Norcal Spotted and BS Thread

We need more fast wagons! I have to buy 2 cars just to make my wagon fast... =(

 

the lack of rear fiberglass flares for the 4runner is depressing.

 

That reminds me I need to do finish fitting my fiberglass. Good luck finding some.

 

I feel like shit today

 

Anybody lose a front wheel on 49 today?

 

Hey, anyone ever used Specialized Exhaust and Fabrication in Elk Grove? I need a place to fab a high-clearance crossover pipe. Yelp reviews and their website seem promising. Look like they do a lot of custom street rod stuff too, good sign.

http://specializedexhaust.com/about-us/

 

I went to two places to get mine done in sac and was told no they wouldn't do it. Report back if they will. Thanks.

 

No. But I just used El Camino Muffler in Santa Clara. In and out in no time. Excellent work.

 

its going around like crazy. stay the hell away.

 

Did you happen to take a picture? Need to get this done, great to hear that there is a local place willing to do it.

 

LAME! Will do.

Waaaay too far away...

DVexile has awesome pics (as usual) in his Diet Taco thread. I asked him to post a couple more, too, where they re-use the stock Y. Fairly recent, I'll dig up the post if I have time later.

 

Lol it was

 

Diet Taco... trying to keep things light

Exhaust Crossover RerouteJanuary 2016

As most everyone knows the lowest point on the truck up front on a V6 is the exhaust pipe crossing from the drivers side under the transmission and transfer case. I have a set of RCI aluminum skids coming which are designed to require that crossover to be moved. You can purchase skids that drop down below the OEM crossover but then that leaves something sticking down waiting to be caught on a rock.

There are a bunch of ways to do the reroute, some prettier than others. I wanted to get it done as cleanly as possible. I thought maybe the best way to get what I wanted to was to go to a shop that does a lot of custom exhausts for things like hot rods. So I checked around on Yelp and found a shop in the LA area that had lots of good reviews from people who would likely be fussy with their cars.

The shop was Joe's Mufflers Brakes & Shocks on La Brea. I showed up around 10AM to the shop which is a modest two bay workshop. We put the truck up on the lift and Joe and his crew let me describe what I wanted. They got the idea quickly and made some suggestions.

The plan was to modify the OEM Y-pipe which connects to the two cats with flanges, joins the two pipes and then connects to a single pipe headed back to the muffler with another flange. We wanted to keep all the OEM flanges and the OEM Y-junction. In order to have space to route behind the transfer the overall length of the Y-pipe would need to be longer and so the flange connecting to the muffler pipe needed to be moved back.

With the plan worked out I left them to it, they expected about 90 minutes to do the job. I grabbed something to eat and waited for them to call when it was done. They did great work and I really like how it came out. First pictures of the OEM configuration:




Inexplicably stupid OEM configuration

The reconfigured Y-pipe is longer and the Y-junction has been moved further back and also rotated a bit. The pipe bends in the rerouted section are as smooth or smoother than the OEM configuration as well. The redesigned pipe still uses the OEM hangers as well.




Redesigned Y-pipe

I'm quite happy how this turned out. It was $240 which is a bit higher than I've seen some other peoples jobs here on TW but in this case I think the quality work and design was worth the cost.

The one remaining issue is that if you look at the pictures you can see all the heat shielding Toyota applies around the exhaust pipes. The rerouted pipe passes by a number of things that aren't shielded and that should be fixed. The drive shaft can't have a shield attached of course and the shapes of other things nearby are awkward to cover. The solution is to apply the shielding to the new pipe itself instead.

One option is to heat wrap the pipe, the problem with that is I don't think it is a good idea to do for long sections. Wrapping the pipe means the temperature of the metal in the wrapped section would become much higher than normal. Instead I applied a type of insulator and reflector that is held off of the pipe and only covers half the pipe. This prevents radiative heating of nearby components but does not result in a significant increase in the temperature of the exhaust pipe itself.

I got two one foot long shields from Amazon and applying them to the pipe took just a few minutes. This should keep the transfer actuator and various cables and lines in the area from getting too hot.




Heat Shielding

I'm quite happy how all this turned out. Really no addition in weight and gained some clearance under the front and center of the truck. More importantly my transfer skid will actually be a "skid" now, meaning something scraping the bottom can actually "skid" or scrape along the bottom of the smooth transfer skid.


CONTINUED:
Diet Taco... trying to keep things light
Here is a closeup of the relocated and rotated factory Y and the shortened pipe to the muffler with its flange rotated to match the Y flange:


In this shot you can see in the background the connection to the passenger side cat. In the foreground is the factory hanger attached to the new section of pipe.



I don't have a good photo of the connection to the driver's side cat. I'll need to get that later, but unfortunately I'm out of town this week and not near the truck. I'll try to remember to get one next weekend, but it might not be as nice as these since I won't have the truck up on a lift!

Let me know if anything else is unclear or there are any other detail photos you'd like.

 

No pictures. But as long as you're not getting rid of the smog part, it's something anyone should be able to do.

 

See my dude pete at mufflers express in wsac...he's been doing all my exhaust since I was 15...good work

 

I'll check him out. Thanks.

 

Thanks, Feranando. What's the hardest thing you had him do for you?

 

Ewwwww

 

Time to modify this monetary switch to be an On/Off and then it's go time to disable my VSC.