my buddy’s uncle owns the meineke out in wexford. i must say, nothing bad to say about the way he’s doin business out there at all. so i figured id spread the good word. he made me a custom 1 piece mandrel bent exhaust for my teg. all 2.5 inches. very nicely priced as well. you tell him what you want, and he does it for you. also, if anything goes wrong, he just said come back and they will take care of it. he also said that they do suspension work( i.e lowering or lifting) he does a lot of custom stuff. they even got a regal up there on hydros that he worked on. that was fun to play with while i was waiting.
but heres the cliff notes:
if you want custom work done at a good price and get good service, go see bill up at the meineke in wexford. :blue:
Did he use the same material as the pre-bent tubes (the stuff that rusts away within a year) or was it something else? I’m guessing it’s a better grade if it’s just stock tubing.
I think we need a tube bending 101 class. I need a pic to believe that a meineke has a mandrel bender. Not trying to hate, you can still do a quality job with the benders they use. Its just a pet peve.
the Meineike in castle shannon has one, creep thru one day and you’ll see it
but when you ask him to put 3 inch exhaust on a turbocharged car he’ll stand there and ask you “why!” and he tells you that “if you put 3 inch exhaust on this car you will bogg out at redlights” :kekegay: all you got to do is tell him that your paying him to do it and want it done! and he’ll do it.
just dont try explaining why your putting larger pipe on your car cuz you wont win the battle
I went to a place called Marty’s Welding shop.
Its right next to Nigros resturante in east mckeesport
i had a true dual exhaust for my XRunner fabbed up and it took him only about 3hrs to do and only cost 180bucks.
here are some pics all 2.5" pipe back
No, mieneke in castle shannon does not have one… And yes the guy there is a moron. I will typically not argue with anyone about cars. But that guy loves back pressure. I just walked away when I was in there with my buddy getting duals on his RT dakota. He really believes that you need back pressure. I think if I argued with him it would go over his head in a heart beat. I’m glad 05XRUNNER didn’t try to pass his for mandrel, that is a perfact example of what these places tell you is mandrel. Just because its not a corrugated crinkle bend, doesn’t make it mandrel. Those are compression bends. Looks nice by the way. As for castle shannon meineke, that guy does superior work to damn near all custom exhaust shops. Class for tube bending will begin as soon as its full. Slowshelby, you are enrolled.
I dont mind that its not mandrel bent. I dont know any shops with one of them and also I am sure the price woulda been alot more for it. Plus it flows alot more then any cat back system i woulda bought from gibson, magnaflow or JBA since they are just a single pipe that is still restricted from a smaller diameter crossover pipe that feeds into the catback and actually this cost me less to have this custom setup done then one of their kits
i just noticed xrunners pics, i figured that was mandrel bent… my bad…
then no Meineike does not have a mandrel… i figured what he was useing was mandrel cuz it wasnt crinkle bent… plus he told me it was mandrel… that dickhead!
I talked to Jeff last week about putting an exhaust on an F-150 I’m looking to buy. When asked about mandrel he told me that he doesn’t have one of those benders and as far as he knows nobody in the state does. They are incredibly expensive and I doubt any independent shop can afford one. I work right across the street from his shop and I can attest to the fact that he does work on a lot of classic, antique and hot rod vehicles. That must be some indication of the quality of the work.
Nope I got compression bent…but he did a pretty good job not to crimp it to bad. I am very pleased with it since it only cost me 180bucks to have all that fabricated up from scratch
Honestly, there is no performance difference between the compression bending that 05XRunner has and mandrel bending. I looked into this when I got my exhaust done the first time. Compression bending still retains the diameter of the pipe, it’s just in the form of an oval rather than being round. You still retain size in the bends, it just looks different. If there is any difference in performance betwen the 2, it is VERY minimal.
any restriction any interference anything that prevents air flow from flowing smoothly is hurtfull for performance. so the compression bending reducing the inside diameter of the pipe a small % where as mandrel just shinks the overall lenght of the pipe instead of the inside diameter
