Hey gals and guys, here's my (almost) finished 2.5" straight pipe exhaust I rigged up. I know this sounds rather excessive, but there is a method to the madness lol.
So, without further adeu...
Gut the stock system. Yuck. Seriously, this is an awful exhaust. So.much weight, such little pipes, I get it (emissions, sound ordinances, yadda yadda) but geez come on. 1.5” pipes after the second cats? I'm amazed the poor girl can breathe at all.
After thats out, clean er up real nice nice and get ready for the goods - Chinese headers of course! Painted with high temp grill paint and then wrapped. (everything is painted, not for thermal effect, just for rust prevention).
Here's the tricky part - the collector on these is only 2". Not big enough. The 987 collectors are 2.25". Getting better but at a grand a pair that's just ridiculous. So what to do? Fab an adapter! This was the hardest part, finding a 2.5" "collector reducer" that I could then weld a 2" flange on the other side. That took 10 seconds to type out but it took me 2 weeks of endless searching to find the dang part that would work. Anyway, I digress... These were too short to wrap but did get a triple coat of paint.
After the 2 to 2.5 adapter comes the 2.5 pipes. Offset was needed here. Again this took quite a bit of searching but hedman made just the right set. Painted and wrapped just like the heads.
Last but not least the pretty part h simple 2.5" chrome turndowns. They're tucked up under the car to far to see currently, but they won't be like that for ever.
Now for the assembly. All joints get aluminum crush gaskets with a thin coat of the copper silicone gasket goop. Adapters in the headers, headers onto block. First snag encountered - O2 sensors too long to fit in first sensor bung on passenger side. Thanks china. No problem, moved down to second bung, got some slack on the harness, and used the postcat sensor (which as far as I can tell is the same sensor but with a longer harness). Problem averted. From there the offset pipes go on, sneaking past the strut tower and over the sway bars. Good clearance on driver's side, super tight on passenger side. Now the tips went on (with a generous coating of antisieze) and pointed down and out. Lastly the diagonal bars and aluminum plate went back in. The trapezoidal bar that supports the aluminum plate in the rear touches the passengers side pipe (grrrrr) but clears the driver's. Everything torqued to spec and voi la.
Now, I would like some opinions. I do not like the fact that the pipes touch rigid structures. My concern is that something will break. I think that I need put a donut with spring bolts between the 2-2.5" adapter and the offset pipes. This will suck donkey nuts because I will have to disassemble everything, unwrap the pipes, and then put everything back together. But, I sure as hell don't want to crack anything, especially at the block (go ahead, ask me how long it takes to drill one of those out and retap the hole lol). What are yalls thoughts about this?
Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys!
Best,
Ike
Oh, one other thing - the aluminum plate came off in the beginning without effort. It took a bit of oomph to get back on. I was gonna have the alignment checked before going crazy, has anyone else encountered this?
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