Project SR E30: Part 8 – Fabricating a Custom Stainless Steel Oval Exhaust
Acetone wiping stainless steel exhaust pipe before welding
The last step is to wipe down the inside and outside of the joint with acetone.
Back purging stainless steel oval exhaust pipe
Now that everything is ready, we seal up the pipe and purge it. Note the angle of the gas flow.
Welding stainless steel exhaust pipe
After all that work, we can finally weld. Welding stainless properly is not easy but it’s worth the effort.
Stainless steel exhaust weld porn
The good news is that stainless steel has incredibly pretty colors if you get the gas timing and travel speed right. It makes all the effort satisfying.
Pie cutting oval exhaust pipe
When we went to test fit the newly welded section, we realized that we need to angle the joint to the downpipe a little in order for the exhaust to be flat with the floor of the car. We added a small angle cut to the joint that’s supposed to meet the downpipe.

5 comments

    1. At the time, we couldn’t find any decent oval exhaust flanges that wouldn’t have taken away from the ground clearance.

      That being said, the exhaust is actually pretty easy to remove.

  1. Nice work, I was gonna see if you can check out the treehouse racing lollypops. they are smaller in physical size and gain more clearance. Your build reminds me of one of my friends who went KA-t in an e30 and it ran pretty gnar.

    Tip: might want to 2-piece the exhaust for when you need to change out the guibo, subframe bushings, and other rear maintenance.

    1. Yeah we’re definitely going to switch to a heim-style lolipop bushing down the line. I’ve gotten that burning polyurethane smell a couple of times already.

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