Side Pipes Setup.

With the catalytic converters fully welded and in place, it is time to do the final set up of the side pipes. At this stage, the pipes can be adjusted up and down where they come through the body and the gap between the pipes and body can be set. The gap between the pipes and body is initially adjusted by cutting the pipes to length. As I said in the previous post, the flange plate was a tight fit to the pipes so that made the adjustment easier. I might add that the adjustment of the amount of fall on the pipes can't be altered because that is governed by the flange plate on the cats merge collector and this is now fully welded. When I was confident that the pipes where right, I tacked the flange plates in position.

You will also notice a star shaped infill piece in the centre of the pipes. Without this, the exhaust gas would blow through gaps in the pipes. The way I made these was to take a piece of cardboard and place it over the area I needed to fill and taped with a hammer until it cut the form I required then just traced it onto a piece of 1.6mm mild steel sheet. After cutting the shape into a square, I just used a die grinder with a 1/2" rotary burr to cut the final shape until it was a tap fit in between the pipes

Once I was confident that all was as it should be, I set about making the hangers for the side pipes. This was particularly easy as the pipes, where I wanted to place the hanger was above the floor line so it was just a matter of an angle bracket running from the bottom of the pipe then forming a right angle and bolting to the inside of the under car exhaust tunnel.

As I don't have the capacity to make a right angle bracket (no engineers vice, only a woodworking one) I picked up a pair of 40mm x 5mm x200mm x 200mm shelf brackets from Mitre 10 and cut it to suit. The off cut formed the brace so it worked perfectly. The rubber donut insulator started life as a heavy duty door stopper where I just sliced 2 x 10mm sections through the base and using a hole punch, increased the hole to 7/16"

I was happy everything was right so I paid another visit to my friendly welding shop and the job was complete.

I had the pipes welded to the flanges on both side as the flanges were at and angle to the pipes so I needed as much grip as I could get. The welder did a mighty job and the dressing on the flange sealing faces was very minimal. This is haw they look in their finished state.

When I have the car going and am happy that all is legal. I will be having the entire exhaust system fine grit blasted and ceramic coated in a satin black or dark aluminium to reduce the heat. The additional holes in the shelf brackets will be filled with JB Weld at the ceramic coating process so that will cleann them up nicely. The price label will also be removed (look closely at the mounted bracket and you will see it.

My next post will be on getting the Cobra on the ground.

Cheers

Russell