The exhaust system is often one of the most overlooked aspects of a classic truck but let’s face it, when the key turns and the engine is fired, it’s time to separate the men from the boys. You could have the hottest looking shortbed Fleety on the block, but if it’s wheezing through a sad, single muffler, you might be laughed right out of the local drive-in. It’s as if you worked out on your upper body only, leaving two little, skinny bean pole legs to poke out from your awesome Muscle Beach stretchy tank top. It’s not cool, it’s not right, and it’s just plain sad.
So what do you do when you just bought a classic pickup with the aforementioned bean pole exhaust? You do what our buddy Danny Valenzuela did; you call up your buddy who works for a magazine and ask him to hook you up for free! Well, that’s not exactly what you’d do or what he did. What you’d do is bust out the latest issue of everybody’s favorite hot rod truck magazine, Custom Classic Trucks, and flip through and find an advertiser who sells exhaust products. Then you call them up and tell them what you need! Well, in a perfect world anyways!
But that’s what we did in a nutshell. I had a pair of Hushpower mufflers for a future project that wouldn’t need them anytime soon, so I donated it to the project as well as a U-Fit kit from Flowmaster, which I had borrowed a few pieces from over the years that also needed a good home. We called up Doug’s Headers for a set of bolt-in pipes to fit the 360ci Ford engine and they asked if we wanted to include their stainless steel electric cutout kit. Scare unwitting women and children? Uh, yeah!
We tore into the build on a Tuesday morning and save for a few unrelated snags along the way, were huffing and puffing out on the road by Wednesday evening. So to say that you could do the exhaust job in a weekend is to say the least. Next time you pick up a project that suffers from the wheezes, give the job a shot yourself; you’ll probably find it easier than you thought and you might even save some dough! Who wouldn’t appreciate that? CCT
