I was at the PO's of my trucks house last week and he showed me his almost completed 56 F100 project. The one thing I noticed was his exhuast system. I know a few member's are concerned over having the mufflers under the cab for a side exit exhaust. The truck I looked at had a custom built aluminum fuel tank in the rear frame rails, his fix was to run mufflers past the cab using one's with an inlet and outlet on the same end.
Apparently they are made by a couple of manufacturer's, he won't let me take pictures of the build in progress, but when it's done I'll post pick's. This is a good fix to having the muffler roaring under the cab.

 

I've seen mufflers like those before. I think Corvettes and such used them. I think no matter where you mount the muffler, having the pipe exit in front of the rear tires is gonna be louder than normal. But that muffler would probably ease installation and could possible quiet it down a bit.

Weird that he wouldn't let you take pics of his setup because it was 'in progress"... Not like he's building some top secret submarine or something.

 

He is a wizard at fabrication, but quite excentric. One minute he's done dealing, the next he'll give you the shirt off his back. All said and done I'll grant him his space and get all the pic's and knowledge I need. I'm following your build very closely, I'm starting (due to weather ) my instument cluster, any word on which temp sender you're using yet?

 

As a matter of fact, I FINALLY got my heater hooked up. I was waiting to drain down the cooling system to hook up the heater and at the same time remove the temporary mechanical temp gauge and install the temp sender. I did that this weekend. Needless to say, the heater cranks out some HEAT!
The temp sensor seems to be working fine too. It reads a little taller on the scale than i'd like though (needle more tward the 'H'). It would have been nice to have a mechanical hooked in along with the temp sender to just get an idea of exactly 'where' certain temps are on the gauge since there are no numbers.
The sending unit I used is available over the counter at NAPA (and probably most other parts houses) I just asked for one for a '58 F100 with a Y-block, which is the match to the guts/housing I used. Seems as if this sender fits alot of different Ford vehicles in the '57-'63 range.
Overall, I'm happy it's working and seems to work just fine. The needle is a little shorter than the other gauge needles and makes it a little less easy to see, but i can still see it well enough. I would have possibly tried to extend the needle somehow. Not exactly sure how though.

When I get a chance sometime this week, I'll update my build thread. This weekend, surprisingly, didn't have any Little Leauge stuff going on other than team pictures so that gave me time to gang-bang the '56.