Before starting the exhaust I decided to fit the brake master cylinder and servo, so that I knew where to route the manifold. Dax use the master cylinder and servo from an Escort Mk5 1.4. I got mine from a scrapyard and just fitted a seal kit to the cylinder. Dax modify their servo's, so I ordered the parts to do the mod myself. All this consists of is a clevis, for the princely sum of £11+vat. The original clevis is cut off the servo shaft and a 12mm thread is tapped down it to allow the new clevis to be screwed on. This makes the pedal position adjustable by about 25mm. 

       Anyhow, back to the exhausts The kit consists of 32 x 1 3/4" pipes, half of which are bent at 90 degrees and the other half bent at 45 degrees, 8 flanges for the head and a pair of 4 into 1 adaptors. 

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      The idea is to first fit the side pipes and get them into the engine bay through the wings, so as you have something to aim for when building the headers up. This was easy enough, but next came the hard bit. The manifold kit was not the easiest and most user friendly thing I've ever used, it was actually the hardest piece of the whole build so far. If you cannot weld well or you don't know a good welder then I would think very hard about using this system. Thankfully I have a very good mate who welded it up for me, but this took 6 weeks of cutting a bit at a time and getting it tacked into place, then retrying it before welding it up. I also had to buy another head to hold the pipes together before welding them to the 4 into 1 connector, as there is no room to do this on the car. 

        Once built I soaked it in some Zinc Phosphate, to keep it from rusting, and then sprayed it with some VHT paint. I then bolted it all into place and tried the engine. At first it wouldn't start, I had no spark at the plugs, but I unplugged the distributor and plugged it back in again and it fired up. The sound is just great, it's not overly loud but it's very deep and bubbly, probably a lot to do with the size of the manifold pipes.

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        So was it worth it? Well it was hard work and, at times, very very frustrating. But I saved a lot of money, around a thousand pounds, so I guess it was worth it. I assume these days there are better options available than this.