Can anyone give me a supplier for a 2.5 exhaust system to suit 67-70 Rivs. Tried Google but all I get are mufflers and tips
TA Performance makes systems for '67-'70 Rivieras. Not sure of quality or fit, check thier website under exhaust systems. :TU:
Be prepared to do some fabricating if you buy TA's kit. If I were to do it again I would have a muffler shop make the system from scratch.
OMG what I went through with Kepich. ou: His pipes seemed to fit OK with some persuasion, went with the stainless, but his mufflers were absolute horrible JUNK. GARBAGE. I wonder if my threads still exist here or if they went down with the great crash? I wound up using 4 stainless flowmasters and adapting them to fit. So far they have lasted longer than any steel muffler than I have ever had on that car. :TU:
I've posted the changes I needed to make before, but can't find the posts quickly this morning. Basically, The down pipes from the engine aren't long enough to allow the muffler to sit behind a floor brace. I bought a couple of straight lengths of pipe and added them on. I didn't like the intermediate hangers they provided, so I modified the factory hangers with 2.5" Clamps. With their hangers the exhaust hangs real low, and as you know with these Rivs you don't have a lot of ground clearance to begin with. They left out a subtle bend in the pipes as they travel up over the rear axle that brings the pipe in towards the frame and away from the tires. I had to hammer flat spots on these beautifully mandrel bent pipes to gain adequate tire clearance. That hurt! (I learned I didn't have enough clearance on my maiden voyage when a motorcyclist pointed out the smoke rolling out of my rear wheel openings at a stop light.) I love TA and they have been very helpful in supplying parts to me, but I wish they had spent more time on R&D with these systems.
good to know...ive bought a lot of stuff from ta as well but if its too much of a headache i might look elsewhere. off subject do you know of any long tube headers that will work? i have a set of ta perf shorties but would really lilke to upgrade to lt/s in the future.
Long tubes are impossible with the frame design. The front kickouts that lead from the central tunnel to the front suspension would make long tube headers impossible without going through the frame. The stock stuff curls under the edges of the frame where they kick up at the toeboards and duck behind the rear splash sheilds on the front wheels. TA's kit fit with some persuasion and its a better starting point than anything else short of a custom fabbed system that I've tried but I've only done my '70 and now my '64. The '64 kit fit better except for the headpipes which turns out were designed for thier headers online and I had to have them modify them to work with the stock manifolds. Also I think its a bad idea to put the mufflers under the floorboards as they tend to drag on stuff so I sectioned the tailpipes and welding the mufflers in the middle of them and then took about 4" out of the drop behind the axle to pull them up against the frame rails. The '70 3" kit was a tight squeeze and it took some careful adjusting to keep the pipes off the tires and the springs.
The TA 2.5" system fit my 67 Riv quite nicely with their shorty headers. I did have to cut a chunk out of the horizontal portion of the right downpipe and relocate the intermediate hangers to hang the pipe higher. But all in all, I don't think I've ever had to do such a little amount of work to end up with a perfect fit.
I bought a set of shorty headers and front pipes of eBay that I assume are TA's because I have not been able to find any other source. Interesting to hear your comments on TA's fit. I could have my mates muffler shop do a system but I would prefer a mandrel bent set if possible, so maybe TA is the way to go.
The best place to start if you just want mandrel components is the Flowmaster X-frame kit, that will get you to the rear axle but not past. There is a second kit that will take it over that axle. Honestly the TA kit is only about $100 maybe more than the complete set of Flowmaster stuff I'd go with it unless Flowmaster has local vendors in Australia that would cut the shipping out for you.
Sounds like you had no issues with the rear pipes and tire clearance. There was no way I was going to get adequate clearance without hammering flats in the pipes. It was when I pulled the pipes back off to make this modification that I stood them up side by side with my original pipes and noticed they lacked that subtle bend I talked about earlier. I wonder if there is a lot of variation in the bending of the pipes from kit to kit. I was so PO'd at the time! :rant: I had no idea that anyone else had a kit on the market for these cars.
You can try these guys- http://ll.hemmings.com/pdfs/ClassicEx63534.pdf They said that they caould bend up a factory exhaust for a 67-70 Riviera. Im not sure what they're using for mufflers and resonators though. The 67-70 Riviera muffler is pretty unique. Its a center in/ center out with a very slim body. Pretty long too. I was considering using a long glasspack in place of it. I think it would fit right in place of the OE muffler. As far as a resonator, like Joe said, a short turbo style muffler would work. Someone should make a "resonator retrofit kit". basically a kit consisiting of two pieces of bent pipe with the tailpipe hanger bracket welded on. The bracket is a piece of flat steel with two 1/4-20 studs welded on. Sell it as a kit for the left and right sides so someone can use a commonly available muffler. Or even better, a set of turbo mufflers with the pipes and brackets already welded on.
I am using Summit's dirt cheap turbo mufflers. I purchased the longest ones they sell, they fit well, but there is a bit more resonance inside the car than I care for. I have wondered if using a couple of really short glass packs as resonators would help. Back in '86 when I needed mufflers for my '66 Riv, I found what the guy at NAPA told me was the last pair of Walker OEM's in the Twin Cities. $75.00 a pop which back then was some good coin for a muffler! :shock:
Actually they're center in and side out. What sucks is that with them being so slim, there was only one flowmaster that was close, and even that was about 1/2" thicker. I had to custom make extensions to make them fit. The straight ones I had made at a muffler shop, and the ones for the resonators I made myself using a stainless ''U'' bend that I bought at a local performance store. (You know, the ones that sell COMPLETE SYSTEMS IN ANY SIZE FOR ANY CHEVY! ) :spank: :rant: :af: :blast: I saved the brackets from my old rear pipes and welded them onto the bends in the correct spots. Jegs probably has them too. I found the photos in my archives: :Brow:
Dale, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some variation from system to system, especially between different production runs. I initially thought that I was going to have interference with the tires in the wheelwells at first. But I repositioned the pipe to run right below the lip of the frame where the spring pocket is. So it is sort of tucked beneath that and closer to the coil spring. This gives me plenty of clearance, even with the 255 width tires I run. I'm actually working on my Riviera right now, so got some shots of the system since the car was already up with the rear tires off. You can also see how I redid the intermediate hanger to position the pipe higher. In the third shot, you can see the weld where I had to remove a section because that run was too long. I was substantially too long, placing the muffler out beyond the rocker panel, so several inches came out of it. I can't imagine how that would have been correct for any muffler configuration unless it had the inlet along the outer edge. The other side worked fine with the center in muffler setup, so naturally I wanted the center in type on the right side also.
David, I seem to recall that Yardley had the same problem with that passenger side down pipe. Both of mine fit perfectly. Just had to add length to the tail of them to move the mufflers back behind the floor brace. I'm going from memory here, but I think the pipes you have that run over the rear axle are bent differently than mine. I don't think mine have as sharp of a turn at the top as yours. Maybe they revised it? o No:
Dale, does that mean that my exclusive Walker lifetime muffler warranties are not worth the paper they are written on ? ou: David, I don't think that right angle bend over the rear axle is OEM, but hey, as long as it works ! Nice pics. :TU:
