Since the car was in the air, I had a look at the exhaust. I was planning on waiting to install the Stebro but this was a good opportunity to mount it. Removal of the stock muffler was pretty simple. The OEM muffler is a tank! It must weight twice as much as the Stebro.
There are standard exhaust donuts at each mounting flange and these needed to be replaced. Fel-Pro makes donuts for Chevy systems that are the right size and I picked some up from Napa. I also replaced all the mounting bolts. On disassembly, I noticed that one of the catalytic converters had a hole near one of the mounting flanges. Before putting it back on, I sealed up the hole with my MIG welder.
The Stebro was a direct bolt-in replacement. All of the mounting points and flanges are in exactly the same places as the stock muffler. Once I had all the parts, putting everything back together was pretty simple.
So the real question is, how does it sound? Well, it definitely sounds better than stock. The exhaust sound is not necessary louder, but the note is noticeably lower. At higher RPMs, the sound is more full and not as thin as stock. Overall, I give it two thumbs up!
Since I had the welder out, I decided to tackle another small project. With a new set of wheels, I was going to use one of my old wheels as the spare tire. I was missing the bolt to hold the spare tire in the well so I set about to make one. An OEM replacement is $200 and an aftermarket one is $100. Wow! We're talking about a bolt with a knob at the end. There's no way I'm paying that much for a stupid bolt so I'm going to make one that will work. I had a bolt that was the correct thread, but it was a little too short. First, I welded this bolt to another bolt to get the length I needed. Then I drilled, tapped and shaped the head to accept a faucet knob that I found at the hardware store. Result? I now have a bolt to hold the spare tire and it cost me less than $5 in parts.
I'm taking the car to an All Italian Car Show tomorrow. Let's hope for good weather!
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