Who hasn’t had a pair of Cherry Bomb mufflers on a car at some point? The company has been manufacturing the straight-through glasspacks since 1968, and most people recognize the red mufflers when they see them.
1 The Hot Rod Builder Kit comprises enough aluminized tubing and mandrel bends to fabricate a pretty complex exhaust system, and even comes with two flex couplers and four stainless steel hangers.
Nowadays, Cherry Bomb doesn’t just sell that one style of muffler, though they are available in 18- or 23-inch lengths, with 2 1/4-inch inlets and outlets. There’s a whole range of mufflers to choose from, as well as vehicle-specific exhaust systems. Check out their website for the full range.
What caught our eye was the Hot Rod Builder Kit that is also offered. This makes it extremely simple to construct an exhaust system for almost any one-off application. The kit comprises four straight lengths of tube, four 90-degree mandrel bends, four 45-degree mandrel bends, two 180-degree mandrel bends, plus two flexible couplers and four stainless steel hangers. Header flanges are not included, but there are so many types that’s understandable.
The kits don’t come with crossover tubing either, but we don’t see too many of those on hot rods. The kits are available in 2 1/4-, 2 1/2-, and 3-inch diameter tubing, and it’s all aluminized steel. The flex couplers are ideal for minimizing vibration, especially if your application’s like ours and the tailpipes are solid mounted.
2 The system that I built for my roadster pickup several years ago is about as basic as it gets: straight through to the rear of the truck, under the rearend—one of the mufflers had split and the plain steel tubing had rusted pretty well!
We installed one of these kits on our ’46 roadster pickup, with the tailpipes exiting through the nerf bar, hence the solid mounts. Not only did we route the system over the rearend, but had more than enough tubing, or more specifically, bends, to go around the gas tank too. We even had a little left over. Now we can remove the rearend a whole lot easier, and the truck sounds better to boot. Mission accomplished!
