Project FD RX7 Restomod: Part 27 – Fabricating the Exhaust with Vibrant Performance and SP Mufflers

As we connected the center muffler to the rear muffler, we can see the finish welded segments near the 3.5” Vibrant Performance V-band clamp and SP Muffler, and we can see the thin pie-cut that was marked and tacked in place for final fitment.  Since everything lined up, this pie-cut would be finish welded after the next hour-long drive back to the fabrication shop.  We spent a lot of time to ensure plenty of clearance to the chassis, differential, and driveshaft.

We also paid a lot of attention to detail to ensure the exhaust was tucked-up in the chassis and did not hang below the plane of the bottom of the car.  This takes a lot more time to achieve, but we did not want the exhaust to scrape over speed bumps, and we wanted the possibility to flat-bottom the car with underbody aero in the future.

If you have been wondering why we would go through so much trouble of using a fabricator an hour away from where our FD was living, this is why.  (Super) Mario from TSR Fabrication in Torrance, CA is one of the most talented fabricators in the country.

We used 3.5” Vibrant Performance V-band clamps on both sides of every muffler.  This allows us to service the car and even drop the rear subframe, while leaving the mufflers in place.  This also gives us the ability to quickly replace the center and/or rear muffler with straight pipes or different size mufflers in the future if we want to dial in the pitch and sound of our exhaust, without having to rebuild an entire downpipe-back or cat-back exhaust.

Mario’s dimes are outright art.

The SP Muffler’s 3.5” FD RX-7 Resonator is the perfect size to maximize sound reduction and reduce drone in the center of the car.  Now that the exhaust was complete from the center of the car out back, we started work on fabricating the exhaust forward to the turbo.