Last week my wife complained about a new and annoying rattle underneath the truck as she was driving the kids to school. That weekend I crawled underneath the truck and discovered that the exhaust was about to fall apart! The previous owner had removed the muffler and straight piped it. To connect everythign together they welded the joints, which is where it all began to break apart.
To hold over the busted exhaust I got some flashing and some hose clamps. This kept the weld from breaking completely.
Before we kicked off this project I took some video of the current exhaust. I wanted to have documented proof of the sound improvement.
We always hated this sound. It was very hollow and at highway speeds it would drone and drone and drone.
The first step was to break the connection between the catalytic converter and the old broken exhaust. I was a little worried about this because of the type of clamp used and the rust.
To get easier access to everything I cut the pipe. Then…
I cut it again. This provided some wiggle room needed to pry the hanger bushings off of their support to remove the exhaust from the truck.
Old exhaust on the floor.
To remove the piece of pipe that was attached to the cat I needed to cut it a little. I used a grinding wheel and cut a 2 inch incision into the pipe. With that taken care of I was able to get a screw driver in there and break the hold. A few bangs with a hammer and the pipe came off.
This is the small pipe that was on the cat. You can see the cut I made to remove it.
Old exhaust next to new. Notice the new muffler. Yay!
The MBRP kit comes with an extension pipe sized for a 8ft bed + a quad cab truck. This truck is a short bed quad cab so that means I needed to cut the pipe. This pic is of the pipe on the vice waiting for the reciprocating saw. The pipe needed to be cut to 10.5 inches plus the flange.
The freshly cut pipe and muffler connected.
From the muffler to the back of the truck.
Now the clamps go on.
More clamps.
The connection to the catalytic converter.
The exhaust tip.
And finally the resulting sound!
I also heard those before-and-after exhaust sounds, and I immediately saw the difference between those two. The after-results went smoother without the so-called chuckling every time it accelerates.
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