cat test pipes
 

My Cat test pipes arrived today! woohoo! maybe I'll be able to install them tomorrow night. I also have the matching headers in the mail tomorrow as well. :)

Got mine too. I promptly painted them black with high temp paint. No shiny crap to announce that I'm running test pipes. Mine will go in next week when I have some time.

Interesting take. I've had test pipes for about a year and they are difficult to distinguish from the stock exhaust (if your unaware that it should have secondary cats). The car was state inspected with the test pipes and no one batted an eye. Stainless is a pretty common exhaust material on high end cars, flat black paint? Not so much. I think the paint is the more conspicuous of the two.
:cheers:

painting the pipe will increase the emissivity of the pipe which will increase the temperature in the engine compartment.

Got my Test pipes in and just installed them last night. Combined with the Top Speed Exhaust im real happy the way it sounds. Have to get some exhaust leaks figured out since the clamps didnt exactly fit will but all in all very happy

pipe wrap insulation
 

I was going to wrap mine in heat tape but one of my co workers cautioned against that since they put Mag Chloride on our county roads out here and I have to drive just under a mile on gravel to get to my house.

Did anyone have the problem of your cat bolts being "welded" on?

The whole muffler has hi temp paint to hide the ugly thing when viewing from the rear. Been doing this for years on my cars were the muffler shows. Not too worried.

Yes, the top bolt of the cat flange should have a welded nut. The bolt however will back out just fine. The bottom two bolts you will spin the nut off as the studs will stay in place, bottoms are pretty easy to get at. Takes some clever arm routing but over all pretty easy. I also sprayed mine with WD-40 the night before just in case.

Cool thanks, I've gotten to the point of remove all the nuts and bolts but I can't get the cat and pipe out of the car lol. The bottom two studs are still on the adapter and the exhaust is getting stuck on the hook piece near the muffler. I'm starting to consider dropping the entire muffler... Is there another way around it?

I disconnected the cat pipe from the U-Pipe and got the u out first. Then i let the cat fall so the cat was actually facing toward the ground. With the cat facing the ground i pulled it straight back and slightly downward. Took a little jiggling but it does come out. Hope this helps

Does that mean you hammered or cut these studs off? Because I can't twist the cat at this pointhttp://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/05/23/y6eryjat.jpg

QUOTE=Shehadehd;401499]Does that mean you hammered or cut these studs off? Because I can't twist the cat at this pointhttp://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/05/23/y6eryjat.jpg[/QUOTE]
Once i disconnected the u pipes my cats came out really easy, However if you have the stock muffler still on, there are some supports that connect the muffler to the cats that need to be removed as well.
http://986forum.com/forums/uploads01...1400784612.jpg

I guess it's Christmas for everyone. Mine came in yesterday and will be going on this weekend. I like the idea of using High Temp paint... I may try that. With the unrestricted flow there shouldn't be any temp increases, I would think you'd see a decrease.

different pipe diameters
 

Ok, so the pipe clamp doesn't fit the bypass pipes since the bypass pipe end is a larger diameter than the original cat pipe diameter. SO, how the heck is everyone one getting the pipe clamp back on with the new bypasspipes? I put my cat back on the driver's side after I started up with a kluge fix with the bypass pipe that was releasing quite an exhaust leak. Anyone have a good fix?

You should have an adapter with the kit. The slotted side of it should go over the test pipe and the smaller end fits inside the original pipe clamp. It takes some shimmying. It's a bit easier to clean it first before trying to adjust it under the car.

Speedy2000, thanks for your help. I was finally able to attach the test pipes. Turns out I just needed to add a little more elbow grease. it sounds great!