The solid-roller 408 small-block crackled to life, its sharp staccato echoing between the rows of buildings in the industrial park. Close your eyes and it’s easy to pretend you’re in the paddock area at Daytona or Talladega. Lang Paciulli of LP Racing in Upland has just completed the fabrication of our Dr. Gas exhaust system. I fired it up for the first time, and it sounds amazing. It’s hard to believe that just a year ago, this ’75 Laguna was an asthmatic daily driver that was one minor breakdown from the car crusher.
Rewind two days ago. The Laguna was brought to LP Racing on a flatbed from Don Lee Auto Service, its engine and trans installed, but with no trans crossmember or exhaust. Lang Paciulli had agreed to fabricate a crossmember, and assemble the exhaust from a cool pile of parts from Dr. Gas they shipped out the week before. It took Lang about half a day to fab the double-hump crossmember out of 1 ¼-inch .083-diameter chromoly tubing, and another day to mock-up, cut, and TIG weld the exhaust from the various, pipes, bends, and transitions sent by Dr. Gas.
At the heart of the Dr. Gas kit are two key pieces: the “X” crossover, and the boom-tube mufflers. The X section is functionally a balance tube, but because of its “X” design, the column of fast-moving exhaust doesn’t need to take a 90-degree turn, wasting momentum and robbing the cylinders of some scavenging effect. The boom tube mufflers are pretty much just flat, NASCAR-inspired exhaust tips with some flow diverters to provide a slight muffling effect. It’s really, REALLY loud. Like way louder than our big-block Chevelle, and even louder than a Harley, but in a good way. We expect to get tickets from the po-po with this! With any luck we'll have it on the road today.
Sources:
LP Racing
909-932-0044
www.lpracecars.com
Dr. Gas
801-563-1111
www.drgas.com