been busy again today. the y-pipe that the previous owner WENT TO A SHOP TO HAVE built for this car way back in the day was a total JOKE. i knew that it could possibly be hurting my fuel economy and mileage, but i wasn't totally ready for what i found when i took the y-pipe off the car.

here it is, driver's side is a WHOPPING 1 7/8" in diameter:


here it is off the car:


look at the inside of this collector from the driver's side...think there could have been some turbulance?


here's my rendition of what a y-pipe SHOULD look like:


all mandrel bent 2.5" pipes and a flowmaster y-collector to a single 3"


here it is on the car, all nice and tucked up:


this did more than just improve the performance! wow! the sound is SO much throatier and the throttle response is totally different. i couldn't be happier.

 

The old one is not to far off of the factory version. That is why there is a lot of horsepower to be gained by simply doing something like what you did. Also that is why most posts say to do the exhaust as your first mod.

 

yeah, but when someone brings a car to a shop that already has a 350 crate motor in it with a set of hooker 2460's, you'd think the shop would know that the customer wants a quality y-pipe built. oh well...i fixed it i was going to purchase the hooker y-pipe for these headers (wasn't available when this motor was swapped in the car), but simply couldn't justify the cost when it ends in a 2.5" pipe.

 

you think that is bad, the one on i had on my car originally looked like that except it was welded to the collectors, the whole original exhaust system looked like crap though.

 

to add to the you think thats bad category.

Wish i had taken a picture, thats from back in the day, like 3 years ago i had an exhaust shop build me a y-pipe and when i cut it off for the new long tubes i found about 4 different joins including the y pipe that were one tube crushed and cut and jammed inside the other tube.

 

Check out this one, I got this made about 6 months ago

 

that's not quite as bad as mine was, but still not worth the money you probably paid.

a guy came into work today asking me if i did any side work. i told him maybe, depends on what he's got. he wants me to build him a y-pipe for his 87 bonneville. i told him sure, for $300 labor time plus materials...he didn't hesitate to say yes after he saw under my firebird...we'll see if that works out though. it's alot of work to do these things the right way. we're talking 8+hours of fab time.

 

defenatly not worth what I paid, I don't even want to say how much I paid makes me mad just thinking about it.

this might help a little, I took a die grinder and cleaned up as much as I could.

 

Here is what my $70 custom y-pipe looked like,




I think the guy did a pretty good job on it.

Vid clip a couple of days later,
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nGTLJ9nS2aI

 

This comes under the heading:
"Believe it or not"
I redid one like you did with a before and after dyno session.
160 RWHP before 210 RWHP after, on the same day.
The guy couldn't believe the difference.

 

Yeah, but you guys need to understand, that the people at the exhaust shop do not care about the performance of your car. They might say they do, but they really dont. Because at the end of the day, they have their money in pocket, and you have your exhaust being routed to the back of the vehicle without (hopefully) any leaks.

 

womp womp! lol JKJK
be jealous 3" madrel off of headman LTs, 3" Xpipe, 3" force mufflers with turndowns... loveeee it! couldnt go stock... its just an ugly configuration.

RK82... looks alot like stock the passenger side shouldnt be a 90 degree into the driver side pipe thats running to the 3" intermediate pipe. still since its larger it would work better. MW66nova has the right idea... i would have given them a pic of wat u wanted... most muffler places dont kno how to do anything but screw up wats there.

mw66nova... nice work... u'll pick up sum power and noise wit that setup... hope u sprayed the welds good. also i like the edelbrocks ypipe cuz its a slip fit from the driver side so u can just take one off instead of unbolting it all down. still nice work... looks good

 

what you need to understand is that it was done by a place called "Performance Muffler" and i can't understand how people will pay top dollar for bull-crap exhaust. i don't do that to my clients!


which would you prefer? i've done all sorts of flavors:

dual 2.5" h-piped system:


dual 3" x-pipe:


dual 2.5" x-pipe with LOTS of ground clearance:


dual 2.5" into single 3.5" y-pipe:


then what i have in my original post is for my daily and now sports a single in/out magnaflow muffler.

 

Wow thats some nice work nova. Do any of those not sacrifice any ground clearance though? They look like pretty good setups when you line them all up like that, though I'm still a fan of just super-sizing the single exhaust.

