An expensive lesson can be learned when you here the words “One Off, bespoke, handcrafted, stainless steel exhaust system”. Most of the time this is music to a classic car owners ears. But, in this case the exhaust was indeed a one-off. The car was picked up and the owner knew something was wrong straight away. The car was making a horrible noise and pretty undriveable since the exhaust was fitted. The exhaust was taken to another place to be sorted and it was improved, but again it was still not right. The car was eventually brought into our workshops where we had a look at it and found the problem. Not the material itself, but the quality of workmanship and maybe a lack of understanding. So we cut it off and threw it away as it couldn’t be salvaged.

The mufflers were not a well know brand and looked similar to a very well-known brand should we say. The exhaust was made of many sections as you would expect and welded together, not very well. The mounting of the exhaust was the serious problem to start with. A right-angled bracket was welded to the rear of the chassis and a corresponding right angle was then welded to the exhaust. Now you should always hang an exhaust on straps or rubber to allow the exhaust to move with the engine and any resonance would be dispersed from the exhaust. This hand crafted exhaust was then unbelievably welded bracket to bracket at the rear. A “one off” alright, we haven’t seen that before.

No wonder the noise was bad and that didn’t include the poor exhaust note either. To rectify the problem we could make another stainless system again and do it properly, or get a Scott Drake Flowmaster system from stock and bolt it all on with the correct brackets and hangers. We did the later as requested and here we have a full sequence of pics of another new exhaust fitted, correctly this time from front to back.

The car now sounds like a Mustang should and drives as expected. So next time you hear the words “One Off, bespoke, handcrafted, stainless steel exhaust system”, ask yourself who will be fitting it! It’s all in the detail and knowing how to fit it properly.

We didn’t get to post last week as Mustang Maniac and Friends were out to a Classic Car Show simply known as “A602 Autorama” in Stevenage. The weather was not to bad with the odd few rays of sun shine but the rain held off which is the main thing at all these shows. It was up early for some of us, no names mentioned who that was though Lance! As always there were lots of nice cars there so we thought we would focus on the Mustangs.

It was a good show and some very nice cars there, far to many to take up space on a Mustang post. 😉

Customer Cars:

John Wick is proving to be the popular car and questions about the build from visitors. Over the coming week we hope to fill with fluids and fire her up. This will check the electrics out, and the fact the engine will run. Fine tuning will come later after a road test or three. The glass is all in now and has taken time to set them up correctly.

Question:

What do you do with old doors that have gone rusty?

Answer: You make a sign out of them of course.