With the changing weather we get just as many requests to change our customer’s cars. Most of the time it’s aesthetics to make them very personalised then there are tweaks to the engine or performance and handling of course. Every so often we get a change like this recent change. The exhaust system has been converted from the headers to make it an also open header system.

This particular upgrade is an electronically controlled valve that is manually opened via a switch inside the car. The butterfly inside the pipe opens and diverts the exhaust gases straight out by passing the rest of the exhaust system.

This has an advantage of giving more power as there is no back pressure, this will allow the gases to escape from the chambers and pipes as soon as they are burnt. The other side effect is that the car gets loud, very loud. Of course this open header situation would only be used in limited situations like a race track or drag strip. It would have nothing to do with drowning out the little boy racers, or ricers that think that their one inch exhaust pipe, that comes with the mandatory tail pipe the size of a bucket, (also know as a fart can); They obviously think that their exhaust sounds better than pure American Muscle V8. The starting up of such an engine in this situation is not recommended first thing in the morning, especially after the neighbours come home boozed up and making lots of noise. We wouldn’t want you to disturb them just for the sake of it as it could aggravate their hang overs with the sound of Hell’s thunder. Anyway back to the motorised valves, these will require some adjustments to the chassis and Yogi cut some holes in the chassis rails to mount them correctly.

We recommend mounting the mechanism as high as possible to give as much ground clearance as possible. Part of the front pipe needs to cut away from behind the to allow the “Y” junction pipes to fit into place without disturbing the rest of the exhaust backwards. You never know, we may just fit some small turndown pipes on this 289cid,  just because we can.

Customer Cars:
The 1970 fastback that Yogi declared a war of rust on has been coming along nicely. The floor pans had been completely removed and the front chassis legs had been replaced. Yogi had a helping hand from Sam who broke the Red Oxide out and started to treat the new metal inside the the chassis legs.

The seat platform and the floor pans were given a good coating to prevent any further rust. A process often missed when restoring with new panel work. The torque boxes were treated at the same time as the welding was done to put the floor pan back in place.

The floor pan in place and ground down for a smooth finish.

The seat platform was welded in place after the underside of the base was treated.

The platform was added and welded into place.

Once Yogi was happy Sam got to work with the brush treating all the inner side of the new floor pan.

Next week we would like to get going on the other side as well. But, like all these things we have a lot of cars due in. Providing nothing takes longer than we think it should then we will be OK. Like we predicted the rust don’t stand a chance!