Just to catch this thread up to this last weekend…. I ended up buying a Magnaflow 3” X-pipe system. I went back and forth between the 3” and 2.5” systems. The 3” system is overkill for my stock 6.1 but someday I’ll do cam/heads and so I’ll be prepared for that. I mocked the system up and realized that it would need some modifications to fit well and that it wouldn’t be a lot of fun trying to do that while lying on my back in the garage. So I decided to take it to a local exhaust shop. The owner of this shop is a huge Mopar guy (he has a 69 Dart he’s restoring plus other Mopars in the shop), so I knew he’d do a good job.
On the way there I was on the freeway towing the Cuda and I had one of the trailer tires de-tread. Pretty scary to see chunks of the tire behind you and look in the side view mirror to see the trailer fender all buckled. Luckily the fender did its job otherwise that tread might have slapped in to the door of the Cuda!
Once I got the car there they ended up having to modify the system pretty heavily. Mostly because my car is so low and has the 4-link rear end. He used all the pipes and pieces but would cut and re-clock the pieces as needed to clear everything. He also spent quite a bit of time making it clear around the driveshaft plus tucking it up as much as possible. I didn’t take too many pictures when it was at the shop, but here’s one when it was in progress.
I also just realized I didn’t take any pictures of the exhaust tips other then this one when I was getting ready to pull the car off the trailer.
I used the 3” stainless steel Cuda exhaust tips from P&G. The one thing I’m not happy with is the tips have a bow or dip in them along the horizontal edges. I tried straightening them when they were off the car but that didn’t work that well. Now that they are mounted I might be able to get better leverage to try and straighten them. The other thing I wasn’t thrilled with is that the tips had 3” pipe installed but where the pipe met the box part of the tip the opening was pretty small and all jagged. It was like they welded the pipe on to the closed off box part of the tip then they took a blow torch to open a small hole. It was pretty cheesy and a definite restriction. So I spent a while with a die grinder opening up the hole to at least come closer to matching the pipe.
Anyway, here’s one shot of the car down on the ground. The color is washed out in the sun (plus the inch of dust on the car) but I kind of liked this angle.
I guess next I need to clean up my garage so I can buff out the windshield trim and get new glass installed. Then get some of the interior in before taking it down to get the front end aligned. Plus lots more computer tuning. Anyway hopefully it will come together pretty quick now. I’m really anxious for the first real drive.
Travis
72 Cuda
