JimmyJimboJet

Gee, talk about f**king annoying... i've been pissing around with this for a whole day.

I sprayed some liquid wrench on the bolts yesterday morning, and they are both still stuck. I ended up cutting one cause i couldn't get the nut off, and i've spent the last couple hours trying to drill it out.



maybe i should just get a hi-flow cat or mid pipe right now and be done with the biatch?



:rantoff:

9BASE3

Get a hi-flow cat if you are still sequential.



I love mine!

P'cola FD

That is the hardest metal on the entire planet! If you can get access to an oxy-acetylene torch, it makes quick work of those studs. Or just ditch the cat.

paw140

I took mine to a muffler shop to try to get the stud out. There was about a 1/2" sticking out, so it was easy to get vise grips on it. They heated it up with an oxy-acetylene torch, and it started to come out, but then froze up again. Then they tried to cut it out, but they were having problems because the flange steel is a lot softer and weaker than the stud steel. They were starting to mess up the flange steel. So they just gave it back to me and I drilled it out. Major pain in the ***.



If you have enough muscle, and a good rachet or breaker bar, you can just break the nut/stud off, remove the cat from under the car and drill it out. I actually broke off the front two (dp to cat), and one of the rear ones (cat to muffler). Only one of them came off nicely.

JimmyJimboJet

i am eventually going to get a hi-flow or a midpipe, but i need to move my car out of the garage it's in (it's not my garage)



i cut the studs flush with the flange on the dp side, there was barely an eighth of an inch sticking out the other side. it took me a good 2 hours to drill thru each stud. my arms are killing me and my left shoulderblade hurts like a bitch. i couldn't get a good footing on the slippery cold garage floor, so i had to hold the drill in one hand, and support myself by holding onto the front sway bar. and to top it all off, i had to use a cordless drill, so i would have to wait for the batteries to fully charge up. it was nice though, cause then i'd go work on putting my boost guage in.



after finally getting the studs drilled out, the downpipe went on very easily, in about 5 minutes. The front two studs on the turbo side of the downpipe came out, the rear two didn't budge, so i slipped the dp on and started putting the front two studs in. then i started on the bottom rear stud. i couldn't get the nut on because of the bend in the downpipe.

im gonna give her another shot tonight, i'll have to try to get the nut started before getting the dp all the way on.



wish me luck

JimmyJimboJet

i kicked my cars a$$ tonight. i'm in such a good mood. the dp was on and all bolts were tight in like 10 minutes. took some pics (need someone to host) of some missing parts i need, ran the tubing for a steering column-mounted boost gauge, replaced some vacuum lines, put some new headlight bulbs in (sylvania silverstars), got all my anti-theft lugnuts off, drank about 9 cans of pop.



and i got to jam out to some good ole James Brown. what a good night



then i came home and spent about half an hour scrubbing my hands