Stainless Steel Exhaust System parts for Type 1 ?

I am getting back into the VW Bug world after a 20 year hiatus. My first car was a 64 Bug (with sunroof) that I bought for ** $40 ** that needless to say was a bit of a fixer-upper. Good thing I bought it when I was 14 so I had time to fix it up and get it running by the time I could legally drive it. It came out pretty nice, even the $69.95 Earl Scheib paint job looked pretty good (did I mention that my family and I didn't exactly have a lot of excess cash running around in those days). Unfortunately the car was totaled in a MVA after I got to drive it for a little over a year.

Now that I am all grown up and have a bit more dough to pay with I am in the process of building a garage so I can do a restoration on a mid-60's vintage bug (I knew I hung on to my John Muir "Idiot" book for a reason). I'm looking at a car that is in fair shape, but like many Bugs the heater boxes and muffler are hopeless. I am wondering if there are any after market makers of heater boxes and mufflers that fabricate these parts in stainless steel. I know that when I was working on my first car and some of my friend's Bugs that the heater boxes tended to be trouble spots due to rust and corrosion. It would seem logical to fab these parts in stainless. I know that both of my late model Japanese cars have all stainless exhaust systems.

What about it guys, do such beasts exist?

Reply to
John Crichton
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Not exactly. 99.9% of the VW buying public would be unwilling to plunk down the kind of cash this would entail. Most of those spending serious coin are into performance and I get the impression you're referring to stock components.

A few vendors sell decent German muffler's and other exhaust pieces. If you simply spent some hours on prep work with hi-heat paint or have the components stripped and ceramic-coated (lots more $$$), they would outlast the rest of the car.

But I know where you're coming from. I just took my Borla (T304 stainless) off my pickup after 8 years to do a clutch and it looks like it would last another 10.

RT

Reply to
Raymond Lowe

Reply to
Ben Boyle

none of them offer ones that will fit '74-up

pipes though which are very worthwhile.

Ben,

You say that there are some vendors that offer stainless steel mufflers for per- '74 bugs. Do you have a name of anyone that sells then?

-Thanks

Reply to
John Crichton

Raymond,

You are correct that I am doing a pretty much stock restoration.

The thing is that fabricating something like a muffler or heater box out of stainless versus mild steel really doesn't drive up the price that much. You might get a 20% bump in material cost and then a slight cost increase due to the fact that you have to replace your tools a bit more often (stainless is harder than mild steel and will wear your tools faster). I could see it increasing the cost of a finished product by

50% (which would include an increased profit margin). I would think there would be lots of bug enthusiast would be happy to pay that for parts that would lasts 4x longer. Maybe one day someone will offer this.

-Thanks

Reply to
John Crichton

none of them offer ones that will fit '74-up

pipes though which are very worthwhile.

Reply to
Ben Boyle

They just mentioned these guys

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in the Feb 05 VW Trends , looks a nice product - George

Reply to
Still in Primer

Reply to
Still in Primer

Reply to
Still in Primer

Thanks for the info. It's fairly close to what I want. Ideally what I would like to buy is a completely stock muffler and heater boxes that are fabricated from stainless steel. The muffler on that website is "stockish" though I didn't see any place to connect the pre-heater hose. I'm thinking of getting a powder coating gun and building a powder coating oven to go with it. There are some metallic/ceramic coatings that are applied and cured more are less like a normal powder coat. Some of these coatings are said to be good for as much as 1100 degrees F. Maybe I'll just buy a good German set of heater boxes and muffler and sand/media blast them and use this metallic/ceramic stuff on them. It would have to be better than the gray primer that normally comes on these things.

Reply to
John Crichton

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