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March 1, 2012

Bushings and exhaust hangers - behind the scenes....

There's a lot of stuff that goes on with restorations and repairs that not very exciting - even for a car guy. The installation of bushings and making exhaust hangars are two of those tasks - but the real "sexy" stuff ;) can't happen without these support bits. Like any great play - it's only as good as it's supporting players..... (who said car guys can't be cultured?).

After much work resulting in my ruining one bushing, I took everything to the local Minute Muffler Shop. I needed extra tubing for the exhaust system anyway and had purchased pipe from them before, so I thought I'd see if they had an industrial press - which they did. I left all the pieces in their much more capable hands and will pick them up later. Oh well, I'm smarter now and only out a few bucks!


Here's all the bits and pieces that came with the exhaust setup from SUMMIT Racing. I know, exhaust clamps suck and shouldn't be used in a nice fab-job, but they are good for mock up. Once I get it all fitted, I'll weld up some tabs as well as the joints.


The Galaxie had one main hangar that I could re-use for the axle loop, but I needed another, so I fabbed up a similar set up. Using a piece of a tire that had given up pieces for the Challengers exhaust, I cut a piece the same size as the original and also cut and bent some metal pieces for the rest of the hangar.


Close enough.


This is how the exhaust was cobbled together previously. It's not that it didn't work, it did - for many years - but I'm excited to see and hear the car with the new full-dual 2 1/2"  set-up with the Dynomax free flow mufflers. It's a similar system I had on the Challenger and it was great.


As I mentioned, I did a lot of "background" work today - and didn't take a lot of photo's. Tomorrow I'll shoot the fruits of all that labour.





Don't forget to check out the website at www.E-tekRestorations.com ! Special thanks to www.Eastwood.com and www.CarCraft.com !