Today was the day to start the adventure known as an exhaust swap. Placed the S on my scissor lift and started at the muffler. I contemplated removing the rear bumper but decided to plow forward and be stubborn and struggle. It only took about 20 minutes to remove the top nuts for the top muffler mount. Then moved onto the clamps, no big deal here I powered through with an air impact. I did treat all the nuts with PB Blaster the night before. Struggled a little bit removing the muffler but the right combination of cursing did the trick
. Then onto the rear cats no struggle here everything came apart no issues. Now onto the OEM headers. First I unplugged the O2 sensors, took me a few minutes to figure out the " tab " to push to remove the connector. All O2 sensors came out with no issues. I'm happy to report no snapped bolts
. OK now everything is removed now time to start installing items. Did the headers first with new metal gaskets and a coating of Loctite 510 as recommended by a local guru. Went in no problem but wow it's tight in there !
Then I installed the rear cat delete pipes no problems there other than the supplied hardware was crap
I'll probably replace in the future. So now I'm almost home and I go to mount the Dansk muffler and the bracket on the muffler won't fit the transmission ...........crap ! After studying the situation I was able to use some parts from the OEM setup and the Dansk to make it work. I ran out of time to complete today and I have to make a Home Depot run for a few spacers but she'll be done tomorrow. When buying used you know you might run into issues so I wasn't concerned. All pipes went together as planned and the exhaust tips are centered in the opening. Tomorrow I hope to update with road trip results