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As y'all may or may not know, I bought the Hooker Aero-chamber exhaust from Jonny. I guess the exhaust has "been around the block" a few times with the members on here. 
Here's the exhaust as it was when I got it (Jonny's pic in the for sale thread)
At $100 it was such a good deal that I couldn't pass it up. Initial impressions this morning having the chance to really look it over was - "Who the heck learned how to weld on this thing?"
Second was "Damn, who cut the cutout right where the merge is?" Made the situation a little more difficult, but not too bad.
First order of business was to take it apart, degrease it, and paint it. I painted it using VHT which is supposed to be a ceramic paint, we'll see how it holds up.
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Angie even got in on the fun and spray painted some of the pipe:
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Next order of business was to get my current Magnaflow exhaust out of the car.
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That's where the pics end for today. My dad came over to help bail me out on the project (as usual!). Since the cutout on the Hooker exhaust was cut right where the two pipes merge together, it was impossible to get a clamp on it so that didn't really play into my plans on doing this all without going to a muffler shop. Since I had a 3" cutout on the Magnaflow exhaust, I figured cutting that one out so I could put it on the "new" exhaust would make sense. So when my dad got there we cut out the 3" cutout out from the intermediate pipe and then cut the intermediate pipe from the y-pipe. O'Reilly sells a 3" inner diameter pipe that's 18" long so we went over there to grab that and some clamps.
Got my y-pipe back in place, the 18" intermediate pipe cut down to size, the 3" cutout in place and that's when we hit a brick wall for the day. The damn pipe which goes from the cutout, up over the axle, and ends with a flange to bolt to the muffler. There's a thick metal bracket attached to the pipe and the way the bends are there's no way to get the pipe all the way into place. Unfortunately my dad's cutoff wheel was completely gone by that point and I wanted to get out to Woodward so we called it a day.
Today (Sunday's) plan - Angie and I had planned to go to the Brandenburg Park car show tomorrow. Angie got insurance put onto her Firebird so she's taking that to the show. My brother is in town so my parents, brother, and sister-in-law will be doing breakfast and then my dad and I will get back to work. What's killing our progress is that S&K Muffler took two separate pipes together - the intermediate pipe which turns up towards the axle, and then the pipe which goes over the axle and bolts into the muffler. By welding the two pipes, it made it basically impossible to get the pipe into place. To add to it, when S&K Muffler welded the two pipes together they apparently needed like 2" of extra pipe so they grabbed a tiny ass pipe and then made one hell of a glob of molten weld to connect it all together. Tomorrow's objective is to cut that all out and then put it all back together the right way. So that's all for now - will take more pics tomorrow.
Here's the exhaust as it was when I got it (Jonny's pic in the for sale thread)
At $100 it was such a good deal that I couldn't pass it up. Initial impressions this morning having the chance to really look it over was - "Who the heck learned how to weld on this thing?"
Second was "Damn, who cut the cutout right where the merge is?" Made the situation a little more difficult, but not too bad. First order of business was to take it apart, degrease it, and paint it. I painted it using VHT which is supposed to be a ceramic paint, we'll see how it holds up.
IMG_2279.JPG
IMG_2280.JPG
Angie even got in on the fun and spray painted some of the pipe:
IMG_2282.JPG
IMG_2283.JPG
Next order of business was to get my current Magnaflow exhaust out of the car.
IMG_2284.JPG
IMG_2285.JPG
IMG_2286.JPG
IMG_2287.JPG
That's where the pics end for today. My dad came over to help bail me out on the project (as usual!). Since the cutout on the Hooker exhaust was cut right where the two pipes merge together, it was impossible to get a clamp on it so that didn't really play into my plans on doing this all without going to a muffler shop. Since I had a 3" cutout on the Magnaflow exhaust, I figured cutting that one out so I could put it on the "new" exhaust would make sense. So when my dad got there we cut out the 3" cutout out from the intermediate pipe and then cut the intermediate pipe from the y-pipe. O'Reilly sells a 3" inner diameter pipe that's 18" long so we went over there to grab that and some clamps.
Got my y-pipe back in place, the 18" intermediate pipe cut down to size, the 3" cutout in place and that's when we hit a brick wall for the day. The damn pipe which goes from the cutout, up over the axle, and ends with a flange to bolt to the muffler. There's a thick metal bracket attached to the pipe and the way the bends are there's no way to get the pipe all the way into place. Unfortunately my dad's cutoff wheel was completely gone by that point and I wanted to get out to Woodward so we called it a day.
Today (Sunday's) plan - Angie and I had planned to go to the Brandenburg Park car show tomorrow. Angie got insurance put onto her Firebird so she's taking that to the show. My brother is in town so my parents, brother, and sister-in-law will be doing breakfast and then my dad and I will get back to work. What's killing our progress is that S&K Muffler took two separate pipes together - the intermediate pipe which turns up towards the axle, and then the pipe which goes over the axle and bolts into the muffler. By welding the two pipes, it made it basically impossible to get the pipe into place. To add to it, when S&K Muffler welded the two pipes together they apparently needed like 2" of extra pipe so they grabbed a tiny ass pipe and then made one hell of a glob of molten weld to connect it all together. Tomorrow's objective is to cut that all out and then put it all back together the right way.
So that's all for now - will take more pics tomorrow.
357ci LT1, cammed, stalled, and driven. 
Took it around the block tonight and I think it sounds good. It's hard to tell in the car. The YouTube clip sounds awesome, but yet in the car it still just sounds ... well, muffled. 
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