Well, time for another update. Everything went smoothly with the remainder of the engine timing rebuild project. New seals and gaskets went in and the engine bay stuff was reassembled soon after my last post.
What's new is on the exhaust front.
Here's the old muffler with some of the pipe that comes in from the cat. It was clamped together as you can see in the premortem pic couple of posts back.
I had a chance to shoot a short vid with the exhaust ending at the cat. (STRAIGHT PIPES OH YEAH.) Some of you may have already seen it in the other thread but here it is anyway.
It was loud and loud V8's are always fun but obviously, despite the grin on my face, it doesn't compare to a nice exhaust setup. The exhaust note with straight pipes is always very rough and edgy.
Test fitting the Magnapacks.
Some of the catback pipe complete, test fitting the muffler. As you can see there's very little clearance between the muffler tips and the rear skirt, this is definitely the largest muffler you can fit on a SEC. Any longer and you'd have the carve up the bumper to get the tips to fit. At this size it was still possible to fabricate corner pieces like the original muffler and have the tips protrude where they should, through an incision in the bumper.
Here's a closeup of the tightest space.
Muffler goes exactly where it should and hangs no lower than the stock exhaust, stuff like that is important to me personally.
Getting the clearance issues near the driveshaft sorted required some gentle adjustments.
Nearly finished shape.
New setup fabricated and installed.
Tips. They're a bit larger and obviously different shape than on the C124 but the configuration and feel is pretty much the same. Couldn't get a pic from behind but will get one once the car is on the road again.
First impressions on the new exhaust: it was much quieter than I expected which is nice considering the extra expense of adding the resonators, I'm glad they worked. Haven't heard them in real use yet which is always a killer, I know from experience Magnas get a lot louder when they get up to temperature. I hope there isn't too much drone.
Unlike on the C124 the sound is very very Magnaflow-like. Just like most Magnaflow setups on YouTube. This is a good thing as I'm very much a fan of the note. Here's a vid I shot at the garage, more will come when I get the car on the road.
(If it says unavailable, that's because YouTube hasn't finished processing it yet, it took until the next day with the straight pipes vid and I can't be arsed to wait until tomorrow to post this. YouTube sucks these days but what can you do.)
Next up are the interior switches and blower motor. In addition, correctness of the fuel mixture is still unclear and it's still idling 200 rpms too high. It's possible the garage can't fix it, in which case I'm planning on running another idle speed controller from a guy who also owns a 560SEC and seeing if that drops the idle speed. Also, there's the side panels, rustproofing etc. Still a lot to do.
I haven't received the BBS's yet either which is not great because of multiple reasons. First, I was stupid enough to pay in advance and they are now very very late. Getting worried. Also, the car's slowly but surely reaching completion at the garage, winter has arrived while the car's been there and it's running summers. I won't drive a yard with summers in these conditions, it's full-blown winter outside. Also, time-wise, when/if I
do receive the wheels, it's another week till I receive the GoodYear Ultra Grip Ice+ tires I'll be putting on them. Atm it's looking like the car will have to remain at the garage in a completed state for some time...