One can learn something about parenting by working on a car or atleast learn something about responsibility. What I mean is if all you do is change the oil and fill the fluids and nothing else then when it starts acting up or you want to improve it… don’t all of the sudden expect it to be an easy fix/”1.5 hr. bolt on project”…

This is about exchanging the exhaust system on a 17 year old DA from Stock OEM to Aftermarket:

Briefly I said that a day after I bought the car I looked for an aftermarket exhaust. Well I found one, a premo GReddy Cat back exhaust (that’s the piping that goes from the Cat converter to the muffler). I found it off of craigs for $50 from a really nice guy who was also a ‘teg fan.

So that went down friday so that weekend’s project of course was going to be…. Titling? Insuring? No! Of course not… it was going to be swapping off that rusty OEM piece of junk for the GReddy! So the next morning I went at it hard.. I had it up on jacks and I start cranking’n’yanking to get that rusty OEM thing off. However… back to the 17 years of untouched rust does funny things like rust-weld stuff. So for this first part.. Yes I had to use a hammer ;P

But finally it was off and all I had was the end of the cat for an exhaust.. And.. for that brief minute or two I had a fleeting thought to just leave it straight like that. Yet… I eventually went back to work. So next was wrangling on the pipes. I sorta pre-assembled it first and mocked it up with the bolts loose.. The tip stuck out pretty far and initially it looked like it was going to rub against the passenger side suspension… regardless it went on eventually.

With it set and locked down I lowered back down off the jacks and fired it up.. The DA ripped a racing low tone that instantly put a smile on my face, “This is going to be good.” I rapped it up a bit to get that raspy new racing tone then I dropped the ebrake and went for a roll.

Big improvement I thought.. I was definitely on my way to making this DA mine 😛

~J out

Part 2: The header debacle

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