Sooo I got these lake pipes laying around and am thinking about throwing them on my 283 '61 impala. Allready has dual exhaust with glass packs, thinking about just putting a y joint on there and creating an additional exhaust outlet throught the lakers because I like lake pipes to be functional. Any ideas on how his may sound? anyone done similar?
If you tee into the exhaust ahead of the mufflers, it will be the same as no mufflers, all (or most) gases are going to go out the lakes pipes. Put caps on the lakers and open 'em when you are out of town, or playing the part. That's the way they were intended to work.
ahh cool. Years ago I got a hold of ONE tee that actually has the valve constructed into it where you can switch from side pipes or rear duals. Anyone know if those still exist for purchase? or maybe an exhaust man could whip one up for me.
My '59 Cadillac has functional lake pipes...Scallop 53's Dad was there when I bought 'em at Back to The Fifties a bunch of years back, and I told him that I was gonna hook 'em up. I put 'em on the car but didn't hook 'em up right away. Anytime he'd see me that summer, he'd ask me if I had 'em hooked up...His Dad passed away the following winter, so the first thing that I did to the car before taking it out in the spring was to hook up the lake pipes. That was about 10 years ago, and I've been running them wide open ever since. I've only capped 'em up three times when I had to go get it checked off by a police officer for being up to spec (Wisconsin police need to spend more time busting real crime instead of focusing all of their energy on pulling over safe drivers with technicalities)...I've been running 'em open for Dale (Scallop 53's Dad)...Remember the forefathers that are gone...sometimes you just gotta run one for the boys
And "back in the days" most caps had one bolt hole that was open and one that was closed. That way if the "fuzz" was spotted all one had to do is flip the cap down. My "gang" used to do it hangin' out the back window .. lol !! Brings back memories .. Only problem back then was we used "flex pipe". It was good for about 3 months before it burned out. Finally they came out with pipe that was bendable. That was better stuff. Trouble with regular exhaust pipe was that with the lakers being bolted to the body and the pipe being welded to the exhaust pipe the vibration would break the welds. In the 60's we just did "cut-outs". we used the neck for gas tanks and just used the gas cap. The gasket would burn out but then we used asbestos gasket maker to fix that... Geeeze .. !! We called them "Open Hackers" .. "hey guys, lets open the hackers" ..
Yep...had Merlin's Muffler shop do the install back then before I knew how to run a welder...plus they've got their in shop tubing bender, so they easily bent up the correct pipes to join the lakers to the two going out the back
Good old jcwhitney exhaust cutouts ought to do the trick. Jegs and summit sell an electric cutout, too. Might be a little safer than getting little sister to hang out the window....though not as much fun.
FWIW, lakers were out of fashion by '61. As were WWWs. I know that I am alone in thinking this: Putting parts from the '50s era on a 60s car is lame. YMMV...
phil... you're such a buzz kill. fwiw... if you are running the lakers without a cutout, you'll only get a portion of the exhaust flow out of the sides. you will still get flow out the mufflers, but you will get the sound you're after. CSS... if you're ever down around Lawndale, you can stop by the shop and listen to mine.
If you run around with them shut you'll find that a great deal of moisture finds it's way into the laker and can't get out. It will eventually rust it out from the inside out. Don't ask why I know that.
great point. after a few trips, i open the pipes and run the motor until they dry out. i don't re-cap them until the next trip to avoid further condensation.
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