327 exhaust work to be done

[TheEmrys]

New here but it seems like a great place for my question. My fiancee' has a 1965 El Camino with a 327 in it. It was her grandpa's car and its had some major cosmetic work done (paint & int.) as well as wiring work and other things. Her birthday is coming up and she loves this car dearly. I have talked to her about doing things to improve it, and she's fine with just about anything. She needs some exhaust work already, so I figured I'd look into getting some things upgraded. I know that the 327 on a '65 isn't cranking out an obscene amount of hp or anything, but what would any of you recommend for exhaust work? She doesn't really want to keep the car original (grandpa did stuff to it in the 70's), just original looking. I was contemplating going the flowmaster route, but I'm not sure. Also, would it be worth it to look into new exhaust manifolds? Dual exhaust?

[molhannah]

Dual exhaust with the Flo-masters will increase the horse power and give it a great sound. Just don't take it to Midas. Fine a good hot rod type shop that does this kind of mod. You don't want the biggest pipe made to hook up to your ride, without doing major mods. Stock exhaust manifolds are fine. The ram horn style exhaust deliver lots of flo for the stock motor. Ask the installer to add a cross section the the system to equal the back pressure and flo. This should be a great modifacation for for the Elky. Good luck.

[TheEmrys]

Thanks for the reply. That's sound advice. I have a guy that does exhaust work. But, why do you say not to go to Midas?

[molhannah]

Your welcome! The reasons I don't like them, they normally can't make changes to the vehicles. If you had a cad. converter they can't by pass it and so on. I once took my 78 K5 blazer in for brakes. After 80,000 miles on them, I went back for the life time warranty to get them replaced. They said the rear shoes where fine and the front pads where only down about half, but I needed two new drums and two new rotors. Like I said 80,000 and the rear shoes still had the original grinding marks on them. All the pads and shoes where harder than the rotors and drums and they thought that was strange too, but didn't replace my parts.

[TheEmrys]

Gotcha. Thanks for the info. I'll probably get it all done in a week or two. I can't wait to see (hear, feel) how it comes out.