GTS Muffler repair

I called Hall and ordered a new set of repair tips to replace these and I started cutting.
I cut the tips off which are acutally a resonator assembly. I had to remove the center baffling because the resonators were welded to it and it got mangled in dissassembly. As a side note the Space City chapter web site has excellent pictures of the inside of one of these mufflers. It all looked like this

And this

Here are the new resonator assemblies from Hall.

This is what they look like with the extensions cut off them. The inlet necks down to 1 9/16 at the opening.

I made a crude fixture out of 2x4s using one of the new GTS mufflers for my car as a template so that I could tack the resonators on and do final fitting and tacking on the car. Here are the mufflers mounted on the car and a level to get the ends even for final tacking.

After final welding the mufflers were sent down to be coated again and they turned out great.
The coaters reimbursed me for the cost of the new tips ($165) and coated the mufflers for free and gave me a credit for future work.
It took about 2 full days to gut and reassemble the mufflers. The car sounds awesome with the GTS exhaust. I hope this information is helpful. I am still working on how to size the pics (thanks George)correctly. If you want more pics or information let me know.
P.S. When ceramic coating in black it sometimes turns the chrome brown. This is because of the 650 degree bake they have to do. The brown discoloration comes off as you can see in the photo. I had the coaters buff them for me before I picked them up. I guess its like how chrome motorcycle pipes turn blue from the heat you just polish it off.

Good looking work!!


Gary #06984

They look great. Is there anything inside of the can?

Man! What a hassle. You did good to get out of that mess.

Pantera Doug,
Yes there is still the horizontal baffles and the inlet perforated tube still in there.
The Space City web site has a lot of good info on these mufflers
www.spacecitypanteras.com/technical/
look under the "Gutting the GTS exhaust" link.
I have borrowed the following photo from the website
(I hope its ok, all credit to Dave Bell)
You can see the baffles running horizontally inside.
The pieces I removed from inside are the two perforated tubes you see at the outlets and the solid center that they are welded to

GREAT post, thanks for sharing. By horizontal baffles do you mean the 2 (up and down) vertical baffles? How did you get the perforated tubes out, did you open the mufflers up like the pic above? What do they sound like?

Thanks again,

johnk,
By Horizontal baffles I mean the two thin sheetmetal pieces you see running across the perforated single inlet tube. Its hard to see in the photo but they have a number of holes drilled in a circular pattern in them. I did not cut the top open and removed everything through the opening. I removed the two outlet perforated tubes and the piece in the middle that supports them. This was done with a Sawzall and you can see the pieces in this previous photo. looking at this pic and the one of the cut out top you can see where this part went.

Here is what it looked like before I removed those pieces. As I said all of it was done through the outlet openings with a sawzall. The mufflers sound awesome! The usual Ford bass resonance between 1800 and 2000 rpm but wide open they are very cool!