May 2-9, 2019: Finally upgrading my rear suspension! (continued)Let me start exhaust talk by saying that you SoCal guys in the north Orange County area have it made when it comes to an awesome exhaust shop. Wow!! I am blown away by this place!
I had my exhaust work done by
The Muffler Man, which is conveniently located only 2 miles from RST's shop (lucky bums!). For the longest time I've really liked our local muffler guy (that Marlin has used for over 30 years), but this shop in Placentia blows our guy completely out of the water!!
http://ocmufflerman.com
Not only did they get the job done 1 hr sooner than estimated, but they did far more work than what my muffler guy did last Spring and still managed to finish in less time. On top of that, they even spray painted all welds to prevent rust.
The owner wheels a Jeep and is involved with a couple clubs, and even invited me to a couple SoCal wheeling trips. And when they put the truck up on the lift, before I could mention a ground clearance issue that our muffler guy caused, they offered to rotate a pipe that wasn't part of the RST/3-link install project to get it up & out of the rocks. MAN, what an AWESOME place!! I
STRONGLY recommend this exhaust shop for anyone in the greater LA area. They are only about 5 miles north-east of Disneyland so you have no excuse lol (Disneyland is a 510 mile round trip journey for me)
Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, let me say that purely out of personal preference this was the worst part of the 3-link install.
RST designs their 3-link kits to be compatible with factory fuel tanks, however, the location of the factory muffler was not brought up when we made plans for this more than a year ago. As such, when I designed and had my dual-entry
MagnaFlow 12580 system installed back at
Reply 743, I didn't give any consideration to 3-link compatibility. My aim with my system was to be nearly as quiet as factory but far better flowing which was perfectly executed and I was incredibly pleased with the system. In fact, around the 2,000 RPM mark on de-acceleration it would give an awesome faint popping sound which sounded amazing bouncing off of trees and rocks while out wheeling. This has been my most favorite exhaust system I've ever had on a vehicle...
...and now I've discovered that only a smaller muffler could be used or we'd need a complete muffler relocation. I didn't want to go smaller because I have my Supercharged MR2 with an exhaust that is angry all the time and having a new vehicle with air conditioning/bluetooth/cameras/heated seats/etc, I want to keep the exhaust mild.
I am convinced that the secret to my previous setup was changing to a true dual exhaust entry into the 12580 muffler, which combines both cylinder banks into a chamber rather than Y-pipe, creating the neat low RPM sounds that I've come to really love. But now, because I am set on keeping such a large muffler, we decided to move the muffler behind the rear end which meant keeping the dual exhaust system would have nearly double the amount of piping/cost/weight/complications.... so screw all of that let's just ditch it and go to a boring & traditional Y-pipe with single entry muffler.
Of course the work these guys did was impressive, it's just that I've lost a nice feature I loved about the truck. I told RST, "Do I want to have a neat exhaust system, or do I want this truck to be able to keep up with SAS rigs on the trail?" haha the answer is painfully obvious
Here is what used to be the true dual exhaust entry into my old muffler, now combined into a Y-pipe. These are the same 2.25" pipes entering the Y, and running the same 2.5" diameter pipe out the Y (the Y of my old setup was inside of the 12580 muffler, which was dual 2.25" entry & single 2.5" exit)
Here is the AMAZING work these guys did to fix a ground clearance issue my old muffler guy caused, and it only took ~ 3 mins to fix. Suddenly I hear, "Hey Mike, wanna take a look at this and see if you like it?", and I was like, "Wat? You already moved it up higher?! @_@"
These guys work hecka fast!The red arrow shows the height above the t/case, whereas before the piping was lower than the t/case!
Tag team'n the Tacoma
