I’m fitting a new Bell SS exhaust to my car, and have come across something odd - everything fits really well, except… the connector pipes between the mufflers and resonators are about an inch too long - they are longer than those on the old system, and even with the pipes pushed as far as they can go into the mufflers and as far as they can go into the resonators, the bolt hole in the hanger bracket on the resonators ends up 1" rearward from the hole in the hanger bracket on the body.
Obviously, I can easily solve this by simply shortening the pipes, but is this normal? Has anyone else had to do this?
Other than this, the whole system fits perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, I was able to both remove the old system and (mostly) install the new one, by myself, in a little more than an hour, without so much as jacking up the car!
I had the exact same problem. I trimmed the back end of the pipes that go into the resonators about an inch.
Other than that, mine dropped right in too. from the down pipes to muffler mounts etc. all seemed to bolt right up easy. I did my system by myself as well. I would rather have a long tailpipe to trim vs a pair that were too short.
I altered my Bell system ('66 S1) A LOT to get a good fit. I shortened the downpipes about 7/8" to get proper ground clearance, pie-cut the bend to get them to aim at the mufflers and probably shortened them too, that would have been hard to remember through the steam coming out of my ears.
I also had to narrow the rear muffler brackets about 1/4" to get the rubber blocks to fit.
Had both problems on ours - shorten and exhaust too wide at rear muffler area. Not too loony to fix, at least the quality is otherwise good (unlike some other aftermarket stuff).
I’m not 100% sure it was a “Bell”. It was on sale from one of the usuals and is stainless. It doesn’t hang too low as some have said about some systems.