Custom exhaust help please

mikemounlio · Mar 4, 2015

The motor is a ford 5.0 roller. The current exhaust is very simply. Shorty headers into 2 inch pipe all the way back to a cherry bomb on each side. The exhaust runs down the inside of the chassis. The cherry bombs are just in-front of the tanks. Simple turn downs after the cherry bombs.

The plan is to keep the exhaust style the same but replace the cherry bombs with borla pro xs mufflers. I also want to add an h pipe to the exhaust.

Does the h pipe matter how far froward or back it goes? Does the location of the mufflers matter that much? It would be easiest to add the h pipe in just in-front of the mufflers. I could fit it in just behind the TC if it would be best.

Any tips or ideas would be great. I want it to sound good but not be to damn loud as its a trail rig. As of now its not really that loud. I thought it would scream with the cherry bombs on it but its not bad. I just dont like the tone of the mufflers. Plus i have always loved the ford 5.0 with borla.

Hucklebuggy · Mar 6, 2015

An old drag racer friend of mine told me how to find the best spot to put the H pipe in this style exhaust back when I was in High School I think. It may not be feasible to do in a buggy that your trying to build everything before really running it though.

Supposedly, you take some spray paint and and spray a good solid line on the inside of each exhaust tube. You'll want to cover about a 3-4 ft section starting at 6" past the collectors, going to the back. Then you want to warm it up a little, then go take it for a good hard flogging down the highway for a couple minutes. Pull over crawl under it, and you should be able to find a spot in each line that has pretty well burned the paint off, or at least looks to have been hotter than rest. The H pipe should be installed to connect the hot spot of each side.

The only car I used an H pipe on was a Chevy II with 3" tubes and Dynomax race mufflers. There wasn't much room under it so, I just put it where I could make it fit. I think that ended up being just behind the tail housing of the transmission. I loved the way that car sounded. It didn't have the uneven sounding pulses coming from each side like most separated exhausts.

Hope that helps, or maybe someone can call BS on the paint trick, since I never actually got to try it out.