SicSE
Veteran CEG'er
Put the headers on last Saturday, a few pics for ya'll.
Before pic - tell me how much you LOVE my custom cat. :laugh:
Bank 2 helper
Install problem #1. Had to grind on oil pan a bit because there happened to be extra casting at the one place that there wasn't any room for it.
Bank 1 helper
The headers themselves went in very easily with the aid of my wooden friends. Took < 3 hours. Bolting up the y-pipe however, turned into a damn fiasco... which is why the pics stopped. I hadn't bolted the y-pipe to the headers before install as I should have, so I didn't notice that the bank 1 flange on the y was convex. Not exactly sure how it got that way, but because of it, instead of being able to just bolt the headers to the y by the threads that are machined into the flanges, I had to run bolts through the back of the flange toward the header, then use nuts to draw the y flange flat on the header flange... which had freshly elongated bolt holes to allow all this to actually work. Once the y was bolted up, it wouldn't start.
I knew I hadn't done anything that would have caused it, so I was rather confused for a minute. Thankfully, I remembered my CKP sensor had once worked it's way loose, (missing retainer), so I checked that to find it almost completely unplugged. No time like the present to fix a wiring issue. I spliced in a connecter that DID have the retaining clip so I wouldn't have to worry about that problem again. Started it up with the y attached & it was loud to the point of pain. There was no way I was going to drive it around that way so I had to connect my exhaust. Then I couldn't find the flange I was going to use to redo my CAT, so I had to make something work as a test pipe... and did I mention elongating the bank 2 upstream O2 sensor wiring by about 3ft? :crazy: After all this, it was time to go home so the dyno would have to wait... but hopefully only until this Saturday. I'm going to do it all in one day because of the noise level involved and will be adding a few test-pipe exhaust runs to the mix to see the difference a cat REALLY makes to us. Stay tuned.
Before pic - tell me how much you LOVE my custom cat. :laugh:
Bank 2 helper
Install problem #1. Had to grind on oil pan a bit because there happened to be extra casting at the one place that there wasn't any room for it.
Bank 1 helper
The headers themselves went in very easily with the aid of my wooden friends. Took < 3 hours. Bolting up the y-pipe however, turned into a damn fiasco... which is why the pics stopped. I hadn't bolted the y-pipe to the headers before install as I should have, so I didn't notice that the bank 1 flange on the y was convex. Not exactly sure how it got that way, but because of it, instead of being able to just bolt the headers to the y by the threads that are machined into the flanges, I had to run bolts through the back of the flange toward the header, then use nuts to draw the y flange flat on the header flange... which had freshly elongated bolt holes to allow all this to actually work. Once the y was bolted up, it wouldn't start.
I knew I hadn't done anything that would have caused it, so I was rather confused for a minute. Thankfully, I remembered my CKP sensor had once worked it's way loose, (missing retainer), so I checked that to find it almost completely unplugged. No time like the present to fix a wiring issue. I spliced in a connecter that DID have the retaining clip so I wouldn't have to worry about that problem again. Started it up with the y attached & it was loud to the point of pain. There was no way I was going to drive it around that way so I had to connect my exhaust. Then I couldn't find the flange I was going to use to redo my CAT, so I had to make something work as a test pipe... and did I mention elongating the bank 2 upstream O2 sensor wiring by about 3ft? :crazy: After all this, it was time to go home so the dyno would have to wait... but hopefully only until this Saturday. I'm going to do it all in one day because of the noise level involved and will be adding a few test-pipe exhaust runs to the mix to see the difference a cat REALLY makes to us. Stay tuned. 