MuscleCar Builds
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Join the PowerNation Email NewsletterParts Used In This Episode
Afco Racing Products
Dynatech Cobra 4V header flanges with stubs.
Design Engineering, Inc. (DEI)
Heat Screen Radiant Matting.
Holley
Hooker mandrel bent exhaust primaries tubing, various bends. Hooker Super Competition formed collectors.
Episode Transcript
Today on muscle car alter ego gets an exhaust that stifle for the street, but scream at the strip including Tommy's custom headers and Rick's personal take on glass packs. Plus swing back to 69 in Dodges mini muscle car.
Hey guys, welcome to muscle car. There's a lot of work to be done on alter egos. We rolled her back into the shop to see if we can throw some more metal at her. Now, everything on this car has been one off and the headers aren't gonna be any different.
That's right. This is a, a FX car. So we knew from day one we'd be using a lot of welding wire, cut off wheels and a whole bunch of creativity
rolled in as a plain Jane 64 Comet. But we've altered the wheelbase stiffened it up, welded in a roll cage, swapped out the steering redesigned, the suspension
added a fuel cell and
fed up some aluminum race seats.
Now, the headers need to be period. Correct, because they're a major part of the style on these cars and that means a big old mess of tubes hanging out behind the front tire here. But it's also got to be street legal. So we're gonna take the exhaust. We run all the way out the back and use cut outs for the track. There's not a lot of off the shelf options available when you're grafting a 4.6 Ford into a Mercury Comic. A FX car. Even FLS
are hard to find. But we found some at dyno
when building headers completely from scratch, you already know where you're starting. You just need to establish where you're going to end up.
One way to do. This is to tack the collectors in place first. This also makes it easier to keep both sides symmetrical.
Most companies offer stubs for their fangs and it's a good idea to order them longer than you need so you can trim them to fit.
You also may be trimming a pinch weld here there. But our comet is used to being chopped up. So that's no big deal. If you're only building one set of headers, you can get by with a cut off wheel or AA.
But a band saw will greatly speed up the process and give you straighter cuts. Those straight cuts really add up when you're butt welding 20 pieces of tubing together.
We began with a big pile of Mandle bent header tubing from hooker and just started eyeballing the bench to make our cuts.
Now, we've got to make sure this here. Header meets dad's approval. All right,
son,
we think Paul.
Good job. Boy.
Normally we would tig weld and metal finish these joints for our parents, but we're planning on having them coated. So we're gonna save a little time and just mig weld them up.
Welding the seams. You can get to while it's still mounted on the car ensures that it will keep its shape when removed. The rest can be welded while it's on the table.
Since we want to be able to uncork these headers, we need to build some caps. There's a couple of ways to do this
weld on a three bolt flange and build a cover port or you can build a cap with one center bolt.
We think the center bolt looks cleaner and it is easier to remove. So that's what we're going with.
I'm using a lathe to cut out the disc for the caps, but a cut off wheel or banda
and grinder will work too.
And Rick will be showing you how that's done later in the show
to make things easier on myself. I'm bolting the cap down to the table before attaching the band that will form the lip.
Since header leaks are nothing less than annoying. We're making gaskets out of mylar heat screen from de I to seal them up.
Well, that'll cap it off to make it street legal, but I know what you're thinking this is not gonna work. Where's the exhaust gonna go?
Well, we're gonna cut a port somewhere in here to match up to the pipes running out back. But we're gonna wait until we get the headers back on the car so we can finish up the exhaustion
after the break. Rick builds his own glass pack mufflers and later a budget muscle car aimed at shooting down the Nova Ss.
Hey guys, welcome back. You know, it's no big secret that our common is gonna be spending most of its life on the track. But hey, we still want to be able to hit the burger joints once in a while without Johnny Law coming down on us. And that means, yeah, we're gonna have to run mufflers. Now, there's literally hundreds of different ones out there in the market. They range in price anywhere from 10 bucks to 1000 bucks. But since we've already hand built 99% of this car,
hey, we couldn't bring ourselves to pick up a phone and order a set now. So we're gonna build our own.
