Ripley's Muffler & Brakes opened in 1973 as an ARCO Service Station. Soon afterwards my father bought the station from ARCO and began selling gas as an independent gasoline retailer. In an effort to support a family of 13 my father attempted many avenues at our intersection and ultimately stuck with Mufflers and Brakes. Every one of us 11 children did our part working for our dad as we grew up. We boys began our career as Muffler and Brake men around the age of 13. I can only imagine what people thought when they saw us out there at such a young age. I believe they appreciated we were hard working kids and understood we had been raised with values they've grown to trust for some 33 plus years.

Over time Ripley's began offering more and more services. We started out doing mufflers, than brakes eventually breaking into the performance exhaust arena. In the beginning we mostly installed glasspacks and turbo mufflers with Custom Dual Exhaust. Eventually companies like Flowmaster and Magnaflow entered the performance exhaust market.

I (Tommy Ripley) returned to Ripley's in 1996 after College and a short career in Home Building to find the Marketplace had upgraded. Performance exhaust was king, Catalytic Converters were a large part of our business and the old rusty steel exhaust tubing had been replaced with Aluminized tubing. We were installing less and less of the Muffler and tailpipes and installing Cat. Back Stainless Steel exhaust. Chrome tips were being replaced by stainless steel tips. Diesel Truck exhaust was beginning to be upgraded to 4" Diesel Exhaust and 5" Diesel exhaust.

When I first returned to Ripley's in April of 1996, I noticed the "Classic Cars", The "Hot Rod's" weren't coming very often. It was explained to me that the "Rodders" wanted Stainless Steel Mandrel Bent Exhaust. I looked into the situation and found the machinery necessary was too expensive. Recently a different generation of Mandrel Pipe Benders has surfaced which allowed me the opportunity to begin offering 2 1/4", 2 1/2", and 3" Stainless steel Mandrel bent exhaust. To my knowledge we are the only custom exhaust shop in Houston to offer Custom Mandrel Exhaust and possibly on of the only Custom muffler shops in the state of Texas to offer Stainless Custom Mandrel Bent Exhaust.

This makes us "The Exclusive Custom Exhaust shop in Houston, Texas".

Tommy Ripley
V.P./G.M.