Hey guys, I've had a dual 3" exhaust setup for 18 or so years. Originally, it was fast, inexpensive, and it certainly got the job done. But the ground clearance was always horrible, and it hit on a lot of speed bumps and high speed dips. It was time to finally build a mandrel bent stainless setup with an X-pipe. The first step was fabricating a new Crossmember to allow the exhaust to stay in between the subframe, and not have to go around it (the cause of the lowest, most horrible ground clearance issue). Making this to the standard I wanted it was tough, mainly because you're working on 3 different mounting flanges which are at independent, compound angles. None of which are square with any of the others. That's not too big of a deal if you're working on a lift, and building one part, right on the car. I wanted to be able to duplicate it, if necessary though. So, I made a fixture for it.

In any case, it's still kind of tight on the passenger side, but there is enough room to run 3" pipe through there and have it be higher than the header collector and blowshield (praying that doesn't hit). The caveats here are I don't have a torque arm, I have SSM lift bars. (I'm aware of the Hooker crossmember with the torque arm mount, but I think it only works on LS swaps which are also using Hooker's motor mounts anyway). To be realistic, I think adding the torque arm mount to this wouldn't be a big deal. Also, my trans is a TKO 600, and it has the long, gangly speedo adapter, and it JUST clears that. With a different setup, it'd likely work even better. In order to do this on another transmission, I'd need a correct crossmember to get the trans mount location/height right on. I'd totally be into working with some people to do that though, as an experiment.

 

Nice work, looks great. That is going to give you a lot more room to tuck the exhaust up. Post some pictures of the finished exhaust.

 

Thanks, will do! ... I'm ordering all the tube and other materials now.

 

Looks like you just have two slots in the rectangle tube for the mount bolt? Hopefully you reinforced in between the holes? If not then eventually the tube will allow the bolt to distort the tube and it will get loose.

 

It is reinforced.

 

Do you have any pictures of your exhaust with your new crossmember?