Str8Razor
SILVER Star
I've been fumbling around with hoses since I had my issues with my custom radiator, will give Top Hose: Gates 23283 a try, thanks for the tip...
Builds Gen IV LS/NV4500 Swap
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This is a VERY satisfying thread. Thanks!
nice....I like the air filter setup among the various other things. I acquired a FJ62 air filter assembly and I need to get a 80 series top as well. I wanted something more "water-proof"....I've been running the air filter assembly from a 99 ear GM truck which matches my engine but its far from water-proof, the FJ62-80 combination is a good approach. Some of the river/creek crossing had been a little bit nervous on the air intake sucking up water. Which likely is not fully solved unless you run a snorkel, but good options are worth pursuing.
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- #64
Yeah, one of my reasons for the FJ62 base was the ability to use a regular snorkel on it. I also looked at adapting some of the GM airboxes and intake tubes figuring they would flow well but it would be a lot more complicated to get an FJ60 snorkel connected to them. I test fit one from a 2012-ish pickup and it ran into the battery so that would have had to move too. This seemed the easier route and I like the Toyota OEM look.
- Thread starter
- #66
Sorry for the late response, been on the road over a month and am just now getting back to this. Can't say much other than they came from my box 'o random Toyota bolts. Probably M8 x 25 or something like that. The threaded inserts were already in the inner fender panel so there was not much to it.
- Thread starter
- #67
As noted above I've been traveling for a while and let the thread languish so time to get back to it. On the plus side, I can say that after about 3500 miles of driving this beast everything is going well. It's soooooo much nicer than the old 2F. 
I'll stick with the air/oil/fuel theme and cover the exhaust system next. I had a few general goals with the exhaust setup - first off I wanted it reasonably quiet since I plan to do a lot of long drives with it, and second I'd like it to be fairly clean to minimize any fuel smells. That meant finding a way to package the biggest muffler possible and a catalytic converter. I have used mostly Magnaflow and Flowmaster products in past projects and had good success with each. After scouring the web site of both companies to see the muffler options and measuring the space under the truck I finally selected Flowmaster 524703 as my muffler. I had a little concern about drone, but these 70-series large case designs are quite a bit different than the usual 2-chamber junk you hear on Mustangs. Driving it now, I can confirm that the sound is great with no highway drone and a nice rumble when you get on it.
This is a large muffler which makes packaging the cats pretty tight. There isn't room to put the cats close to the manifold and I wouldn't want that much heat there anyway, so I planned to do the crossover just behind the tcase and put the cats there. I looked at a lot of options for catalysts, there are some slick 2-into-1 setups and many sizes/lengths. Since this truck is not exactly built to CARB specs I opted for a simple universal Flowmaster 2230124 with a spun housing to keep the diameter as small as possible. You'll note that both these cats and the muffler are 2.25" pipe diameter. The reason for that is the flange on the exh manifold is set up for 2.25" pipe so of course that makes that easy and also to give me more room in the tight area beside the transmission.
The first step to building the system was placing the muffler. The case is extremely long so I was trying to balance competing demands - you need room up front to make the bend over the tcase and driveshaft but you need room in back to get around the shock and the axle. I wanted to use the factory mounts as much as possible and keep everything high for ground clearance so I put the muffler up into position with a floor jack to see how things fit...
You can't see the fore/aft location in that pic, but using the factory position for the exhaust bracket left me very little room in the rear to make the bend for the tailpipe. Eyeballing everything and lots of tape measure routing led me to believe it would be better to move the muffler a few inches forward. The simple solution to this was to shift the rear side of the bracket to the front-most set of holes in the frame and then add two nutserts, as shown below.
After that was done, I clearanced the back of the bracket a little bit to open it up where the muffler inlets flare to the body so that I could push the muffler as far forward as possible. To make the exhaust itself I ordered a number of mandrel bent J-bends, 45's and 90's from Summit and grabbed a piece of 1/2" round steel rod to make hangers. I ordered two V-band flange kits off ebay to put a disconnect point ahead of the cats in case I needed to remove the system.
The process started with moving the muffler back into position on a floor jack and then starting to work with the catalyst positions and crossover. The driver's side cat was an obvious fit directly in front of the muffler. I tacked those two together and then bent the first piece of rod to make a hanger. The easiest way to bend the rods is to chuck them in the vice and slip a piece of 3/4 OD pipe over them to get good leverage.
With the driver's side cat in place I then made a small S-bend out of two wedges of pipe to get up and over the crossmember. After that, I started on the passenger side. I could see this pipe would need to immediately start to turn and wanted to place the cat on a cross-wise position relative to the truck's centerline. Using one of the J-bends I came forward out of the muffler and turned right and up to get the pipe going up over the front U-joint. There's no magic to this fitting process, but having a bandsaw and a few extra hands helps a lot and making small cuts to inch your way up to the right position is certainly a good method, these mandrel bends aren't cheap. In front of the passenger cat i used a 45 degree bend and started to sweep around the transfer case to get towards the manifold. I put my v-band flange at the front of that 45 for the disconnect figuring I'd be able to wiggle everything out if I could break the connection there. Tacked together it all looks like this...
