I picked TOW up this afternoon after Eric wrapped up the exhaust and other work. We didn't have time to get the new sections coated, so I will have to do that after the GG show this weekend. For now it's just sprayed with some high-temp paint.
We ended up using this flange:
That turned into a problem because there were only 3 available at the Vibrant dealer in the states. I do have to give them some serious credit for helping me out though. They are located in Canada, and they stock parts in Detroit. When the one I needed arrived there, the rep had it overnighted to Eric so we could make progress. Much appreciated!
Anyway, strangely the oval pipe is smaller than I expected. Eric though the same, and when he first saw the flange, he was worried I had ordered the wrong ones.
This job ended up taking more work than we expected to get it right, but in the end, it was the right choice. I have plenty of clearance now, the frame rails are the lowest point. I don't have any pics yet, hopefully Eric took a few. But since we need to disassemble for coating, we can get some then if not.
One interesting thing Eric did was to cut off the collector housing from the tri-y headers and transition the 2 2" tubes directly into the oval pipe. To do this he cut up the original collector transition which worked almost perfectly, just a bit of reforming required. He also cut the header tubes to shorten them to raise everything. Again, more work, but better end result.
I know this sounds odd, but the sound of the exhaust is different now. Eric noticed it too. The car has always has a 'crackle' sound: little pops, raspy. That is gone now, and it sounds much smoother. We can only hypothesize as to why, but it's definitely different after driving it for a while...