Exhaust Replacement
So far my car has had two exhausts from Tiger. The first was brand new, and supplied on the car when I bought it from Tiger. It lasted about 3000 miles, by which time all the packing was long gone. It would ring like a bell when tapped with a spanner ... not particularly impressive when you consider that I was only running a standard 2.0 Pinto back then. When we completely rebuilt my car Andy McMinn had just swapped to Vauxhall power, and his old partly used can was given a new home on my car.
Unfortunately, that can has also given up, this time after only a few hundred miles, probably because it had a hard life on Andys car, and my new engine has been running lean, and therefore hot. So, time to find a new exhaust, as these are not repackable. Last time I checked, a replacement from Tiger is about £120, and still not repackable. Frankly, it seemed more sensible to pay more for one that I could repack in the future.
I checked out the usual suspects, in the form of Custom Chrome, Wunoff, etc, and in general, the cost was around the £200 mark. Then I came across a chap on the locost forum who was making and selling cans from his garage. The feedback on the forum was excellent, and it transpired that his day job was building large pressure vessels ... so he really could weld. Neil Wain ordered one for his Striker, and when it arrived I popped down to have a look at it. To describe it as a work of art would be an understatement. So I ordered one for my Six, with a longer than normal inlet to suit the location of the bracket and collector on my car. Total cost, in a combination of stainless steel and titanium, £90. Bargain.
Unfortunately when I tried to fit it to the car, I appear to have a slight problem with alignment. The primaries are actually angled slightly down, and the Tiger collector exaggerates this, meaning that the straight exhaust points significantly downwards. The old Tiger can that I removed seems to have a slightly angled inlet (though whether this is by luck or design is anyones guess!)
By applying upwards pressure to the can, and putting the rear mounting point under some tension, I've got the can so it doesn't trail on the ground, but its a long way from parallel to it. Aesthetically, its not very good, and its also fractionally lower than the bottom of the car ... close enough to the ground to be at risk of making contact with things like speed bumps ... not good. So, I'm now trying to work out what to do about it. You can see the problem in the following picture.
Update
The solution, is to modify the collector. By half-cutting the output pipe of the collector, from the top to the median line just behind the 4-1 section, and then grinding away material from the edges of the cut with an angle-grinder, it's possible to adjust (bend!) the collector so it corrects the downward slant. I needed a little help from a man with the skills and equipment to weld stainless though - thanks Nev!
The bracket also needed adjusting, so as to step the silencer can out from the bodywork, and hold it level with the bottom edge of the side of the car. This simply involved putting an "S" bend into the bracket, which also had the benefit of reducing the height of the protuding bracket to the point where it's all but hidden behind the can now. Mind you ... there was nothing simple about putting an "S" bend in that bracket, since it was made of 4mm stainless steel!