Now, these cutaways show three basic types of mufflers. Now, the Baffle design uses sound wave cancellation to reduce noise.
The blow through design dates back to the earliest engines and absorb sound but doesn't impede flow. These are also known as glass packs and some mufflers like this one use a combination of baffling and sound absorption. Now, we want the comet to sound like it looks. So we're going with the glass pack design
and the concept is pretty simple perforated inner core wrapped with a sand absorbent material all encased in an outer shell. I'm using 2.5 inch pipe for our center because that's the same size as the rest of the exhaust is gonna be for sound absorption. I'm gonna use a layer of steel wool wrapped up with a layer of fiberglass. Then I'll take all of that, shove it in a chunk of four inch pipe and cap the ends
in this part of the process. It was bad enough with the drill press. Now you could do it with a hand drill and advice, but prepare yourself for a long day in the shop and some sore arms the next day. A free T shirt to anyone that can tell me how many holes I just drilled.
I'm using 14 gauge steel to build the Incas.
Now earlier, Tommy used the lathe to cut off precise discs for the header caps, but I know most of you guys don't have a lathe.
Now, another way to get the same result is a drill press and a hole saw
with the centers punched out the pieces can be finished with a band saw or an aa
before assembling the mufflers, I'm grinding off the burrs left behind by the drill press. That way, everything will slip together. Nice and easy,
cool. I love it.
Time to pack it.
We're using plain old coarse steel wool for the inner layer, just unroll it and wrap it around the core as evenly as possible.
Next comes the fiberglass, we're gonna use a double layer, a tight woven mat that'll help resist the heat.
Cool almost there kind of welded up.
And that's it. Guys. I ain't gonna sit here and try to tell you that building your own mufflers is gonna save you time or money because it's not. But if you like me and you like building stuff, go out there and build a set of mufflers man, see what you come up with. Besides, it's one more piece on the car that you can point to and say
I built that
up next. Meet the littlest member of Dodges SCAT pack.
Restore your classic pick up SUV or suburban at shop. Classic Truck, parts.com. We stock anything and everything for Ford, Chevy GM and Dodge trucks, complete bodies, complete interiors, fuel systems, hard parts, chrome trim accessories and more log on now and save
the all new power block directory. Your source for everything. Automotive find all the brand and parts. Thousands of racetracks from Daytona to Long Beach, plus events, clubs and more the all new power block directory. Your source for everything. Automotive only at Power Block tv.com.
Today's flashback. A 69 Dodge Dart Swinger.
What better way to enjoy the swinging sixties than in a 69 Dart Swinger.
The Dodge boys dreamed up this mini muscle car to snag buyer Strat for cash pocking it at 6000 RPM for under three grand.
For that price tag. You could get anything from a straight six up to a 383 magnum.
But the real muscle came when you ordered the 340 package,
2800 bucks got you all the standard muscle car goodies like heavy duty rally suspension, firm ride shots and dual chrome tipped exhaust.
Plus you got a four speed hearst shifter pulling a set of 323 gears
giving you full control as you swing into action.
It's just a real smooth driving. A car shifts. Good drives, good
runs down the road real good.
He's got a lot of speed.
Power bulges on the hood announced what was brewing underneath
Dodges coach 340 small block
V8
churned out 275 horses of 5000 RPM.
Now that was less than 383 but it made up for it by being 90 pounds lighter,
making it perfectly balanced for the small car
bumblebee stripes. Tagged it as a junior member of Dodge's elite scat pack which included the Super Bee
and Chargers.
It could run with a big boy knocking out quarter mile times in the mid fours
and hit 60 in just six seconds.
It may be 40 years old but it's still got plenty of power. The swing of 340 only came in a two door coupe with slick options like this black vinyl roof
and an exclusive bright red paint color
sheet metal was the same as 68 Darts with minor changes to the grill
and tail lights
on the inside. The car was all business and no frills. The bench seats were standard and there was plenty of room for all your buddies. By today's standards. It's nowhere near a compact. It's only one inch shorter than a Dodge magnum
Darts also came with a GTs package that was virtually identical to the Swinger except it had a 440 options,
more blink and a higher price tag
car life rated the Swinger. The best compact of 1969 Raven. It was a small car that was actually fun to drive.
