85 Chevy Truck Custom Made Exhaust

This is the completed exhuast system I built. It is made from tanker truck stainless tubing that at one time hauled milk or milk products. I got a lot of mandrel bends as well at the scrap yard. I got enough to make about 3 sets of exhaust systems all for about 60.00. The tubing is 3" ID 316 grade stainless. The muffler is a gibson one that I had on my Tahoe. The muffler rattled inside so Gibson warranteed it and I was able to keep the old one. I opened it up and fixed it.

I could not stand the header leaks and gasket failures anymore. All they did was the "tick, tick" sound and that was driving me crazy. I then took the stock Y-pipe and modified it to accept a 3" Cat converter I got on E-bay for 24.00.	I found an adapter at a local NAPA store and welded it to the Y-pipe.

First thing I did was located some factory exhaust manifolds on e-bay. I got these from an 88 full size blazer. They fit exactly for the 85. The 88 was TBI so they came with an 02 sensor provision. Eventually I will be converting to TBI so this is another reason I got these	The emission tubes were cut and I then TIG welded caps on them. I could have made some fittings on the lathe but I did not want to use up that much time. This took only about 10 minutes each plug to do. Putting stock maniolds on was the best thing I ever did. I hate headers.

I TIG welded this adapter to the cat conveter. This is where the Y-pipe will clamp to.	I did not want a lot of clamps in this system, so I TIG welded the cat converter set up to the Gibson muffler. Remeber when welding stainless to steel use 309 rod.

This is one of the compound curves I had to make out of the mandrel tubing. I mocked it up on the truck then tacked it. The main reason for making this exhaust was to clear my dump cylinder and become emissions legal as well.	Just another shot of building the curvey tailpipe assembly. This part took me the longest cause I wanted the fitment to be exact.

Completed stainless tailpipe assembly.	Tailpipe assembly in place with the Gibson tip.

All mounted up with custom hangers I fabricated and used Ford Mustang tailpipe hanger grommets. As you can see this clears my dump cylinder. It sounds nice as well. Not too loud, just a nice mellow rumble.	This is the old set up with the duals on it. All it did was leak with the headers. Much better now.