 

the first two pics had poor ground clearance. the third one (dual x-pipe over the crossmember) is in a buddies car. it's stock ride height, but even so, the exhaust is so far tucked it's ridiculous. something insane like 7" of clearance on that one. the last one is on my camaro now. i'm running solid motor mounts and didn't hesitate to notch the trans crossmember a little. that car is slammed to the ground (1 coil trimmed off v6 front springs with iron headed sbc up front) and i've NEVER hit it on anything. there's alot of power to be had in well layed out exhaust.

 

all of those dual setups look really good. Looks like alot of time was spent in makin em right

 

Well i'm in Pittsburgh, aka, land of car-eating potholes. I need all the ground clearance i can get on all these hills and everything. Even my Grand Am scrapes the ground on half the driveways around here .


But do you think that X over crossmember deal could be duplicated by someone like me (mediocre skill and knowledge)? It might be something to look into next time i redo my exhaust.

 

it took a ton of time and forthought. not saying you can't handle it, but it was a lot of work. i do know that without running solid motor mounts like me and a few of my buddies do, alot of this stuff would likely rattle apart. i don't know that the gains from going to a system like this is worth the trouble/inconvienance to you.
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thank you sir. i have spent more late nights scouring tgo and other websites than i'd like to admit, lol!

 

hopefully i wont run into any crappy work like those others when i get mine done, and i know i dont have to worry about ground clearance as u can tell by my sig lol

 

Yea that's true. When i redid the exhaust i was going to go to a single 3.5" pipe with one of those weird (bullet i think) mufflers on it that's pretty much a straight through pipe. I figured thats almost equal to the area of the 2 2.5 pipes from the engine, so the flow should be similar, and that should get me the CFM i need.


Who knows. Not me XD



but still, those exhaust systems are ridiculous. I'd like to do that just to show off yanno?

 

nice setups nova... the only way to get that much ground clearance with dual 2.5" pipes over the tranny crossmember is if u have a stick... which he has. u cant do that with an auto, no ROOM wats so EVER!!! if i could have done that with my 3" i wouldnt have notched the tranny cross member completely even tho i boxed them, and running custom thru floor subrames. wat headers u running? the first and second pic look like headmans bc they are tucked tight between the tranny and tranny subframes. are the others hookers??

 

the shorties on my firebird are hooker 2460's. the pics of the longtubes are all hedmans. i did modify the set on my buddies car with the t5 so it'd clear the slave cylinder and such.

 

The Edelbrock Y-pipe sucks when it comes to flow. Talking about a rip off! Pinched down tubes inside the collectors...both on the headers and the Y-pipe. My motor would hit a brick wall at 3k rpm where it would fall on it's face. Switched to a set of the Hedman shorties, and now it starts to come alive at 3k. The Edelbrocks may be better than stock...on a stock motor. But if you have any real performance mods done to your car, run away from them like the plague.

 

Exhuast shop got a hold of mine as well. There arent words. was using edelbrock headers with these. now using hookers with hooker y-pipe. going to run 3.5 or 4 inch single to rear with a cut out. th400 = no room for duals

 

Here is the way I do them...just another option.

 

nicely done don! and even with sfc's!

 

I have one of Matts on my car that he built for me, He did a nice job......
suprised you didn't post this one Matt.

 

Nice work Don. That is about the best you can get using the stock routing.

 

Nice work!

Too bad you don't make corvette headers.

-- Joe

 

you are talking the whole exhaust system including headers?

 

yup, i did ssean92's as well. and if i remember correctly, he put down over 400rwhp through my y-pipe i hadn't posted it cause i don't have those pics hosted anywhere...i got'em on my comp, but not on like photobucket or anything.

 

8 hours for a few bends and welds on that y-pipe....you need to hurry up a little Looks nice maybe sometime I'll post pics of my true dual with fullsize mufflers, over the 9" and exiting out the back on opposite sides with no ground clearance issues Even has fancy stainless steel 4th gen rectangular tips.

 

WOW! It looks like 2.5" with an X-pipe is the way to go.

 

you know, really, you're right. it did take way too long for what i did. it may have had to do with the fact that i only bought 2 or 3 u-bends, and i really coulda used 4. i also wanted it perfect, which it turned out amazing if you ask me.

do post your pics though.

 

kawtipping... when i meant i liked the headmans ypipe it was that i liked how it was a slip fit from the driver to the pass side pipe connecting to the driver header... so that if needed u could just take the driver header out and only part of the ypipe, vs taking down the entire ypipe. the edelbrock headers arent that bad compared to stock , but yes the small 2.5" collectors and the squeezed ypipe into the cat is cr@p.

nice dyno don. these are the best dual setups ive seen so far