The Pied Piper

15 Jan The Pied Piper

Props to Alex Long for shooting us this suggestion for a pipe-related pun. It’s the best (although perhaps the only) one we’ve received thus far.

When we last left the bespoke fabrication of Alex’s LS1-swapped blobeye Subaru WRX exhaust, we had tacked together a good majority of the exhaust, and we welded together the brackets that hold the exhaust mounts, as well. However, mounts and exhausts don’t work too well when there’s nothing to connect them, so now it’s time to go about doing that. Using the same hanger method as per usual, we set about torching and subsequently bending steel rod to fit. After that, we tack it to the exhaust and make sure that it’s mounted up exactly how we want it.

With the hangers ready for welding, we set about lowering the entire exhaust midsection from the car and moving it to the welding table. There were also a few tacks left in the exhaust piping itself, so we grabbed the filler rod and TIG’d those babies up. This is one of the few times that you’ll see the midsection on the ground, as a majority of the fabrication needs to be done as it will sit in the car, for fitment and such. You can also see, in the second picture, how we staggered the resonators so that the piping off the X-pipe will remain straight, cutting down on constrictions.

We’ll even throw in some weld porn for you today. Just hangers, nothing too fancy, but the bead consistency and cleanliness is still there.

With the entire exhaust, hangers and all, welded up to the rear differential, we put everything back in the car and prepared for the final piping that we’d be running for the time being. As we’re still working with Alex on tip design, that’s a stage we won’t get to just yet. Instead, once the exhaust is finished up to the resonators, we’ll begin more work in the engine bay. However, for now, there still remain two pieces of pipe to make — one for each half of the exhaust to reach up to the resonators. Since space is weirdly distributed (as this setup wasn’t really designed for this car), we have to angle the pipes upwards to meet the resonators, which are tucked nicely behind the rear bumper. It’s a bit of a twist, but that’s why we have several different angles of pipe available. And don’t forget to tape before you tack — cutting tacks instead of removing tape will add unnecessary contamination to your piping.

Once the piping angles were finalized with the yellow masking tape, we removed it slowly and replaced the tape with weld tacks. Now we have two tacked up exhaust pipes ready to help connect their two best friends, Midsection and Resonator. It’s so adorable we just threw up everywhere.

Remember how we said we had something fun coming up last week? Well it’s here, and it’ll be the focus of the blog post tomorrow. Get excited — we sure are. In the meantime, have a great day!