With the design completed, I was able to focus on ordering the exhaust system parts. Not surprisingly, I couldn't find a Canadian manufacturer of mandrel bent exhaust tubing. That meant importing parts.
The value of the Canadian dollar being roughly worth 0.72 US$ ensured that the delivered cost of any part was essentially double that of the listed US$ price after exchange rates, taxes, shipping, and customs fees. This was the determining factor for choosing mild steel tubing rather than stainless. This choice meant the difference between paying $1500 or $4000 for an exhaust system.
I've found that Summit Racing and Jegs have some of the best pricing on specialized auto parts. I prefer Summit because they use FedEx for shipping, which is almost always significantly cheaper than companies using UPS for deliveries to Canada.
One of the things I didn't buy new was header flanges. Two companies offered them (CHRFab and Extreme Performance Sand Cars on eBay) but I decided the extra Cdn$200 wouldn't be well spent considering I had two sets of OEM manifolds laying around:
I decided to sacrifice the rear manifold from both sets since they're oddly angled and would be the least useful if I ever use my spare engine for another project. I started by lopping off the flanges with a cut off wheel in my angle grinder:
The integral heat shields stopped just shy of the flange so I cut them off as close to the flange as possible. There was no sense mutilating the manifolds unnecessarily... you never know when even these oddballs might be repurposed:
The primary tubes were welded to the flanges on the inside diameter, which left me with some grinding to do to open up the ports. Getting rid of the welds and leftovers of the primary tubes took some doing. I started opening up each port using a bimetal hole saw to get the biggest part out, then finished up with a high speed carbide burr:
Then I cleaned up the mating surfaces and the edges of the flanges with various sanding disks and drums:
Here are the finished flanges... definitely worth the elbow grease to recycle them:
Not long after, my first shipment containing all the parts for my primary system arrived from Summit Racing: 20 J-Bends, two collectors, and a couple O2 sensor bungs and plugs:
Here's the parts list:
J-Bends: Patriot p/n H7019, 1.625"OD x 180 degree x 2" centreline radius x 6" Leg1 x 15" Leg2 x 16 gauge mild steel.
Collectors: Doug's Headers p/n H7671, 4-into-1, 1.625" inlet x 2.5" outlet x 10" long 16 ga mild steel.
O2 Sensor Bungs: Vibrant p/n 11105, 18M x 1.5 female thread
O2 Sensor Plugs: Summit p/n SUM-G2990-1, 18M x 1.5 male thread
Exhaust Gaskets: Victor Reinz p/n MS16372