The new exhaust system has been frankly kicking my butt. It has taken me a full week of hard work to install it.
The old exhaust system produced a horrible droning around 45-55 mph and was a bit of mix and match of pieces. It was also welded together and had to be cut apart when I removed it – cut apart into 8 pieces! So it went into the scrap pile.
I ordered a new dual exhaust from Waldron’s Exhaust. They have a reputation for building high quality exhaust systems for classic cars. I ordered a dual exhaust with quiet mufflers – Waldrons has a choice of quiet (factory), “imposter”, and hot rod. For an Imperial quiet is the way to go. The system includes a large muffler and a small muffler for a total of 4 mufflers. Technically the 1963 Imperial was only available from the factory with a single exhaust, but I’m a believer in dual exhaust for big block engines.
Expecting a four week lead time, I placed the order a month before I expected to need it. And discovered that the Covid19 pandemic has pushed their lead time out to 8 weeks! OK, the exhaust would arrive in mid-July. I called in early July to check on the status and learned that the small company that builds their mufflers had been hit really hard and that there would be another 8-10 week lead time for the mufflers!
A few days later they contacted me again. They had the main mufflers, but it would be several more weeks before they could get the small mufflers. They could provide short pieces of straight pipe the same size as the small mufflers, which would let me install the exhaust and drive the car now and then add the small mufflers later. I replied “good plan, let’s do it”, and two large heavy boxes arrived a week later.
Waldron’s does a nice job. The exhaust is heavy – 14 gauge aluminized steel, nicely bent and well finished. The kit includes the pipes, mufflers, gaskets, clamps, and universal hangers. Unfortunately you have to make the actual brackets for hanging the mufflers as part of installation. My only complaint is that the individual parts were not labeled. I would like to have each part identified as left or right and order from front to back.
The first step was to slip fit all the parts together under the car as a test fit. The head pipes bolted up to the exhaust manifolds with no problems – but nothing else fit at all! After an extended period of wrestling heavy parts on my back it was time for a break and some Internet research.
I’m used to seeing dual muffler systems configured with the large muffler to the front of the car and the small muffler or resonator at the back. Internet research turned up another picture of 1963 Imperial exhaust:
Ah-ha! Small mufflers front and large mufflers rear! With this new order things made a lot more sense. I was now able to (very) roughly fit the exhaust.
At this point it turned into a four dimensional wrestling match. As mentioned other places, for such a large car many things are fit into tight spaces. For example, the exhaust goes between the transmission cross member and the floor – a convoluted 2″ pipe fitting into a 2-1/4″ space. And it can’t touch anything or the result will be obnoxious exhaust noise.
Each pipe needs to be rotated to fit. And, since everything is loose at this point, it rotates and flops around as soon as you move to the next piece! Not only do you have the 3D challenge, but things change over time – thus the 4D routing problem!
I spent close to two days fighting this and trying every variation of rotation and position I could think of. Finally I had something that looked more or less right. Or perhaps I should say more or less plausible…
Time to make a commitment. Starting at the front, tighten every thing down and fit it piece by piece. The first step was to tighten the bolts from the exhaust manifold to the head pipe.
Then route the next pipe over the transmission cross member and clamp it to the headpipe. A custom bracket is needed, in this case a hanger rod turned upside down and welded to an exhaust clamp. The clamp is loosely positioned on the exhaust pipe, the rod placed so that it touches and is marked to be cut to length, and the location of the hanger marked on the cross member.Two holes are then drilled in the cross member and threaded for bolts. The hanger is bolted into position, the pipe carefully positioned so that it doesn’t touch anything, and the hanger rod tack welded to the exhaust clamp. The whole clamp assembly is removed, taken to the bench, and securely welded and ground. The finished clamp is then firmly bolted to the cross member and exhaust pipe and checked for interference.
The small mufflers are installed next. Since I don’t have them yet the filler pipe is slipped into place, followed by the next section of pipe. A location is identified for the next hanger. A bracket is designed and partially built. The holes for the bracket are marked on the frame and then drilled and tapped and the partially completed bracket bolted into position. A rubber hanger is loosely clamped onto the pipe, the pipe moved into its desired position, and the location of the hanger marked on the bracket.
The bracket and hanger are removed, taken to the bench, trimmed to size, and welded. The bracket is bolted to the frame and to the exhaust pipe and the clamps on the filler pipe are tightened – this secures everything in place.
Next the main mufflers are installed. This is now much easier as everything is staying in place! The tailpipe is threaded over the rear axle, between the control struts, the shock absorber, and the gas tank and slipped onto the muffler. I’m now able to locate the tailpipe in its final position and design and fabricate the brackets to hold it.
Of course everything has to be taken apart so that I can paint the brackets. With the brackets painted everything is re-assembled, tightened, clamped, and final checked for interference. Good to go!
After the learning experience on the right side, the left side was straightforward. Start at the front, work to the back building brackets and hangers as you go. Time consuming and fairly strenuous, but only took me a day to finish.
I still have the small forward mufflers to install when they finally show up – this will be a project over the winter. In any case, the car is now driveable. Well, driveable once I finish all the other projects…
The final result is quite good. The process to get there was frustrating, taking me an entire week from start to finish, but this was the first time I’ve installed a complete custom exhaust and there were a number of lessons learned. Perhaps the greatest lesson is to take it to a muffler shop next time!
