Has anyone here pieced together and installed their own dual stack kit? I can probably get everything I would need out of our Nelson catalog at work at cost, so I'm thinking it should be cheaper than buying a kit from some where. Also, I'd like to do something a little different and bring my stacks up on either side of my third brake light instead of the outer corners of the bed. I've seen a few trucks like this in the magazines and really like it, but I've never seen a pic of the in bed tubing to see how they do it. Do I need to fab a box up to mount the stacks in, or do you think I could do with with a "y" pipe coming up thru the bed for the pass. side stack and a 90* elbow coming out of that for the driver side? I'm not sure if the elbow will come up to the same height as the y pipe. I'd like to go with 5" tubing and 6" mitre cut stacks. Thanks for any help or suggestions.

 

I made my stacks out of a 5x7" steel tubing. You can see my pictures in my photo gallery if you want to do it that way.

 

Center the Y and put 90's on that. Run your exhaust over to the center so that it will smoke even.

 

just a suggestion but on the y pipe that sits in the bed

just cut out a section on either side and have it welded together to a desired length

that should be able to bring the stacks closer to the third light


that would be the easiest way to do it next to having a custom piece made

test fit in the bad first and then when you have it were you wont it just have it welded

im sure any exhaust shop would do it for realtivley cheap

 

97dodgeram, so you just used the tubing, welded some caps in the ends, and welded some 5" ID tubing to it for the inlet and outlets? I'm thinking this would be the quickest and easiest route for me and make it easy to get the stacks the same height.

 

I got two 6' lengths of 5" chrome, some 90*s, and a 4" 90* for under the bed. After cutting everything to length with a chop saw (a large band saw would have been nice), I welded a short piece of 4" to the 5" cross pipe and the existing exhaust was connected to that piece. It was a lot cheaper than buying a Y pipe. I used exhaust clamps to hold it down to the bed and chrome exhaust clamps to hold the stacks to the bed rails. Pics are in my user gallery. The whole setup ended up being less than half the price of a stack kit, and it's all chrome too.

 

Mine are homemade, I got the tubing for free at a local machine shop. All I bought was the flex tube, and also got the stacks for free.

My post really didn't apply to your problem, sorry.

 

Just use 90's, it sounds so much better when the exhaust can flow instead of the homemade box tubing which just makes the sound bounce off and sounds bad to me. just my 2 pennies

 

i had a set in my truck. went from 4 inch to 5 inch off the down pipe for about 5 feet and a piece of flex hooked to a 45 into an elbow on the bottom of the y pipe that came out the center of my bed.... 90's on the y pipe should put it right outside the breaklights for you.. just how we did it

 

The best thing about the square tubing is that it's easy to align the stacks at the right angle. All I did was box up the tube, cut a hole in line with the exhaust, weld a part of my old 4in exhaust to connect the exhaust with a 90* angle, and then weld on the stack connecting tubes and bolt the stacks on. Whether or not you use the pipes or square tubing, I would use band clamps instead of the u-clamps. They look better and make it easier to take apart.

 

I also made mine out of 6x6 square tubing, flex pipe and a piece of 5" exh. pipe from Napa. Pained them Black with high heat spray paint and I love'em!

 

I second the SS band clamps. They are the priceyest part but well worth it. I have lost count at how many configurations I have had on the 97 but I can tell you with the band clamps every thing slides apart like new and reinstalls easy. I started with a 4" splitter and crossover out of round tubing 4" turnouts then 5" rattle caps, then 5" bull horns, then started over with a flat bed w/ box tubing and bull horns, now back to the dually bed and round tubing with bull horns. The band clamps also give you extra wiggle room to make sure it is all lined up properly. I've had both box tubing and round tubing for the cross over and could not tell much difference, but if going for high performance and maximum flow for cutting heat, I would use a splitter and all round tubing with premade adapters. The splitter if you have a contact a NAPA that will work with you will run about $35.00. The over the counter price will scare you though. The elbows are about $16.00. These are for 4". 5" is a little more. I got 5" turnout stacks recently for $123.00 for two that were 3' long. IMHO the chrome on the napa stacks are lots and lots better than the ones I got from Chome Depot. They are thicker also. I made a set a month ago for a duralax buddy and used the 5" turnouts w/ box tubing and I think we had about $350.00 in the whole shot + some fab work we had to do with a MIG. But who counts time on a project like this :]

 

Band clamps do work rather nicely..

 

I ordered the two stacks and the splitter from Berubes and the rest is off the shelf stuff from NAPA.