VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - GENERAL Mechanical - Engine, Trans, etc Need an Exhaust System for a '46 Truck

Hi all

Looks like it's time for a new exhaust system for my '46 truck.
One of the options I'm looking at is a complete preformed kit that will slip right in.

Waldron's in Michigan appears to produce exactly what I need.
So, my questions are...

Does anyone here have experience with Waldron's products?
How close was the fit?
Would you recommend them?

Also, are there any other good options out there that I'm missing?

Thanks for any and all information you can give.

If it was me, I'd forgo the huge shipping cost that a pre bent set would cost and have a local custom bend shop do it. A good bender can use your existing setup as a guide and replicate it.

Thanks Tiny

That was one of the other options I was considering.
Looks like a Walker 21028 muffler is nearly an exact match to the original spec, so maybe that's the route to take.

I never used them but heard good things about them.

I went the route of a locally fabricated tail pipe on my ‘37. While it functioned just fine the fit was not as good as I would have liked.

The shop used my old tailpipe as a guide. However, they did not have all the different radius dies to duplicate the original. Some bends were tighter than the original. So the route of the pipe was not the same.

The pipe also required that the bends be in different planes. It was difficult to duplicate the exact rotation between the bends.

Another issue was that the shop I used did not have a Pines type bender. He has a universal bender that pushes at what will be the center of the finished bend. So it takes some guess work to determine where to start a bend so the distance between adjacent finished bends is correct.

One other limitation was that length of pipe he stocked was a little short for what was needed to make a one piece tailpipe. We added a chrome extension to get the end of the pipe just beyond the bumper.

I did have a NOS exhaust pipe and got a decent replacement muffler from Chev of the 40’s. The locally fabricated tailpipe was about 1/3 the cost of buying one from Waldron or Classic Exhaust when you factor in the freight cost. It is even more savings if you want a one piece tail pipe due to the extra shipping costs.