Middling

09 Mar Middling

This blog post title took approximately ten minutes to conceive. Guess we’ve done far too many midsection posts already. Oh well, here’s another!

Yesterday, we left Bob’s F07 550ix GT with half a midsection. The large majority of what remained was straight piping, so the last half fell together rather quickly. But don’t think that making the actual exhaust itself is the entirety of the job. Oh, no. On top of all that, you have to create the brackets and hangers that connect to the stock mounting points, and you also have to make sure the mufflers are aligned perfectly before doing any tacking. There’s a good amount of “the details” that we don’t often cover, so we want to make sure you know there’s a bit more to it before you dive into any DIY projects or anything like that.

But, as we said, all that remained were the brackets, hangers, and the final welds once positioning had been completed. The hangers were welded onto the midsection about halfway between the x-pipe and the mufflers, and there were also two sets of supporting brackets to make — two that connected near the transmission up front, and one cross-brace that connected out back.

Once everything was positioned correctly and the mufflers were where we wanted them (which is basically exactly where they were with the stock midsection), we did the final welds on the piping. This necessitated the dropping of the entire system with mufflers attached. And it’s a lot harder to fit all that into a frame than you might think. Not only is the car long, but the midsection is pretty damn ginormous in its own right. The welds that connected the midsection to the mufflers, and two welds closer to the X-pipe were the last kids on the bus.

Once the final welds were completed, we carefully hoisted everything back up to the car, and bolted it in one last time. After triple-checking to make sure nothing was contacting, rattling or otherwise being a bother when it shouldn’t, we started up the GT and checked for leaks. It was precisely at this point when we realized the video camera had no battery, so video was off the table. Bob’s since taken possession of the GT from us, but what we can tell you is that it added a small amount of grunt, and there was definitely some popping where there wasn’t any in the past. It’s not a HUGE change, since he opted to keep the catalytic converters and downpipes stock, but perhaps the mod bug will come a-bitin’ once again. Until then, have a great weekend!