Quote:
Originally Posted by tke344
I had my VRSF DP sitting in a box since their black friday deal and I finally made some time to install it. I wanted to DIY mainly for the experience, and saving the money compared to having a shop handle it was a bonus.
I had already done my spark plugs so I was familiar with getting access to the o2 sensor plugs on top of the engine, that part was very straight forward. Some people do supposedly skip this and disconnect them at the pipe but IMO it's worth the extra time. There is no way I would have gotten them out while connected to the car.
There are already DIYs written out so I'll just list some tips for anyone who is planning to do this. I unfortunately only had ramps so it made the whole ordeal a lot more unpleasant, I'd highly recommend either a lift or at least tall jack stands. I found it necessary to unbolt the power steering rack on the passenger side of the car, you gain a lot of space this way, I imagine it's possible to skip this if you have small hands but it doesn't take long to do. It was the only way I was able to gain access to the bolt on the v-band clamp. Breaking the nuts on the rear of the downpipe didn't go well for me, my car is a 2011 and the nuts were in bad shape. 3 out of the 4 sheared off, even using freeze off. I actually had to hammer on a smaller socket because of the amount of rust. For the center exhaust hanger, make sure you have the inverse star sockets, I tried using a 12pt socket but it just wasn't working. It was the only tool I was missing so I had to run out and grab a set. There's a lot of those types of bolts on these cars so it's worth having. Once the DP was out, I had a lot of trouble with the o2 sensors. I had the correct o2 socket but they were so frozen it was starting to strip the nuts. I torched them, used freeze off, they were just stuck. I came close to giving up and just ordering replacements but eventually they came out with a wrench and a pipe for leverage. A lot of time wasted there but it was worth it since they aren't cheap. I used plenty of anti-seize when putting them in the new pipe.
Re-installation wasn't that bad actually. After trying to support the DP with one hand and align the v-band with the other (unsuccessfully) I had a brilliant (IMO) idea of putting a zip tie on one of the rear bolt holes to hold the pipe up so I could use 2 hands to get the clamp on. Having a second hand for this helped tremendously, I had it on in 5 minutes. 
Despite wasting an entire Sunday, it was very satisfying. I can't wait to do some logs and tweak my tune accordingly. |
Great write up. Are you happy with the DP's? A noticeable improvement? Any downside or regrets?