Thrush welded 2 1/4" in & out.
I was also looking at Dynomax super turbo as I have run a turbo muffler on a Toyota L/C that had a header thst sounder pretty good too.

On the Gremlin I have dual turbo type mufflers and factory manifolds and that sounded good for a little stock 304 motor.

Back in high school I ran a Charry bomb on my van that had a straight six and it was like running the stock muffler and the same with a buddy also and why I did not look at that for the pickup.

Now with a v8 the glass pack may sound a whole lot different?
You going to do the system yourself or farm it out?
Is there room to run duals? If so I would and run the turbo or what I have on it think would sound great, not loud but deep.
Dave ----

 

The Studebaker has the old-timey brake design where the master cylinder is down by the frame underneath the car, so it looks like a tight fit to run exhaust down that side. The steering box is right there as well so I think I that would interfere. Plus I would need a different crossmember, or the hack up the one I have to make a hump on that side to match the one on passenger side. A better option I thought might be to run dual exhaust with both pipes on the passenger side next to each other, but I'd still need to cut up the crossmember to make the area wider I think. That is why I am leaning towards single exhaust. It's not a very powerful engine so I wouldn't be losing anything I don't think. The old Belair we had was cast iron manifolds with glasspacks. That's a low compression motor so even with duals and glasspacks it was not loud, but it gave it a nice rumble at idle. I'm hoping the Studebaker will sound similar with a single. And I would be doing it myself, just cutting & welding and 10 trips to Autozone for various bends and stuff! I did my own exhaust on the Mustang, on the F100, and on the Mazda pickup I did the V8 swap in. I helped a kid in the car club do the exhaust on his 79 Camaro but he already had the setup, just needed some cuts and fabrication to connect it to the headers.

 

New Years eve I had off from work and had the parts to change the out the timing cover gasket.
The hardest part was getting the balancer off.
I was trying not to open the cooling system but even raising it I could not get lavage on the wrench and no room for the impac with out messing with the AC condenser and I did not want to do that.
When I get it running the motor had a tic that it never had before. As part of the looking the oil was low 1 qt but that should not been the cause. I topped it off with a qt of ATF to help clean the inside of the motor before a oil change. As it ran and trying to find where it was coming from it went away?
Took all day but it was together and running by 9 pm.

Today New Years day I was up early and took the truck for a run around the block to heat it up and changed the oil & filter.
I then sprayed the motor & under side of the truck to de-grease it, it was a mess from the oil leak.
Hosed off the motor & under side, with the drop light it looked pretty good and will have to do for now.

Once the de-greasing was done I washed the outside and blew out the inside with shop air.
I have a New Years day Car's & Coffee that some of us are going to in Garner at MoJo's 12 - 4 pm
Dave ----

 

Today I had a Timing Re-curving Party ............... it was a flop
Everything came apart easy and cleaned up nicely.
The flop was the Mr. Gasket spring kit (925D) spring felt weaker than the one I pulled out but went with it anyway as maybe it was just me.

Then the new vacuum advance can I bought that was to be adjustable was not so never even tried to install it.
That was good as it would of never bolted up, the store did not know what it was for as the part number did not show up.
I installed the old vacuum can as it still worked and could be adjusted but I think its for a light car and not a heavy truck and why I wanted to replace it.

The test run only want 1/4 mile and turned around to adjust the timing and the pinging was that bad.
I was at 16* BTDC and bumped it back to 10* BTDC and the pinging was worst than before the re-curve.
So the spring kit spring was weaker as the advance starts a little lower then before also, it should have been later.
With cleaning everything I am getting more advance total than I got before. Timing all in was 24* by 1500 RPM and now 27* by 1500 RPM I need it to start advancing at 1700 to 2000 RPM not all in by 1500 RPM

Need to figure out my next step to fix this.
Dave ----

 

So you need heavier spring, or maybe some way to shim the stronger spring that was already in there. Or maybe a way to limit the travel from the vac advance?
Have you considered trying it without vacuum advance hooked up, so that it only has centrifugal advance?

 

All this testing is just centrifugal no vacuum advance yet.
You have to get the centrifugal under control first then work on the vacuum side.

