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Hanger Bearing Cross-member & Exhaust (Con't)

I decided to go ahead and route & fab the exhaust before I installed the cross-member for the hanger bearing since I had everything for the exhaust. I bought a weldable exhaust kit from Speedway Motors as well as some Dynomax mufflers.

After fiddling with the various pieces of the exhaust tubing in multiple positions and cycling the air suspension up and down to check clearances I decided that the exhaust had to go under the rear differential. The largest two obstacles on going over the diff were the tight clearances to the curved bed floor (now I fully understand why some guys just raise the whole bed floor) and the panhard bar. I always set the rear packaging (primarily the fuel tank) so the dual exhaust would exit from one side at the rear of the truck. I thought this would look good and balance out the offset license plate and maintain the feng shui (lol....).

The fwd section of the exhaust was pretty straight-forward back to the mufflers but after that it got interesting. I fabbed the forward two sections with the mufflers and then started the aft portion. Both go under the rear diff but the LH (driver's) side then takes a hard 90 degree turn and shoots over to the RH side and then another 90 degree turn and out the back. The RH (passenger's) side has a slight joggle in it to basically follow along side the other exhaust. It was sorta had to take pics under the truck while it was installed but there is a pic of this section out of the truck basically laid out like the installation (the pic of the rusty tubes).

To bend the exhaust hangers I had an old bushhog blade that I chopped the end off and welded on a piece of pipe (that was pretty close to exhaust pipe OD) to make a bend tool for the hangers. I then hammer formed the hangers to cradle the pipes and tack welded them in place. I also made a few receptacles/mounts for the hangers to tack in place on the frame.

Next, I pulled it all apart and sanded off the surface rust and finish welded all the tack welds. Then I primered and painted the exhaust using Rustoleum High Temp primer and paint. After I completed it I then realized that I forgot to add a hanger before the muffler that will connect to the hanger bearing cross-member (that was not yet installed)...doh!. Oh well, I still have to run the ends of the exhaust out under the bumper using some stainless tips that I bought so I will add these later. My plan is to slightly scallop the lower trim of the bumper so the duel stainless tips will pass good and tight under the bumper. I will also try and re-trim the stainless tip to follow the bumper contour......so mounting the hanger bearing cross-member, adding the hangers at that spot and finishing the exhaust tip & bumper mod will probably be my next project.