Well, I crawled under the car again today (this seems to be a regular occurance for me) and was presented with this sight:
Yes, that's a huge crack around the flexpiece. You know what's even more irritating about it? This is the second time it's happened, and the car only has 50K miles on it... this is directly related to launching the car at the strip, pulling high 2.2 second 60' times on all-season tires with FWD.
So the plan is, I'm going to send the gaskets I ordered back, and use that money to buy a stainless catless downpipe with a reenforced flex section. Maybe $200 or so, and I'll be good to go.
Oh, in case you were wondering, here's the last one that was replaced under warranty!
And here's the new piece, ready to go in! I installed it today, I'll get some video of the car in motion this week.
Interesting note, the header/downpipe bolts aren't SAE, they're M10x1.5 so instead of popping into the hardware store for new grade 8 bolts, I found myself breaking out my Metric tap & die set and cleaning all the threads up and reusing the stock studs and nuts. I'll find some grade 8 hardware later.
Here's some stainless goodness! This piece should be bulletproof enough for the Bullrun. No worries. I just need to do a quick custom tune to disable the rear O2 sensor, the COT (cat over-temp) enrichment, and cat light-off spark tables.
And here you can see how bad the old piece was...
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That is a much better
That is a much better design. Lets us know how it does...
That's a MUCH better looking
That's a MUCH better looking piece! My whole exhaust is SS too, but it'll discolor quite a bit after a few runs. My O2 housing off the turbo is lots of pretty colors!
Bump, updated the original
Bump, updated the original post!
Thanks for the input, guys.
Thanks for the input, guys. For it to break like that twice in one year (with a stock drivetrain, no less) shows it's a poor design. That's the joys of having a semi-fast car built on an econobox platform (just go ask the SRT-4 guys, they'll tell you!)
I recieved a new 3" full stainless catless downpipe yesterday, planning on putting it in tonight or tomorrow morning. Probably tomorrow, so I don't have to put it on in the dark with mosquitos eating me, working with hot exhaust!
I'll put up some pictures when I get it set up.
If it breaks again, I'd take
If it breaks again, I'd take it to an exhaust shop and have them fab something up. If you need a flex section, order a real one off ebay, not the crappy accordian ones.
http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=m38.l1313&_nkw=exhaust+flex+section&_sacat=See-All-Categories
Wow, that is a piss-poor
Wow, that is a piss-poor design for a flex section. DSM's have a flex section in the downpipes too, but it's never an issue for them. Here's an example of a DSM downpipe:
IÂ would think that the DSM
I would think that the DSM pipe could be mod'ed to work. as long as the pipes are the same size?. Might be a perfect combo. Just a thought.
Why would they put a flex
Why would they put a flex pipe on your car.... Does the motor mount allow for that much movement? I would do something about that be for adding NOS or any other power adder.
Yes, the stock mounts are
Yes, the stock mounts are extremely soft... the first mod I did to it was replace them with polyurethane ones. It helped, but not enough, apparantly. I've got a new, stronger downpipe on order, and I'll put up pics of it when it's on. Might even pick up a few HP from removing the converter and restrictive pipe...