Hey I wanted to make a custom manifold for my evader because the pipe I want wont fit without it. Does anyone know how to make one or knows any places that make them. Also if anyone knows what Material I should use for it if I had to make it myself. The pipe I want is wicked and might boost my engine power by like 20%. If anyone has any ideas, I'm open for any suggestions that people may have.

When I dropped a savage .21 into my maximum st, I had to make a custom manifold for it because the exhaust pipe would have pointed side to side on my truck instead of front to back because the original duratrax engine had exhaust output in the side of the engine, where this engine's exhaust output is on the back of it. So I bought a few 1/2" copper fittings, one elbow and one extension and combined it with the existing savage manifold to get the exhaust to point where I want it to. It fits good and it hasn't costed me any power. Surprisingly these copper pieces fit so snugly together and to the existing manifold that there was no need to sodder them together. I can upload a pic of what I'm talking about it you want.

PLease show me some pics, I am very interested because I want to put a brand new Vantage Racing Carbon tuned peipe on it. Those pics would really help me out.

THX

I would think that the length of your custom header would be critical. 1/4" too long or too short and all advantage of having a new exhaust could be lost. 1/2" either way and all advantage of having a tuned pipe could be lost.

With tuned pipes, length is everything. They are like a trombone, where their length changes their "tune" and what RPM range they are optimizing. You can easily push their tune outside of the rpm range of your vehicle and lose any power gain you get from them.

Just a heads-up for you guys with custom manifolds.

Well here's a pic of what I did. I pretty much just used the existing manifold and attached an elbow so that the muffler would point to the front of the truck, rather than to the side. I didn't want to do this, but I really had no choice. Now that I think about it, I'd like to move the muffler to the side of the truck, so it runs along the side of the truck by where the pull start is, rather than in the middle of the truck. It would eliminate much of my 'custom' work and put it closer to stock specs. But just so you know, this is using the stock savage pipe, this is not a hp aftermarket pipe. I would think that a custom manifold might have a negitive impact on a specially tuned aftermarket pipe, but that said, I ran the truck for a while with the muffler pointed the other way, and now that I've ran it like this for a while, I've noticed no difference in top or bottom end performance. I am skeptical as to how much of a negitive impact that the extra section of pipe would have on a tuned pipe, but I would not rule it out as a very distinct possibillity. Anyway, here's a pic of what I did. In the pic you can see exactly what I did, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why I had to to change the orientation of the muffler.

edit: and if you're wondering about that funky air filter system, but it's just a temp until the end of the week.

Would it be possible to take my existing manifold cut out the section I need longer and just add a longer piece where I need it. If so give me some directions. It looks to me like Daytona did that. How again did you keep that copper piece where it is?

Okay, if you look close at the pic, you can see used a 1/2" diamater x 1" long extension piece of copper pipe and a copper elbow. The straight 1" piece is not just part of a copper pipe I cut, it is a fitting that I bought because it's meant to fit tightly around a 1/2" pipe. Since it was designed to fit tightly around a 1/2" pipe, it fits very tightly on the copper elbow, so tight that I had to hammer it on a bit. But before putting the elbow on, I jammed the extension piece onto the original header. The header is also about 1/2" in diameter, so it wouldn't fit. I had to file it around the outside quite a bit to get the copper extension to get on there, then I had to hammer it on the end a bit to get it to go on. It all fits so tightly that it supports the muffler on it's own, but the chassis also supports the muffler at the other end. I just got all these pieces to fit together very tight so they don't move around at all. I didn't know it was going to be like this, but as a bonus I didn't have to sodder the pieces together. I was planning to, but it wasn't required. I didn't cut the original manifold though, I just added to it, but I'm thinking of cutting my manifold so I can move the pipe to the side of the car, but I can't see why it wouldn't work to cut the manifold and add a piece to where you need it. But just to be safe, it I was going to buy a special tuned pipe, if I had to modify my manifold to get it to fit, I would try to keep it's total length pretty close to the original total length.

MY mabnifold is very small. I need to enlarge it around the part where it does a 180 degree turn into the port on the motor. I have to extend it a little farther back to fit the pipe because the pipe is 1/8 scale and I have a 1/10 evader. I hope this works because that pipe will cost me a pretty penny. Also I have heard this pipe is really good and boosts engine power by about 15%