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I need to reduce and enlarge (depending on which side you are working on), the rear muffler pipes of my 1965 S type to accept the tail tips of a 1986 XJ-S V12.
Why? because I want XJ-S stainless tips in the S type. (the original tips are stainless too but I want rolled edges).
here's the issue I am faced with:
The XJ-S tips are approx. 1/8" inch larger in diameter than the S type's rear resonator end pipes.
Yes I know I can go to autozone and get reducers / enlargers, but I do not want to use metal because those reducers will rust and "weld" themselves onto the pipes,
making it impossible to remove later if I wanted to go back to the original S type tips.
is there any other material that can be used? Carbon Fiber? will it withstand heat and not melt? PVC? (plumbing variety), I can get those at Lowe's.
Any suggestions on how to do this mod a reversible mod? ( I prefer reversible mods ). No drilling, no alterations to the resonator pipes.
google stainless exhaust. there are many suppliers of just about any piece you would need or could fab online. I have used spin tech mufflers to build complete custom stainless exhaust systems before. Everything from adapters, flex, straights, bends etc look at flex joints, and why not metal? what material were you thinking of? plastic, wood??
If you know someone with a lathe they can easily make them out of aluminum. Definitely don't use PVC unless you want a gooy mess. But as mentioned above they are available in stainless.
but I keep asking, would Carbon Fiber or PVC melt when the muffler pipes get hot ? I don't want metal, even stainless steel will "weld" itself to the resonator pipe or to the tip.
You can use metal and coat with anti seize and they will not stick. Otherwise steel or aluminum they will not be easy to seperate later. Never seize is high temp too not that a tail pipe see's too high a temps
now that Jeff partly resolved the issue, (all I need is a sleeve over the resonator pipe),
and to elaborate on this, the 1965 S type exhaust system is almost identical to the Series 1, 2, and 3 XJ-6 exhaust system.
here's a picture of the Bell system I installed in the S type.
Here is two solutions that might meet your criteria for reversable
You might think about using a silicone couplers like they use on turbo cars for intercooler plumbing. A company called Vibrant makes them and claims they are good to 500F.
For just a eighth of an inch difference I would think the silicone would stretch that much.. You can buy a stainless t bolt clamp from them to hold it together.
I can't imagine the tailpipe of a passenger care could get that hot.
There is also exhaust band clamps available and I believe some have a step in them to go from one pipe size to another. Search 'exhaust band clamp'
Since they don't deform the pipe, they come apart easily and can be reused many times. Buy the stainless ones
A solution that would give you interchangeability but not reversibility would be to weld on some v-band (Marman) clamps, but you would have to have the smaller tube swaged up the eighth of an inch difference. I've built these into exhaust systems before and it makes taking them apart a treat.
the XJ-S tips have their own Band-style clamps, the same clamps as used in the XJ-6 and XJ-40 until 1992 and maybe until later in the XJ-40.
Yesterday I measured the S type's resonator end pipe. It measures 1" + 5/8" + 1/16" or 1 and 11/16" outside diameter.
The XJ-S tips are 1/8" wider inside diameter.
that is the difference I need to build up.
so a Silicone sleeve could do it? I have used a silicone reducer / seal at the air filter housing-to-carb intake union and it has outlasted the original factory rubber seal which deteriorates quickly with engine heat. You can see the silicone reducer-seal in the photo below:
Jose,
I can tell you from my own experience, you do NOT want any form of Plastic in that or any other part of your exhaust system.
Summer of '18 one of my curved tips fell off, and as I didn't notice for a while, I drove a couple hundred miles with hot exhaust right out of the resonator, about 8 inches onto the plastic bumper cover. I only noticed the missing tip when the car was on a lift checking something else. Hot exhaust gas in that couple hundred tipless miles had MELTED a large section of the bumper cover!
I was quite astonished! I had always assumed the pipe was far enough away from the engine to be too hot to touch, yes, but Not hot enough to melt the bumper!
I was able to carve the melted part off so it's not noticeable by a casual observer but just barely. Curved tip successfully replaced and WELDED to the resonator.
(';')
Elinor I always worry about those tips falling off my XJ-6 so I replaced the little hex screws with longer ones made of kriptonite and tightened them good.
if the hex screws get stuck due to rust or whatever, or if the hex hole strips, I have some length outside of the clamp to grab them and turn them after blasting them with rust busting spray. You can get new ones at ACE Hardware.
Are you sure yours fell off? or could it have been stolen? If it wasn't tight enough, it could have been grabbed and turned until it came off. You never know.
you can see in the picture what I want to do: From the 1965 S type tips, to the 1986 XJ-S tips.
If you know someone with a lathe they can easily make them out of aluminum. Definitely don't use PVC unless you want a gooy mess. But as mentioned above they are available in stainless.
It's never a good idea to connect Aluminium to Steel (of any kind) they do not like each other and the Steel usually wins.
I could do that with a loaner tool from autozone but then it will not be reversible if the original tips were to be installed again. For example if I sell the car (which I am not planning on doing), with my luck, the buyer would say" Oh but those are not the original tips". It never fails.
I think your best bet would be to get hold of a 2" section of stainless steel pipe with an inside diameter that fits snugly over the inner (smallest diameter) exhaust pipe and with a wall thickness of 1/16". A single cut along the length of this pipe will create a bush that can be used to mate the two sections of the exhaust using a little exhaust sealant on both the inside and outside surfaces of the bush. You can then either clamp the components together or drill one or more small diameter holes to take stainless steel self tapping screws. If someone ever wants to replace the tail pipes it should be easy to remove the bush by prying it open along the cut in its side.
I posted and it got lost. I blame IE. I'm a creature of habit, but I'm about at the nd of the rope. and, my yahoo email will be affected in a day or so!!!
Nuttin but metal has much of a survival chance there. More heat, as Elinor reports than one thinks.
I hope you are going from small to large and not from large to small??? former, fie, latter, not so much....
Yes, indeed there is an issue with dissimilar metals. Alloy on steel. Examlwe getting the head of an XK engine after a hundred or so thou...
If you are dead set on it, bushing and lots of antiseize…
Side bar. My "resonators" are merely small "glass packs". All, including tips welded in place. good thing they are sound. Disassembly would only be by recip saw or blue wrench !!! .