Waldron N25 Exhaust System
The Stage 1 needed exhaust. The original system a bud and I bent up many years ago was starting to rot, also it has had so many mufflers and adaptors on it over the years the pipes were a mess, yet it still sounded good. Gardner exhaust was my first choice of course but their N25 system only comes in the stock sizes (2.25/2.00) and is very pricey. For a ground up resto the only one to get of course but I live in the real world and the bottom of the stage 1 is nothing to be proud of so it was decided to go a cheaper route. Mainly I wanted something I could put on myself, was functional and didn't cost a fortune. I settled on a Waldrons system and am happy with the results.
I ordered up a 2.25/2.25 system. It comes with pipes, mufflers and that is it. The N25 tips came from The Parts Place and are decent.
Of course being in Canada, shipping is insane. The system was 420.00 and shipping was 200.00 but nothing you can do about that. They will cut up the pipes to make shipping cheaper but I prefer to have less connections. That said one pipe did end up with a pretty sharp ding in it, luckily not in an obvious spot.
Install went pretty good. Sourced clamps locally and used my original hangars. The N25 tips have a fairly large openings on them (2 3/8"- not sure whey they did that) so the non stock 2.25" tailpipes helped out. I did end up trimming off about 1" from the tailpipes and due to angles being a bit off needed to shim up one exhaust tip mount about 1/4" to center the tip in the opening. I could have taken pipe to local shop and had it tweaked but install was done over the Christmas holidays and it was cold so decided to do what I could and leave it at that. Waldrons does say some tweaking may be necessary.
Overall I really like it. Stock bends including the flattened section by the tranny crossmember keep the sound nice, the fit was decent (it tucks up nice under the body), the new tips look really good and the system sounds great. Very nice people to deal with too... Performance guys will want bigger pipes and mandrel bends but for me this is perfect.
