veedub,
hope the leak is at or behind the down pipe where it is held by the transmission brace. I think fabricating the section from the turbo to the cat would be the biggest headache. I did see one other member who put a 3" system on. he had tailpipe tips that were upswept and he complained about soot collecton on the rear. I went with downturn pipes to force the sound down instead of up.

as far as strait pipes all the way back... I dont see why not. I have just heard plenty of people complain about the 2000 rpm resonation that hits just under the back seat floor and has been said to rattle your teeth. cant be that bad.
I did have a conversation with a tech at flowmaster who said in their custom shop they can pinpoint in a exhaust system where resonation is comming from by using a remote temprature reading gun. they just find the hotspot where the exhaust waves are tripping over eachother and put in a resenatior.

now what is bad is I was driving around for a couple of weeks with only the cat. nothing in back of it. that was LOUD. My local arm of the revenue collection agency stopped us to ask what was the matter with the vehicle. I got a laugh out of that because the girfriend was driving it and was quite embarrased. so I ordered the parts that night. the cop didnt like my explination of. "OH... well, it's a diesel, they just run louder"

__________________
sold
1987 300 SDL 318K
126.125 (OM603.961) (722.321 trans) (head#14)
Born on date 11/07/1986
2.5" Flowmaster Exhaust
flex-a-lite dual electric cooling fan conversion

now have a 1985 toyota diesel pickup