A trip to the local exhaust shop yielded a pair of seals and flanges. The flanges were then welded to a short piece of 2 1/2" stock exhaust pipe.  The rest of the exhaust system was a series of 45º angles, 90º angles and straight lengths of stock pipe all bought from a local auto parts dealer for a few bucks.

The image above show how the dual exhaust was routed.    Notice how one catalytic converter is further forward than the other.  One was shorter and I was able to take advantage of the space above the skid plate which also put the muffler in a good spot to use the hanger already on the frame.

Directly below shows a good example of a very slight bend in the exhaust pipe.  A good tip to make such a slight bend is to cut though the pipe with an angle grinder and a thin cutting blade all the way around the inside side of the bend but leave about an inch of pipe on the outside of the bend of the pipe.  I cut about a 3/4 inch notch out of the inside side of the bend and then closed the gap thus making the slight bend.  Then I re-welded it back together.  There were several instances of doing this to tweak the angles.  Angles are the name of the game when it comes to exhausts.  Hangers were bought and hung from several locations to support the system. 

Click above picture for a close up

Heat Shields

Later, after the new brake lines were installed several areas needed to be protected from heat from the exhaust.  One area was at the passengers side below the exhaust manifold and the other was the passenger side where fuel line ran above the skid plate in the area of the catalytic converter.  Sheets of bend and manipulated aluminum were used to shield from the exhaust system's heat.

One other place an aluminum heat shield was used was above both mufflers.  This was done later after it was discovered that creeping slow on the trail allowed a lot of heat to build up under the floor of the Jeep.  Enough heat to melt a plastic bag that was laying on the floor of the Jeep.  It also melted some of the contents of the bag, in particular the chocolate in my homemade trail mix.  The fix for the heat transfer from the dual Flowmaster mufflers was a large sheet of thin aluminum coil, the kind used for capping exterior woodwork on homes.  You can get rolls of this stuff from home supply stores like Home Depot of Lowes.  I used a sheet about 3 feet wide by 2 feet and bolted it under the floor between the frame rails and above the mufflers.  That stopped just about all of the heat transfer through to the floor.

Above, Heat shield to protect the gas line.

3 pics below, heat shield to protect the brake lines and proportioning valve.

Project CJ-7

Fabricating an Exhaust System

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