Its main rival was the Chevy Nova Ss,
which would run you about 300 bucks more for the same amount of performance
of all the muscle cars that year.
This one was by far the best bang for the buck.
How about 10 bucks per horsepower plus being so small. It flew under the muscle car radar of insurance companies saving you even more green.
The car was a hit in its first year with over 16,000 sold and Dodge continued swinging well into the seventies.
The 69 swinger 340 is still a good bargain today for anyone looking to own a classic piece of American muscle.
When you're driving a classic, you feel like a classic
coming up. Altered ego meets the bacon Master two thousands. See how they're hanging.
You're watching muscle car for a DVD copy of this episode. Just go to Power Block tv.com and order your copy for just 595 plus shipping and handling. Start your own muscle car collection delivered right to your door from the power block,
restore your classic pickup SUV or suburban at shop, classic truck, parts.com. We stock anything and everything for Ford, Chevy GM and Dodge trucks, complete bodies, complete interiors, fuel systems, hard parts, chrome trim accessories and more log on now and save.
Hey guys, welcome back. It's time to unplug this exhaust. And that means we need to decide where we're gonna knock a hole in these collectors. That's gonna have to be a pretty sharp angle here which I know doesn't exactly maximize air flow. But the point here is to get this thing just legal enough that we can get it to the track, then we'll uncork it, make some passes.
All right, man. What do you think you can be turned this way? Just, hey,
they just keep a nice air gap in here. So we're not burning the floorboards, right?
We got plenty of room for hangers.
We're on board of the rail.
Yeah, just I
would work.
I think that'll work right there
and uh
six
mhm
exhaust jacks will keep everything in place while we're laying it out. Temporary hangers will also help hold it together until the real ones are installed,
right?
Uh
About there about 10 inches.
Yeah. Shot. Muffler.com has a lot of cool stuff, but they don't carry the Bacon Master two thousands. You're only gonna find these under altered ego.
Hey, man, got the clamps. Sweet. That's all we lack other than burning this thing all together. Right on. But for this week we're out of time. So, and until next time we're out of here.
Show Full Transcript
Hey guys, welcome to muscle car. There's a lot of work to be done on alter egos. We rolled her back into the shop to see if we can throw some more metal at her. Now, everything on this car has been one off and the headers aren't gonna be any different.
That's right. This is a, a FX car. So we knew from day one we'd be using a lot of welding wire, cut off wheels and a whole bunch of creativity
rolled in as a plain Jane 64 Comet. But we've altered the wheelbase stiffened it up, welded in a roll cage, swapped out the steering redesigned, the suspension
added a fuel cell and
fed up some aluminum race seats.
Now, the headers need to be period. Correct, because they're a major part of the style on these cars and that means a big old mess of tubes hanging out behind the front tire here. But it's also got to be street legal. So we're gonna take the exhaust. We run all the way out the back and use cut outs for the track. There's not a lot of off the shelf options available when you're grafting a 4.6 Ford into a Mercury Comic. A FX car. Even FLS
are hard to find. But we found some at dyno
when building headers completely from scratch, you already know where you're starting. You just need to establish where you're going to end up.
One way to do. This is to tack the collectors in place first. This also makes it easier to keep both sides symmetrical.
Most companies offer stubs for their fangs and it's a good idea to order them longer than you need so you can trim them to fit.
You also may be trimming a pinch weld here there. But our comet is used to being chopped up. So that's no big deal. If you're only building one set of headers, you can get by with a cut off wheel or AA.
But a band saw will greatly speed up the process and give you straighter cuts. Those straight cuts really add up when you're butt welding 20 pieces of tubing together.
We began with a big pile of Mandle bent header tubing from hooker and just started eyeballing the bench to make our cuts.
Now, we've got to make sure this here. Header meets dad's approval. All right,
son,
we think Paul.