The forward extension pipes from there were pretty simple. Ideally I would have been able to run just a straight section with a 45 degree bend up to the flange, but both required a small bend mid pipe. On the passenger side I had the local exhaust shop put about 5 degress of bend in it using their bender. On the driver's side I put two shorter pieces together and put the slight bend in myself using a small wedge of the mandrel pipe. Here's a later shot after the truck was on the road showing the forward section installed...
The factory heat shield does a good job protecting the floor from the driver's side cat. The passenger one is higher up and close to the floor so I added a piece of stainless that you can see in the above photo for a little extra protection. It has a double 90 degree bend to make a flange that rests on the body crossmember and then I put nutserts in to hold it. The front position is held on what used to the heater pipe mount. With the truck driving now I've had no problems at all with heat in the floorboards.
Here's a final shot of the front section sitting on the shop floor, you can see the front pipes also have the O2 bungs now installed.
I'll stick with the air/oil/fuel theme and cover the exhaust system next. I had a few general goals with the exhaust setup - first off I wanted it reasonably quiet since I plan to do a lot of long drives with it, and second I'd like it to be fairly clean to minimize any fuel smells. That meant finding a way to package the biggest muffler possible and a catalytic converter. I have used mostly Magnaflow and Flowmaster products in past projects and had good success with each. After scouring the web site of both companies to see the muffler options and measuring the space under the truck I finally selected Flowmaster 524703 as my muffler. I had a little concern about drone, but these 70-series large case designs are quite a bit different than the usual 2-chamber junk you hear on Mustangs. Driving it now, I can confirm that the sound is great with no highway drone and a nice rumble when you get on it.
This is a large muffler which makes packaging the cats pretty tight. There isn't room to put the cats close to the manifold and I wouldn't want that much heat there anyway, so I planned to do the crossover just behind the tcase and put the cats there. I looked at a lot of options for catalysts, there are some slick 2-into-1 setups and many sizes/lengths. Since this truck is not exactly built to CARB specs I opted for a simple universal Flowmaster 2230124 with a spun housing to keep the diameter as small as possible. You'll note that both these cats and the muffler are 2.25" pipe diameter. The reason for that is the flange on the exh manifold is set up for 2.25" pipe so of course that makes that easy and also to give me more room in the tight area beside the transmission.
The first step to building the system was placing the muffler. The case is extremely long so I was trying to balance competing demands - you need room up front to make the bend over the tcase and driveshaft but you need room in back to get around the shock and the axle. I wanted to use the factory mounts as much as possible and keep everything high for ground clearance so I put the muffler up into position with a floor jack to see how things fit...
You can't see the fore/aft location in that pic, but using the factory position for the exhaust bracket left me very little room in the rear to make the bend for the tailpipe. Eyeballing everything and lots of tape measure routing led me to believe it would be better to move the muffler a few inches forward. The simple solution to this was to shift the rear side of the bracket to the front-most set of holes in the frame and then add two nutserts, as shown below.
After that was done, I clearanced the back of the bracket a little bit to open it up where the muffler inlets flare to the body so that I could push the muffler as far forward as possible. To make the exhaust itself I ordered a number of mandrel bent J-bends, 45's and 90's from Summit and grabbed a piece of 1/2" round steel rod to make hangers. I ordered two V-band flange kits off ebay to put a disconnect point ahead of the cats in case I needed to remove the system.
The process started with moving the muffler back into position on a floor jack and then starting to work with the catalyst positions and crossover. The driver's side cat was an obvious fit directly in front of the muffler. I tacked those two together and then bent the first piece of rod to make a hanger. The easiest way to bend the rods is to chuck them in the vice and slip a piece of 3/4 OD pipe over them to get good leverage.
With the driver's side cat in place I then made a small S-bend out of two wedges of pipe to get up and over the crossmember. After that, I started on the passenger side. I could see this pipe would need to immediately start to turn and wanted to place the cat on a cross-wise position relative to the truck's centerline. Using one of the J-bends I came forward out of the muffler and turned right and up to get the pipe going up over the front U-joint. There's no magic to this fitting process, but having a bandsaw and a few extra hands helps a lot and making small cuts to inch your way up to the right position is certainly a good method, these mandrel bends aren't cheap. In front of the passenger cat i used a 45 degree bend and started to sweep around the transfer case to get towards the manifold. I put my v-band flange at the front of that 45 for the disconnect figuring I'd be able to wiggle everything out if I could break the connection there. Tacked together it all looks like this...
