mid pipe nightmare.

Fuck...
Working on exhaust with jack stands in the driveway sucks. Doing it on a daily driver really sucks. I got under the car sat. morning to spray down the bolts and look the job over before my brother got there to help. I took note of the extremely corroded bolts between the midpipes and the collectors and thought, "that doesn't look good." It wasn't, 3 of the 4 bolts broke. No big deal, I'll go buy some new bolts and pound some beer. Looked closer and realized they weren't bolts, they are studs.....fuck. They were corroded to about 3/16" diameter in the area between the flanges, all the heating, spaying, and care in the world wouldn't have saved these studs. At this point I was pretty frustrated. I tried drilling them out with my battery drill, but only had about 10 min of power in the battery, and a limited supply of drill bits. I got an 1/8" diameter hole drilled through the first two studs, then broke the bit off in the third. Time to blow off some steam. I grabbed my daughter and took a ride with open headers. I got pulled over almost immediately on Lagrange, and couldn't keep a straight face while I asked, "What seems to be the problem?" He let me go without a ticket and I went home without further incident, end of sat. This morning I woke up with a fresh positive attitude. Went to the shop and got a drill with a shit ton of drill bits. It was tedious extracting the broken drill bit, but about two hours later I had all three broken studs drilled out. I put everything back together and fired it up. the midpipe to collector connection is leaking, and needs to be tightened, also I couldn't get the midpipes to slide into the exhaust as much as it was before, so that connection is leaking as well. I'm going to call Exhaust Works and see if I can get in there and have an exhaust system made up next week. Hopefully these cats/ o2 sensors are good and my check engine light goes away for good.

bill

the reason i hate working on cars hahah...

Bill, you can be proud of yourself for hacking it out. Now you know what a nightmare it is to work on your car. I have done some of my own work too and that's why I appreciate it when I have a shop do the work.

I run into that all the time man, SUCKS. I usually heat the surrounding area up, and use my air hammer and knock out the studs. I would say if you just can't get it tight enough, try letting the car warm up all the way, so the exhaust is nice and hot, then try to tighten it, sometimes that helps. OR go to the sxhaust shop LoL

I'm pretty sure I got the mids tight enough to the collector now. I can't see or smell any leaks up there. I did another 1/4 turn on each of the o2 sensors, and they seem to be good as well. I still can't get the mids to go into the x pipe any further. I tried using a ratchet strap to pull them in but no dice. It seems like the clamps aren't loosening up properly so the mids don't go in far enough, just push the exhaust backwards. The old mids went in about 2 7/8", so I marked the new ones at 2 7/8". that mark is still a good 3/4" from the x pipe. I've wanted a new cat back since I bought the car, so this is as good an excuse as any.
bill