Yea it needs a heavier spring. Going to recheck my MSD springs and if they don't look like they will work I will put the stock spring back in and work from there as it had less pinging before this work.

What sucks is the whole dist. Needs to come apart just to get to the springs. This is when a distributor machine is nice, make a change and test before putting it back together.
Dave ----

 

Well after my needle in the eye this morning and a little rest I went back out to redo the spring curve.
I was told to test spring tension if you did not have a scale was to hook the 2 springs together and pull them apart and the weaker one would start to spread before the other. That worked out great and was able to tell right off the Mr Gasket spring was weaker than the Ford weak spring.

I also pulled out my MSD springs and tested them to the Fodr spring and found 1 of them took more to spread apart.
Bottom to top: Ford rusty weak spring, Mr. Gasket kit #925D silverspring, blue MSD springs, MSD silver heavysprings

You can see the Ford spring is heavier than the Mr. Gasket spring but did not see that when I was doing the swap.

Today I pulled that really weak spring and installed 1 of the blue MSD springs.
I was told to install 1 of the MSD heavy springs but when I did the pull test with the Ford heavy spring I found the Ford spring was heavier so I put it back in.
I was also told to move the centrifugal limit slot from R13 to R18 slot so I did that.


I set the timing to 14* BTDC as a starting point. Before any of this work it was set to 16* BTDC and it started great and had a little pining.
After the first spring swap I had to set the timing to 10* BTDC and had more pining than at 16* BTDC
With it set to 14* I did not get any pinging when I ran it around the block but do want to do more road testing.
I also could see with the timing light it took a little more RPM before the centrifugal advance would start to kick in so I am on the right track.
All of the above is with out the vacuum advance hooked up as you have to get the centrifugal dialed in first.

On the vacuum can the first one I got was not even for this dist. store did not know what it was to?
Today I went to install the 2nd can I was told would fit, it looked like it would. Well it did not and I am thinking this dist may not be for a 1981 300 six?
Here are the numbers if anyone can de-code what it is would help. If the store cant get me the right one I may check if Crane Cams makes one for the 300 motor dist.

I hope to to a timing curve plotting this weekend with my son.
Dave ----

 

Looking at the pic you posted of how the vacuum canister arm pulls the timing advance, made me wonder what if you kept what you have but made some modification to limit the amount of advance it pulls. Like, stopping the arm slightly earlier?

 

Oil change and tire rotation on wife's car, oil change, tire rotation, sway bar links, and brake caliper pins on front drive side caliper, as well as greased front end on my truck. I need a car lift 😫

 

I was able to do the curve test and centrifugal starts a little later than I would like but no pinging at 14° BTDC.

Took a ride to Durham and back 105 miles and it ran pretty good. I am still adjusting and testing centrifugal before I can put vacuum to the can. It's a slow process with out a distributor machine.
I may do 1 more spring change, I am getting pretty good at it, to see if centrifugal comes in a little sooner then I can look at the vacuum side of advance.

You were a busy boy
Dave ----

 

And today replaced a axle on the 4 wheeler, and freed up the 1 way bearing in the clutch on it.

 

Well it doesn't seem the cold has kept either of you from poking around the old workshop and getting things done! I haven't done much of anything in the past week, except cut 25 stakes from my friend Tom. He lives in NY and owns an acre down here in my neighborhood, he is coming down this weekend to mark out where his house, septic, driveway, etc, will be so I'm trying to help him out. But if you believe WRAL they are saying our weekend is going to be crap with cold wet possibly snowy weather. Won't get much help from me in conditions like that!

 

Where in NY does your friend, Tom live? Daughter lives near Raleigh and runs into people she went to school with (in NY)
Darn Yankees keep moving South

 

He lives somewhere on Long Island, out past Riverhead. I forget the name of the town.
There's a lot of New Yorkers here and I'm responsible for several of them. My wife is from NY so I'm responsible for her coming here, and then her parents decided to move here to be near us and their grandkids, and since they were here as well, her sister and her family decided to move down. And because of that, my brother in law's mother, brother, and his wife moved here. So that's like 11 or 12 people! Damn.

 

Tom is probably out in Suffolk County . I used to live on LI. I'm N of Ithaca. Smart getting out of NY . I know several people that have moved to NC.