A new exhaust downpipe had to be made. I had only just replaced the entire exhaust system from the downpipes back before the Niva engine was pulled out of the car, so I was keen on retaining this new system. Luckily only the first half meter or so of the exhaust system needs to be modified. This was an easy straightforward procedure. I started by "guesstimating" where to cut the original Niva downpipes so they would end up pointing more or less in the right direction to join up with the Fiat manifold. Then the Fiat downpipes were cut just below the manifold mounting flange.

After using the leftover bits of pipe ( I am Dutch!) , some further trimming of the pipes, and some trialfitting the first tube was tackwelded into place. Careful consideration was giving to make sure adequate clearance was maintained between the pipe and the starter motor to allow the original heatshield around the starter motor to be retained. Starter motors do not like getting to hot. I had learned this lesson years ago after owning a relatively small car which was repowered with a smallblock Chevrolet V8. This thing would refuse to wind over the starter motor when the engine was hot, for example after filling up with gas, due to the starter motor being surrounded by a spaghetti of pipes and getting cooked.

The same procedure of trimming, cutting and fitting was followed to make the second pipe up. All that was left was to fully weld all the pieces together. The plan is to wrap the pipes in insulating tape especially made for this purpose to further reduce the the heat radiation into the surrounding ancillaries.

One way around this problem of the starter motor being under the exhaust manifold is to fit a Fiat 124 bellhousing to the Niva gearbox. These bolt straight up and have the starter motor on the other side of the engine. That way the Fiat starter motor can be used instead of the Lada one. The downside to using one of these bellhousings is that some suitable mounting pad has to be made to fit the clutch slave cylinder to as Fiat 124s only came out with cable operated clutches. As well as that trying to find one here in New Zealand is like looking for a needle in a haystack and when you do find one the price asked will almost certainly put you of, it did for me anyway which is why I have decided to stick with the Lada set-up.