05 Apr Umbrella, ‘Ella, ‘Ella
Trust us, this is probably the only time you’ll see a Rihanna reference in the title. Hopefully.
Today, we’ll be finishing up the FMU custom Lamborghini Gallardo exhaust that we’re fabricating for the owner of Umbrella Auto Design and his shop Gallardo. If you haven’t seen their site yet, go check it out — some of the NSX parts they make are absolutely outstanding. But now let’s get back to the action. Last time we left off with this build, the X-pipe and the pipes connecting the cat deletes to the X-pipe were complete, but not welded together. Well, now they are, and it’s back on the Gallardo to triple-check fitment of the two pass-through resonators we’ll be incorporating into the system.
Once the resonators were determined to be in their proper spots, we tacked them onto the system and began drilling the holes for the oxygen sensor bungs. After tacking the bungs into place, we brought the whole thing over to the welding table and began to lay down our beads. As always, all of our exhaust welds are backpurged TIG welds to prevent any sort of oxidization from penetrating the pipe, which can cut down on flow, sound and power.
After the welds have been allowed to cool, we reattached the system to the Gallardo and began fitting the tips. We’d already pre-welded the tip portion of the exhaust (the part that runs from the resonator to the exhaust tip), so it was just a matter of fitting everything in place. We utilized our fancy-pants method of centering the tip, which actually consists of nothing more than a rubber outer ring that goes over the exhaust tip and has the same diameter as the Gallardo’s bumper-mounted exhaust outlet.
With the tip placement finalized, we once again returned to the welding table to finalize everything. And with that, we’re done!
…Oh, wait, no we’re not. The exhaust cannot support its own weight by the catalytic converter clamps alone. Therefore, it’s time to fabricate a set of our mounts, just as we’ve done before with other renditions of this system. This means we’ll be taking some steel rods and square pieces of steel and welding them together for a mount that’s simple, yet strong and aesthetically pleasing. Below, you’ll see the two locations of the mounts (under the resonator, and under the oxygen sensor bung), along with the tacked-together mount prior to final welds taking place.
Some time later, we finished up the mount welds and put everything back on the Gallardo one more time to add one extra detail.
That detail comes to us by way of an additional heat shield underneath the X-pipe. It’s a bit of added security for the two lines that deliver lubrication to the rear transaxle. It mounts to two nuts that we welded to the bottom of the X-pipe, again using argon backpurging to make sure flow wasn’t affected. Seeing as how we’re not fans of big expanses of blank metal, we then added our FMU logo to the shield by way of a mystical, largely unknown process known as “sandblasting.”
Okay, okay, NOW we’re done. It’s currently being boxed up for shipping to the Pacific Northwest, but before it was whisked away, we snapped a quick picture of the final product, including the new heat shield and the “megaphone” style cat delete pipes. Umbrella’s garage is going to get a whole lot louder once this bad boy arrives, and we hope that they like it!
If you’re interested in knowing how this exhaust system would sound once attached to the Gallardo, take a look at the video below, which we filmed when a previous system was being installed:
We’d like to thank Ravi and the whole of Umbrella Auto Design for giving us the chance to contribute to their shop Gallardo build. They’re a company we’ve always respected, and hopefully this won’t be the last time we work with them. In the meantime, have an excellent weekend, and we’ll see you right back here on Monday!
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