Stainless Exhaust Preview

I bought an exhaust kit from Magnaflow (#15815). It's all stainless steel, with an x-pipe, 2.5" and semi-polished. I bought it from PerformancePeddler.com and it was $349 shipped, which seems like a steal of a deal.





I also bought some Magnaflow tailpipes that are 12" long and 3" in diameter (2.5" in) with a rolled edge, and a 15 degree angle for exiting the rear GT valance cleanly. Should look great with the underside of the car being detailed pretty well.





Here's the "before" pic of the hardware package with the Magnaflow kit.





I dropped off the clamps and brackets to be zinc plated at Surtronics, and here's what I received...





A set of JBA 1650 mid-length headers were already on the car and from the massaging required to get them to fit I'm probably not going to deal with replacing them any time soon.

Wet Sanding Begins...

In the interest of keeping the job moving and keeping the cost down a bit, I decided to wetsand some of the bits and pieces from the car. The items at left took about 4 hours to wetsand with 400 grit paper. The rest of the car and other pieces need the same treatment here very soon.

Odds And Ends: Part I

The wheels on the car are from Vintage Wheel Works and are the V45 style in 16"x8" front and rear. I painted them with Eastwoods Wheel Paint in Charcoal Gray. The stock center caps though were cheap plastic and didn't look good being just too big. The lug nuts were kinda old and scraped up and didn't look too good either.

The photo at left shows one of the old lug nuts and the four packs of new ones. The car has McGard wheel locks so I got some good McGard lug nuts too. The old lug nuts are duplex style (a small shank at the bottom along with a 60 degree tapered seat.) The new lug nuts (McGard 64000 Chrome Cone Seat Style Lug Nuts (1/2' - 20 Thread Size)) don't have a shank, but do have a 60 degree tapered seat so VWW says they'll work fine.

I bought the billet center caps from "torqthrust.terry" on eBay. They were polished, but I polished them again when they arrived and now they are muy shiny.

Here's a manufacturer photo of the V45 16x8.





And here's a pic of the stock plastic center cap that comes with the wheels, which I replaced with polished caps. (It's also on the wheel above.)