Well after my piper exhaust and INA hi-flow mani sitting in my garage for far to long i have fitted them, this was prompted mainly by me finding out our workshop at work has a ramp and after asking nicely i can now use it when ever i want
so on Tuesday afternoon i went down planning to just fit the exhaust, all went well until it came to removing the down pipe resulting in two snapped studs.
This was a total downer, but i had a spare turbo housing at home so the decision was made to leave the car there and return tomorrow. I needed to remove the turbo and seeing as i was doing that fit the exhaust mani, i would then remove two good studs from the spare housing and replace the snapped ones, i also needed a bit of welding done on the connection from the down pipe to the middle section. I got Wednesday of work and started on the car about 10am.
Here she is on the ramp.
After all the liquids where drained it wasn't to much trouble to remove the turbo most difficult bit was finding the water and oil inlets and outlets and trying not to round anything off, so got the turbo and mani off, the INA mani is very nice it flows 50% better than the stock one, it needed a bit of trimming with the grinder (as anyone who has fitted one knows) it was a bit of a fiddle getting the nuts back on due to the mani being bigger but i got there, i have one massive bit of advice for any one fitting this put the rear most bolt for the turbo in
BEFORE you attach it to the head as its to long to fit in its hole and hits the head, i only wish i knew this before hand
i had to fabricate a bolt to fit as i didn't have time to remove it all and start again, it worked really well. With the turbo and mani back on i fitted the exhaust, i had made this a little more difficult as i was mating a Piper LC 200 cell down pipe with a Piper LCR cat back system and found that the point where the exhaust is held by the centre mount made the exhaust dip down and become the lowest part of the car, so to overcome this i made a spacer to lift the mount up enough to cure the
problem,
and after the joiner was welded i fitted it all, it looks really nice,
the only issue is that i feel the tip is to low so i will be having a fiddle with that later to lift it nearer the bumper.
Well i put all the oil and water back in double checked all the bolts and lowered her down, turned the key and wah hay she started first time checked for leaks and found none
The exhaust tone is really nice, so for the drive home waited until she was warmed up i wanted to see if i could feel any difference in power from the mani and exhaust so nice clear bit of road put my foot down and..........bang hiss
i knew what had happened a hose has blown of so nice steady drive home sure enough top hose from the turbo to the charge pipe had blown, so re-fitted it all and the wife came home so never got to give it some welly and to make things worse she took it to work this morning as her car needs a new windscreen and they are coming to my work to do it.
Next on the list next month is fit new oil cooler and change the oil.