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I've looked into building a set myself, and I've made a couple of unfortunate discoveries about why the price is so high. For starters, 4 to 5 foot pieces of straight stainless 2.25" tubing are about $50 delivered to your door. A pair of stainless header flanges are going to run $10 or so, making the raw materials cost around $100. The next hurdle is finding someone with a mandrel to bend the tubes correctly. Most exhaust shops don't have this...they've got a cheaper bender that puts the little wrinkles in the inner part of the bend. Anyone who's got a mandrel is going to be a real specialist, and their rates won't be cheap. I wouldn't imagine the labor to be under two hours to bend, cut, and weld both pipes. That's easily another $100+ . Put general retail markup on, and you're right at $450-500. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure Fabspeed sources the materials cheaper, and I'm also sure their welding dude isn't making $100/hr, but they also know their clientele and originally marketed the pipes to folks who paid new or near new for their cars.
Just to throw it out there, what would folks be willing to pay for a set of bypass pipes that WEREN"T stainless?
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