The forward extension pipes from there were pretty simple. Ideally I would have been able to run just a straight section with a 45 degree bend up to the flange, but both required a small bend mid pipe. On the passenger side I had the local exhaust shop put about 5 degress of bend in it using their bender. On the driver's side I put two shorter pieces together and put the slight bend in myself using a small wedge of the mandrel pipe. Here's a later shot after the truck was on the road showing the forward section installed...
The factory heat shield does a good job protecting the floor from the driver's side cat. The passenger one is higher up and close to the floor so I added a piece of stainless that you can see in the above photo for a little extra protection. It has a double 90 degree bend to make a flange that rests on the body crossmember and then I put nutserts in to hold it. The front position is held on what used to the heater pipe mount. With the truck driving now I've had no problems at all with heat in the floorboards.
Here's a final shot of the front section sitting on the shop floor, you can see the front pipes also have the O2 bungs now installed.
Is it just the angle of pictures or are the cats different lengths?
Mandrel systems always look & flow so much better than crimp bends...nice.
Mandrel systems always look & flow so much better than crimp bends...nice.
- Thread starter
- #69
Good eye! The cats are the same part number but the cans are a little different, the driver's side can is a bit longer. The brick inside is the same dimension so there seems to be some gap in when they were produced. Interestingly, the one on the passenger side appeared older and after two days of driving the brick broke apart. I called Flowmaster and they replaced it under warranty, the replacement part looked like the one of the driver's side.
Great work on the exhaust. Would love to hear a video clip of it!
Nice build!!
im in the fort from time to time. I'd love to see this thing running sometime
im in the fort from time to time. I'd love to see this thing running sometime
- Thread starter
- #72
Good idea, I'll see if I can get my GoPro mounted near the tailpipe and record some audio of it running under load.
- Thread starter
- #73
Finishing up the exhaust section - found a pic of the heat shield so you can see how that went in:
The tail pipe was last and not actually as difficult as I expected. The 3" mandrel bends aren't cheap though, so take your time if you go this route. I ordered a J-bend, a 45, and a straight section and was able to get it done with just those parts. With my 40 gallon long range tank the tightest part was getting the fit between the front LH corner of the tank and the leaf spring. Again, a few extra hands helps a lot and slowly working up to the cuts and angles. Here's the best shot showing the installed routing, I think it's pretty good and balances all the clearance requirements (spring, gas tank, tire). You can just see the bottom of the hangar on the left side, it curls around the pipe and goes up to the factory hanger location.
Here's a shot of the system on the shop floor after final welding...
And the tail pipe outlet where all the happy V8 noises escape...
I'm getting ready to build rocker protection as part of my rear bumper setup so later I'll have some photos as to how that tail pipe fits with the armor. I tried to keep the pipe outlet as far forward and high as possible to avoid rock bashes when out on the trail, we'll see in a few months if I'm successful.
The tail pipe was last and not actually as difficult as I expected. The 3" mandrel bends aren't cheap though, so take your time if you go this route. I ordered a J-bend, a 45, and a straight section and was able to get it done with just those parts. With my 40 gallon long range tank the tightest part was getting the fit between the front LH corner of the tank and the leaf spring. Again, a few extra hands helps a lot and slowly working up to the cuts and angles. Here's the best shot showing the installed routing, I think it's pretty good and balances all the clearance requirements (spring, gas tank, tire). You can just see the bottom of the hangar on the left side, it curls around the pipe and goes up to the factory hanger location.
Here's a shot of the system on the shop floor after final welding...
And the tail pipe outlet where all the happy V8 noises escape...
I'm getting ready to build rocker protection as part of my rear bumper setup so later I'll have some photos as to how that tail pipe fits with the armor. I tried to keep the pipe outlet as far forward and high as possible to avoid rock bashes when out on the trail, we'll see in a few months if I'm successful.
- Thread starter
- #74
PM me next time you're coming down, happy to show it to you!
The exhaust looks great. Do you have a heat shield above the muffler? I think I have the same muffler (with no heat shield) and it got hot enough to start melting the carpet after five or six hours on the interstate.
My exhaust is similar...I need some extra heat protection above the muffler and where the exhaust pipe crosses by the transfer case. Likley later this summer I'm going to have my exhaust "re-done" back to single exit. There is some magic on where the exhaust can exit and not get crushed off-road. I too hate the drone at cruising rpm, I've had magnaflow (dual in-dual out / large muffler) but that was a semi-dual setup and it was loud, currently I have a walker large muffler that's similar to OEM on 99 GM pickup. Mangaflow and Flowmaster seem to make the best HD "units" out there that I've seen. I'll likly replicate like what you have here and what I've done in the past...except no converters.
tmxmotorsports
SILVER Star
What is that on the back of the tcase?
VSS?
Really like how you got this up n over with a minimum of large bends, so many systems crank a huge U hoop over the axle without incorporating the before and after needs, (if that makes sense...)