Good job. Boy.
Normally we would tig weld and metal finish these joints for our parents, but we're planning on having them coated. So we're gonna save a little time and just mig weld them up.
Welding the seams. You can get to while it's still mounted on the car ensures that it will keep its shape when removed. The rest can be welded while it's on the table.
Since we want to be able to uncork these headers, we need to build some caps. There's a couple of ways to do this
weld on a three bolt flange and build a cover port or you can build a cap with one center bolt.
We think the center bolt looks cleaner and it is easier to remove. So that's what we're going with.
I'm using a lathe to cut out the disc for the caps, but a cut off wheel or banda
and grinder will work too.
And Rick will be showing you how that's done later in the show
to make things easier on myself. I'm bolting the cap down to the table before attaching the band that will form the lip.
Since header leaks are nothing less than annoying. We're making gaskets out of mylar heat screen from de I to seal them up.
Well, that'll cap it off to make it street legal, but I know what you're thinking this is not gonna work. Where's the exhaust gonna go?
Well, we're gonna cut a port somewhere in here to match up to the pipes running out back. But we're gonna wait until we get the headers back on the car so we can finish up the exhaustion
after the break. Rick builds his own glass pack mufflers and later a budget muscle car aimed at shooting down the Nova Ss.
Hey guys, welcome back. You know, it's no big secret that our common is gonna be spending most of its life on the track. But hey, we still want to be able to hit the burger joints once in a while without Johnny Law coming down on us. And that means, yeah, we're gonna have to run mufflers. Now, there's literally hundreds of different ones out there in the market. They range in price anywhere from 10 bucks to 1000 bucks. But since we've already hand built 99% of this car,
hey, we couldn't bring ourselves to pick up a phone and order a set now. So we're gonna build our own.
Now, these cutaways show three basic types of mufflers. Now, the Baffle design uses sound wave cancellation to reduce noise.
The blow through design dates back to the earliest engines and absorb sound but doesn't impede flow. These are also known as glass packs and some mufflers like this one use a combination of baffling and sound absorption. Now, we want the comet to sound like it looks. So we're going with the glass pack design
and the concept is pretty simple perforated inner core wrapped with a sand absorbent material all encased in an outer shell. I'm using 2.5 inch pipe for our center because that's the same size as the rest of the exhaust is gonna be for sound absorption. I'm gonna use a layer of steel wool wrapped up with a layer of fiberglass. Then I'll take all of that, shove it in a chunk of four inch pipe and cap the ends
in this part of the process. It was bad enough with the drill press. Now you could do it with a hand drill and advice, but prepare yourself for a long day in the shop and some sore arms the next day. A free T shirt to anyone that can tell me how many holes I just drilled.
I'm using 14 gauge steel to build the Incas.
Now earlier, Tommy used the lathe to cut off precise discs for the header caps, but I know most of you guys don't have a lathe.
Now, another way to get the same result is a drill press and a hole saw
with the centers punched out the pieces can be finished with a band saw or an aa
before assembling the mufflers, I'm grinding off the burrs left behind by the drill press. That way, everything will slip together. Nice and easy,
cool. I love it.
Time to pack it.
We're using plain old coarse steel wool for the inner layer, just unroll it and wrap it around the core as evenly as possible.
Next comes the fiberglass, we're gonna use a double layer, a tight woven mat that'll help resist the heat.
Cool almost there kind of welded up.
And that's it. Guys. I ain't gonna sit here and try to tell you that building your own mufflers is gonna save you time or money because it's not. But if you like me and you like building stuff, go out there and build a set of mufflers man, see what you come up with. Besides, it's one more piece on the car that you can point to and say
I built that
up next. Meet the littlest member of Dodges SCAT pack.
Restore your classic pick up SUV or suburban at shop. Classic Truck, parts.com. We stock anything and everything for Ford, Chevy GM and Dodge trucks, complete bodies, complete interiors, fuel systems, hard parts, chrome trim accessories and more log on now and save
the all new power block directory. Your source for everything. Automotive find all the brand and parts. Thousands of racetracks from Daytona to Long Beach, plus events, clubs and more the all new power block directory. Your source for everything. Automotive only at Power Block tv.com.
