THREE INCH STAINLESS STEEL EXHAUST
I bought the car with a completely box stock exhaust. Fortunately it was rusting out, forcing me to replace the cat-back section with the stainless Saab Sport, which served me well until I went after 340 hp. By that time I had already put on a 3" MP Performance stainless down pipe. What follows is the project to splice in a stainless steel (hereafter "SS") Abbott Racing Motorsport 3" cat-back exhaust onto an existing 3" SS downpipe, in this case an MP Performance DP. Materials required: A 1' section of 3" SS pipe, Vibrant SS V-band clamp, a large pipe cutter or steel saw, and a TIG welder with T-308 or 309 wire filler. The reasons for splicing in this manner are many. Both the DP and the exhaust have 3" to 2.5" reducers on the ends where they mate up. This mutual reduction creates a bottleneck just behind the cat. The exhaust could be mounted directly to the existing DP with a standard Saab clamp, but the bottleneck would then remain, defeating my ultimate goal of having a full 3" exhaust tract from the turbo, back (necessary to support 340 bhp).
This is the entire exhaust (edited low-res image from theAbbott site - the actual exhaust looks much prettier and shinier in person):
This is the existing MP Performance 3" DP I have had on for a few years:
These are the two reducer ends (left from the MP Performance DP and right from the Abbott exhaust) after they were cut off to remove the bottleneck:
This is the Vibrant V-band clamp kit:
These clamps have male and femal halves to make a better seal:
This is the male half of the Vibrant SS V-band clamp tacked onto the DP after the reducer end had been cut off:
Abbott exhaust with reducer cut off:
This is a view from beneath the polished center resonator showing the Abbott exhaust end ready to have the short (approximately 6" long) extension section butt welded on and with the male half of the SS V-band clamp tig welded into place:
Jonethan, welder extraordinaire, test fitting the short extension section to the Abbott exhaust (where it will ultimately be butt-welded into place). Note that the cut at the Abbott end had to be made a very slight angle to facilitate having the extension end meet up at the V-band clamp connection square enough to fit perfectly. There is a flex section immediately behind where the weld will occur which would allow enough movement to permit a straight cut, but the goal here was to relieve as much stress from the butt-weld as possible:
This shows the center extension section welded into place, with the female end of the V-band clamp already welded on and the V-band clamp torqued down:
Another view of the center section after fitting and welding:
Here is the finished product looking back:
The rear section bolted into place after everything else was completed. The final fit was perfect:
Rear section from beneath. It hangs perfectly in place:
Here is the tip supplied by Abbott (straight 3") round, already welded on by Abbott:
This is the tip I will put on, time permitting. It is a Magnaflow 3" to 4" dual wall polished stainless oval angle cut tip:
