to be making a ton of horse power here, so the cast iron manifolds are
going to be perfectly adequate for what we're trying to do.
And you can see their pretty free flowing design, their made out of heavy cast iron,
and what I really like about them is their going to package nicely inside the confines
of the chassis, they're going to give us the flow that we need and their going to look
good for a long time to come.
Now what I had to do to make these work was I had a set of head pipes made up at the local
muffler shop here, it's just about an 18 inch piece of pipe here, with a 60 degree bend,
that gets the pipes tucked underneath the chassis and the cross member there like we
need and what I'm going to do right now is kind of dumb them up into place so we can
get these bolted to the engine, then we'll work on the rest of the exhaust, but before
we do that, I want to tell you something about these gaskets here.
Now these are GM gaskets, you got to use them between the head pipe and the manifold there,
now these are an expensive, one time only use gasket, so we're going to hold off on
bolting these up until we get the whole exhaust system in place and then we can put everything
all together and we can use them, I don't like buying these things, they're pretty expensive
and a one time shot like that, well I think I can spend my money in other places better.
Let's bolt these up and see what happens.
These cast iron manifolds are going to bolt right up to these heads, they take the old
bolts that we used off of the old manifold so they're the perfect length, but as you
can see, we've got plenty of clearance here, they tuck in real nice, it'll give us plenty
of clearance to run our starter, and this head pipe that we had the muffler shop bend,
shoots it right back through the cross member area just like we need it.
Now what we did with these head pipes is we've gone ahead and welded them all the way around
to this head pipe flange that's included with the manifolds, and then, that little gasket
I showed you earlier, this one comes from a 5th generation Camaro, so you'll know what
to order, but you can see it just sits right there, it goes right in that receiver group,
and when it smashes down, this is a one time use only, but it's gonna give us the seal
that we need.
Alright, now once you get the manifold bolted up, don't forget to reinstall your dipstick.
Once we get this bolted up, we'll go take a look at our X-pipe set up that we're going
to be using from Flowtech.
Well alright now, this is the Flowtech X-pipe set up that we're going to be using, now as
you can see they come with several bent pipes, they're all mandrill bent so you don't squeeze
them down, good flow characteristics that way, and of course this the little X-pipe
that's going to make it all work.
Now the first step that we've got to do is, we're going to have to make these 45's up,
with our head pipes there and get them into this X-pipe situation, so we'll go ahead and
start marking pipes so we can cut them.
Now the first thing that we want to do is establish the location of our X-pipe connector
here, and we're going to position it right here where the end of the drive shaft is going
to go into the transmission.
Now what that's going to do is give the drive shaft plenty of room to articulate as the
rear end moves up and down and we won't get into any interference there.
Now once we've got that established, that looks pretty good right there, we're gonna
take one of the extensions, and we're going to mark it, it slips into there into that
end, and we'll mark it up on this end where to cut it, and then once we get this thing
cut right here, I will take an expansion tube and we'll expand that out so it will slip
right over this head pipe here and I think we'll be in pretty good shape, we'll do the
same thing on this side here and then we're ready to start making some cuts.
Now we're going to use a chop saw, it's going to make a nice, clean, quick cut and we'll
get this project underway.
Now what we're going to do is get rid of all these ugly rough and dangerous edges here,
these will cut you quick.
Then we can go ahead and expand it, and slip it onto our head pipe.
Now we just insert the tool like that, snug it up, and we just start opening it up with
this ratchet.
There we go, looks good.
Well this is what our completed X-pipe set up looks like, now basically what we've done
is we've gone ahead and made all of our cuts, we expanded the ends where we needed to, and
we've welded everything together, this is the muffler end, this is the head pipe end.
Now hopefully everything is stayed in place, and it will fit like it should.
Oh yeah, now that looks good, the X-pipe is right where we wanted it to be, the mufflers
will go on here next and speaking of that, let me show you what we're going to be using
for mufflers.
Now before I show you these mufflers I want to mention one quick thing here, now I've
got the luxury of a welder here, now you guys may not all have a welder at your disposal
there, so Flowtech has gone ahead and they include all the claps and gasket flange plates
and everything that you need to clamp this whole system together, but since we've got
the welder, that's what we're going to do, we'll repurpose these down the road.
Alright, now we're staying with Flowtech for our mufflers too, and we're using their afterburner
mufflers, now basically what this is, is a turbo style muffler with a fully welded aluminized
case, plus they've been painted for extra corrosion resistance, now unlike some of the
other mufflers that have the baffles inside of them to quiet the sound, what these use
is actually a perforated tube and packing to give us that real good muscular sound.
Now they're a double double off set just like any Chevelle muffler, I'm ready to slip them
in place.
Well with one of them in place all we have to do is slip this other one on here like
that, that's looking really good.
Now we're about ready for the tail pipes, wait till you see what I've got planned for
that.
Now, what I've done here is, I've had an old set of tail pipes that I had on another Chevelle
here and I've gone ahead and added this extra piece of pipe that came with the Flowtech
kit, now what that's going to do is it's going to extend this tail pipe, into the end of
the muffler there.
I wasn't real sure what I was going to do with these tail pipes when I cut them off
the old car so I did cut them a little bit short, but like I said nothing that this extension
won't take care of, and the hangers are already in place, we're about ready to bolt this thing
up.
Now what we're going to use here is a hanger, pretty much in the stock original location,
it mounts up here to the frame like that, and I like to use these serrated nuts on here,
get that thing started, we'll tighten things up a little bit here, and we'll do the same
thing on the other side.
Now we'll just snug everything up real good.
Do the same on the other side there, and then we'll go back to work on the tail pipe hangers.
Alright, well that pretty much cinches everything down, we got the exhaust system hung real
well, the next thing we've got to do is get that thing up on my lift over there and I'll
weld the whole system up complete, but in the meantime, I'll tell you what so we don't
loose our setting our anything while we're moving this thing around over to the lift,
I'm going to use some of those clamps I showed you earlier just to kind of snug things down,
keep things from moving around.
Alright, now that cinches down the exhaust system, I used a little torpedo to make sure
that we're level front to back and even side to side, and these clamps are going to hold
everything in place until we can get it over on the rack and get everything welded up,
so that takes care of the exhaust system for today, but you'll want to be sure to join
us again in a week or 2, then we're going to talk about the cooling system, now I've
got a lot of great hardware that's gonna keep that LS engine cool along with the transmission,
and even the power steering.
So come back and see me in a couple of weeks.