Today's flashback. A 69 Dodge Dart Swinger.
What better way to enjoy the swinging sixties than in a 69 Dart Swinger.
The Dodge boys dreamed up this mini muscle car to snag buyer Strat for cash pocking it at 6000 RPM for under three grand.
For that price tag. You could get anything from a straight six up to a 383 magnum.
But the real muscle came when you ordered the 340 package,
2800 bucks got you all the standard muscle car goodies like heavy duty rally suspension, firm ride shots and dual chrome tipped exhaust.
Plus you got a four speed hearst shifter pulling a set of 323 gears
giving you full control as you swing into action.
It's just a real smooth driving. A car shifts. Good drives, good
runs down the road real good.
He's got a lot of speed.
Power bulges on the hood announced what was brewing underneath
Dodges coach 340 small block
V8
churned out 275 horses of 5000 RPM.
Now that was less than 383 but it made up for it by being 90 pounds lighter,
making it perfectly balanced for the small car
bumblebee stripes. Tagged it as a junior member of Dodge's elite scat pack which included the Super Bee
and Chargers.
It could run with a big boy knocking out quarter mile times in the mid fours
and hit 60 in just six seconds.
It may be 40 years old but it's still got plenty of power. The swing of 340 only came in a two door coupe with slick options like this black vinyl roof
and an exclusive bright red paint color
sheet metal was the same as 68 Darts with minor changes to the grill
and tail lights
on the inside. The car was all business and no frills. The bench seats were standard and there was plenty of room for all your buddies. By today's standards. It's nowhere near a compact. It's only one inch shorter than a Dodge magnum
Darts also came with a GTs package that was virtually identical to the Swinger except it had a 440 options,
more blink and a higher price tag
car life rated the Swinger. The best compact of 1969 Raven. It was a small car that was actually fun to drive.
Its main rival was the Chevy Nova Ss,
which would run you about 300 bucks more for the same amount of performance
of all the muscle cars that year.
This one was by far the best bang for the buck.
How about 10 bucks per horsepower plus being so small. It flew under the muscle car radar of insurance companies saving you even more green.
The car was a hit in its first year with over 16,000 sold and Dodge continued swinging well into the seventies.
The 69 swinger 340 is still a good bargain today for anyone looking to own a classic piece of American muscle.
When you're driving a classic, you feel like a classic
coming up. Altered ego meets the bacon Master two thousands. See how they're hanging.
You're watching muscle car for a DVD copy of this episode. Just go to Power Block tv.com and order your copy for just 595 plus shipping and handling. Start your own muscle car collection delivered right to your door from the power block,
restore your classic pickup SUV or suburban at shop, classic truck, parts.com. We stock anything and everything for Ford, Chevy GM and Dodge trucks, complete bodies, complete interiors, fuel systems, hard parts, chrome trim accessories and more log on now and save.
Hey guys, welcome back. It's time to unplug this exhaust. And that means we need to decide where we're gonna knock a hole in these collectors. That's gonna have to be a pretty sharp angle here which I know doesn't exactly maximize air flow. But the point here is to get this thing just legal enough that we can get it to the track, then we'll uncork it, make some passes.
All right, man. What do you think you can be turned this way? Just, hey,
they just keep a nice air gap in here. So we're not burning the floorboards, right?
We got plenty of room for hangers.
We're on board of the rail.
Yeah, just I
would work.
I think that'll work right there
and uh
six
mhm
exhaust jacks will keep everything in place while we're laying it out. Temporary hangers will also help hold it together until the real ones are installed,
right?
Uh
About there about 10 inches.
Yeah. Shot. Muffler.com has a lot of cool stuff, but they don't carry the Bacon Master two thousands. You're only gonna find these under altered ego.
Hey, man, got the clamps. Sweet. That's all we lack other than burning this thing all together. Right on. But for this week we're out of time. So, and until next time we're out of here.
