Well this weekend i pretty much got the exhaust for my northstar finished. All i have to do is make a hanger, weld the 90* elbows on the muffler and put the tips on it, but i'm gonna wait until it's in the car to do that. It took me about 3 days to build the exhaust and headers so far.

What muffler are you using? Do you have an estimate for your exhaust build cost?

Looks like the WCF muffler.

it was about $500 cdn including the cost of the muffler and tips and everything. The muffler is a Spintech Sportsman splitcase.

Details on the headers?

What did you use for the flanges? Plasma cutter?

Primary sizes?

Stainless?

I made the flanges from 3/8 X 3" cold rolled steel. Cut the ports with a 1.5" hole saw and did the edges of the flanges with an angle grinder. I wish i had a plasma cutter, the angle grinder took forever. The primarys are 1.5", collectors are 3" that reduce to 2.5". It's not stainless. I used 6 1.5" J bends, 1 3" J bend and 4 2.5" J bends for the whole exhaust. The welds look crappy but they serve their purpose.

[This message has been edited by Zac88GT (edited 09-13-2006).]

quote Originally posted by Zac88GT: does anybody know of any high temp paint that i can paint the headers and exhaust with that i dont need to either bake or run the engine to cure the paint?

I use duplicolor 1200* ceramic and have had very good luck with it. be carefull to NOT use the 500* ceramic as it won't hold up on headers.

Russ

quote Originally posted by Zac88GT: I made the flanges from 3/8 X 3" cold rolled steel. Cut the ports with a 1.5" hole saw and did the edges of the flanges with an angle grinder. I wish i had a plasma cutter, the angle grinder took forever. The primarys are 1.5", collectors are 3" that reduce to 2.5". It's not stainless. I used 6 1.5" J bends, 1 3" J bend and 4 2.5" J bends for the whole exhaust. The welds look crappy but they serve their purpose.

You didn't use 8 1.5" bends?

I can't imagine using an angle grinder.... well, I can but I don't like it.

I was thinking about doing the same in stainless... Just tack the pieces together and have a "real" welder finish them up. With how hot headers get, i'd be concerned about regular steel falling apart. You might not have problems with a ceramic coating, I think a lot of places use that inside and out.

at first i bought 8 bends but i only ended up using 6. The steel should take the heat allright i think. Stainless would have just cost way to much. we'll see how long they last, if they blow out in a couple years mayble i'll redo them in stainless but i think these will work pretty good for now.

Don't feel bad. I've always done things the hard way also
in the future, make use of a reciprocating saw however as it's much faster than the angle grinder. when you put a good bi-metal 14T blade on it it's amazing what you can cut.



Russ

quote Originally posted by Zac88GT: Stainless would have just cost way to much.

http://store.racing-solutions.org/hebukiss.html

$55 for half a dozen bends in 1.5"

$55 wow, i wish i had known about that earlier, i think i paid about $75 for regular exhaust steel. mine were all 180* J bends though, looks like you'd probably need at least 2 of those kits to build a set but i still thought stainless would be way more expensive

I agree with the others on the ceramic coating. I've had other headers coated by Jet-Hot with their sterling/ceramic coating, and they are as pretty as they were 7 years ago when I installed them. Make sure you coat the insides as well. You won't need to worry about stainless after that.

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quote Quote Of The Month - Originally posted by Formula88: Bill Clinton did good because he couldn't move against bin Laden until after he broke the law. George W. Bush did bad because he didn't move against bin Laden BEFORE he broke the law. Simple, if you're a Democrat.

To cut the flange, I think I would've just fired up my smoke-wrench (oxy-acetylene torch).

i would have to if i had one

That's OK ... you do what you can with what's available. Still, nice work! And Ryan's link (above) to the stainless steel tube supplier will be handy when I build my N* manifolds. At those prices, I just may do the whole system in CRES.

Zac, did you remove or modify the forward rail on your cradle when you mounted the N*?

[This message has been edited by HitesFiero (edited 09-15-2006).]

For the record, Stock N* manifolds are about 1.59" OD, and then step up to a larger clamshell design.



I would use 1 5/8" primaries