June 10, 2006 - The fuel pump saga finally ends
and fitting the exhaust (2)
After the tailpipes were in place we picked up the mufflers and
slide the short end into the slightly larger opening in the forward
part of the tailpipe. The slip fit was perfect and the pipes
slid together without a problem. Bassani did a good job
manufacturing the cat-back system and they even included some heavy
duty looking exhaust clamps. The HP directions say to cut off
the exhaust flanges in front of the mufflers and install the slip
joints (not included) over the cut pipe. Since we didn't have
the slip fits we took the mufflers home with us and Dad cut the
flanges off during the week. Now we had the tailpipes and
mufflers in place and were ready to grab the Autozone $2 slip fit
joints. We slipped them over the end of the pipe in front of
the muffler without a problem because when we went to Autozone we
brought the H-pipe with us and used it as a metric for how big the
slip fit joints needed to be. We learned that not all 2.5"
inside diameter slip joints are really 2.5". Needless to say
bringing the h-pipe into the store was a great idea. When Dad
cut the flanges off he wasn't sure how much of the pipe to remove so
he removed as little of the pipe as possible. That left us the
option of cutting off more if we needed to later. Here's a
nice picture of the $2 Autozone slip joint.
With the slip joints in place we each grabbed a side of the
h-pipe and slipped it in apprehensively. We thought things
were going too smoothly and were anticipating an enormous problem,
however the h-pipe went together as planned. There was only
one thing left to do per side - attach the downpipes. Fitting the downpipes
into the h-pipe opening was easy enough, it slipped right it.
Here's a picture of the h-pipe installed and the heavy duty Bassani
clamps around the slip joints.
Unfortunately when we moved to the turbo side of the downpipe we noticed a
problem.
Neither side reached the exhaust flange on the turbo. We sat
back and thought about what we could do to make it reach. We
wanted to avoid having to change the turbo mounting because we knew
that could be challenging. So we pushed and pulled on the
exhaust pipes but never made any progress. There were other
things that needed to be done so we let the exhaust be and
concentrated on the driver side wastegate. Here are some
pictures of the wastegate before being installed.
I didn't get very far though because when I slid under the car
this is what I saw.
There was obviously a coolant line running right in front of the
wastegate flange. I pushed, yanked, banged and did just about
everything else I could think of but I couldn't get the damn thing
out of way. Dad said he had a tool at home that would make
quick work of it so we'd have to leave it until later.
During the week the new coil-over sleeve and lower spring perch
showed up. The first thing I did when I opened the box was
make sure the perch threaded onto and all the way down the sleeve.
Assembling the strut was easy and so was the installation.
The last thing I had time to do on June 10 was put the oil filter
on and add the oil.
