That thing where you see faces in things.

You know what I mean?

All

Damn

Day

And even a couple days ago.  Ladies as gentlemen, it is my privilege, pleasure, and honor to introduce the one and only, the cold and lonely, the holy, mole-y, prime bologna,

Fart
Pipe
Pete!

That makes a lot of unexpected visitors. At least for me, anyway.

It's cool, though -- I can deal with seeing imaginary faces that are friendly for a change.  Especially since these can be photographed.

Despite what it might look like, I haven't been screwing around by making metal "sculptures" all day.  With the exception of Fart Pipe Pete, these were taken during the course of the latest phase of exhaust development.  Let me get you caught up real quick:

When we last saw our adventurer, he was plumb tired of plumbing the depths of his car's plumbing.  Terribly terribly welded plumbing.

The driver's side was run out as far as it would go without needing the sidepipe to be installed, while the right side needed a total 90° bend and run to the flex pipe for it to be at the same point as it's peer.  I have the pie cuts sliced, diced, and prepped for  welding, then set aside so I could make more cutgrindnoise.

Got the measurements to find the length of straight pipe needed after the bend, got it whipped out and welded up with the flex section, then determined that I needed to get the hangers squared away.  Without them I wasn't going to be able to keep the pipe runs square, and I'll be damned if I'm going to invite chances to cut and reweld stuff after I think I've got it all figured out.  That kind of thing doesn't need an invitation.  It invites itself.

Since I'm not PUTTING GOD DAMNED LAG SCREWS THROUGH MY FLOOR, I've got to use a different hanger design for my pipes.  Since I have no end of poly bushings from my rear suspension madness, I decided to crib the design used by the burrito supreme.  Here's a section of pipe from a fatty wagon that shows how they did it, Chrysler style.

Forgot to get a picture of the hanger mount, but it's basically the same thing as my shackle hangers.

I've got plenty of bushings, u channel, and round bar stock, all in compatible dimensions, to do this and not have to buy hangers.  The alternative would be to pay way too much for pre-made parts, then put in the same amount of effort to make them work for my vehicle as it would take to make some from scratch (scrap).

I wanted to split the difference and pick up some 1" ID tube, then cut segments of that to use for the bushing sleeves.  Well, guess what local steel stock sellers (with a storefront) don't sell?  Yep, the ointment was onioned, so I had to figure out a solution with no appropriate sleeve material and only 2 hours of power tool time left.

This is the result:

I'm really, really pleased with this, considering I don't usually come up with on-the-fly solutions that do anything but waste time and money.  It took me getting some 1/8" bar stock for the sleeves and a 3/4" black oxide pipe nipple to use as a mandrel.  The only other stuff I needed was in the shop, either as available stock or piled trash.

The 3/4" nipple was chosen for its OD matching that of the bushings I planned to use.  As mentioned, the nipple was used as a mandrel, so the plan was to cut a slot in it to fit the bar stock inside, then basically roll the bar stock over the nipple until I had something like what I ended up with.  Knowing it wouldn't be as easy as it sounded, I made sure to keep time and number of objects needed for tooling and materials as low as possible.  That way I'd still be in a reasonable spot when stuff went off the rails like always.

[NOTE: This is the point where I fell asleep while writing.  I'll finish the description of how to do this stuff when I write my next update.]