I wanna make my own exhaust. Where do I buy the stuff?

I know I could say muffler shop, but it just feels wrong to go to a guy and say "hey I'm not gonna have you do the work, but will you sell me all the stuff to do it?"

I won't need much straight pipe, mostly elbows and flex pipe.

http://www.mandrel-bends.com/catalog/

Huh, they are right across the river from me.

In reply to f6sk:

I think that Burns Stainless would be a good resource.

-- Pete

Cone Engineering might be another good recsource.

NAPA.

Another vote to Burns Stainless

Vibrant makes a nice range of fittings, flanges etc.

I bought a bunch of elbows and straight sections from Jegs.

wae wrote: I bought a bunch of elbows and straight sections from Jegs.

Me too, mandrel bent U's and straight pieces, along with some clamps and hangers and a muffler.

Came to say Burns stainless, a little late i see.

I get most of my exhaust stuff from Speedway Motors, Summit and Jegs. I have a fancy boy Hayabusa powered SCCA P2 sports racer that's crazily exotic and fast, but exhaust stuff is a consumable. Hence I use steel mandrel bends and a 4"x 14" stainless 2" Magnaflow can. Burns is way out of my league.

If you're going to cut, piece, and weld it together yourself, might as well buy mandrel-bend U's. Often there are enough straight bits in the U that you can do the whole things just with U's.

v band all the things

Come on - this is GRM. No one here can afford Burns Stainless money.

Best bet is the local scrap yard. There is always a big pile of 304SS tubes and you can buy them for pennies on the dollar. I got a guy that hooks me up for $1/lb, as much as I want. Thin wall, thick wall, bends, straights, from 2.25 to 5" OD, 90s, 180s, 10' sticks, you name it. For mufflers either none (a turbo is a muffler, right?) or whatever I can get from the swap meets, cut them apart and reweld them. PROTIP: You can turn a 2.5" muffler into a 3" muffler by welding a 3" pipe right to the case.

http://www.summitracing.com is another great place to buy exhaust fabrication components, and http://www.weldingsuppliesfromioc.com seems to be a good place for the welding gear. :)

I'm gonna say the local muffler shop, despite your misgivings. My local shop has mandrel bends on the shelf and is happy to sell them to me for about the same price as the online sources and it's a whole lot more convenient not to have to wait for shipping. They're also really friendly guys who always want to see the end result.

I like speedway motors, they are also local to me so that helps.

i got everything i needed to make the screwball Y pipe for my Camaro from a magical store we have here in MN called Mills Fleet Farm... its a few chunks of straight 2.5" tubing, some pieces of exhaust i had laying around, and a few generic 2.5" turndowns that were cut and welded together to make something that gets the fumes away from the header collectors and into the muffler..

it looked really good until i bottomed it out a few thousand times in Arkansas on the road from St Louis to Memphis back in 2012, but it's still on the car to right now..

In reply to bgkast:

Great place and good sturdy products. plus you can go pick up the parts instead of waiting for shipping.

I bought my muffler, cats, stainless pipe, and bends from these guys:

EDIT link didn't work for some reason. performance-curve

Then I bought a bunch of stainless V band clamps and flanges on eBay and welded it all up with stainless wire in a 140a MIG welder. Which reminds me, I still need to weld tips on...

Summit Racing has everything you need and fast shipping.

Go yank a stainless system out of something at the local pick-n-pull.Just look closely at the bends to see if they'll work for you. Battery powered sawzall and you should be able to find everything you need under a few trucks.

In reply to DeadSkunk:

You are wise! Now we need a list of things that came with stainless exhausts!

I buy my exhaust parts from Columbia River which is the same as mandrel bend. Their prices are cheaper then Summit if you're looking for SS. I ordered some flanges and a flex coupler all in SS. The same items from Summit would have been $30 more. True Summit had it in stock and if time is key then go with who can ship first. In my case I could wait and saved some money.

Also, I buy these couplers

on ebay for usually around $20 where they are more like $36 from retail places (for 3" anyway). The quality is the same.