Well, last night in my well lit garage I installed the Gibson Swept side
exhaust I picked up from Chad at muscletrucks.net last week. It took longer
than I'd expected partially because a 900 pound gorilla tightened the
exhaust clamps and managed to crimp the tubes together. The clamp at the
front of the muffler came off very nicely, however the one at the rear
wasn't so easy. The nuts came off okay but the clamp had corroded together
with itself and the tubing. Needless to say, that sure wasn't coming off
anytime soon.
The front of the muffler was a sad sad story...I actually had to bust out
the die grinder and cut the flange at the front of the muffler at 90 degree
intervals. Then I pried it apart by hammering a nice screwdriver between
the 2 pipes and bending the pieces outward. I still couldn't get it apart
so I kept on prying until I got tired of that, then I busted out the trusty
7 pound handheld sledge hammer and beat the snot out of it. :-) After a
handful of blows, I was finally able to beat it into submission and it just
popped off of the headpipe. My joys were a little short lived though, as I
had managed to slightly deform the end of the headpipe with all of my
prying. OH GNOES!!! A quick trip to the toolbox and all is sorted out. I
used this tool my dad made (for this very dilemma in fact) to re-form the
deformed tube end and all was good.
The Gibson muffler (which is actually quite large and heavy when laying on
your back) slid right into place with the help of my little sledge-o-matic
and the rest of the tubes fit right into place. Everything went well and
good until I started to clean up and decided that I should probably start
the truck and check for leaks before I put it down... Well, sure enough
there was a slight leak at the front of the muffler! ANGST++ GRRRRR. So,
all clamps were loosened and I discovered that I had installed the hanger
facing the wrong way. So, I pulled the trusty floor jack over and lifted
the pipes up and undid the hanger from the rubber bushing type mounts and
flipped it over. I also pushed the muffler a little farther onto the
headpipe and tightened everything up good and tight. HA! HA! no more leaks.
All in all it took me about 2 and a half hours from start to finish (and
then about 20 mins to clean up). The tone of the exhaust is fairly decent,
it has a nice low grumble at idle, but right off idle I think it's a little
too loud and it kinda accentuates the inherent buzz of the V6. Hopefully
it'll quiet down as it breaks in. Not too shabby at all, but not quite the
sound I was looking for. At least it'll be easy to take off when I decide
to try something different.
I really haven't had a chance to get on it and see what kind of a difference
it made yet, as it's been raining here since about the time I finished
getting it installed. With the flood warning in effect now, I don't expect
to get a chance to romp on it soon either. However, from what I'd noticed
it seems that my trans is shifting a little sooner than it was before....
Which direction do you adjust the TV cable to make the trans shift later?
-- - Josh Lowered 2000 Dakota CC 3.9L www.geocities.com/lenny187/dakota.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 06 2004 - 11:47:08 EST