So I bought the car and shortly after thereafter I noticed the notorious exhaust "buzzing." Unfortunately for me it was outside of the warranty so I was "forced" to by an aftermarket one. So upon much research I decided to go with the ARK Grip exhaust with the titanium tips. I did this mostly for the sound and I figured I maybe get 10hp out of the thing.

So it comes in the mail and I'm super excited and ready to throw it on. So I go on base to the local hobby shop and throw it up lift. As I unscrew the first bolt on the cat it completely shears off thanks to being completely rusted through. "Great" I think but being the optimistic guy I am I continue on with the install. Everything else goes smoothly until I go to bolt on the nuts to the other cat. That one is so rusted the threads completely disentegrate. So now I have possibly two exhaust leaks. So I start the car up and it yells at me that yes, there is an exhaust leak. So basically I bought this great exhaust to get rid of one crappy noise for another.

Well, guess I need to replace the old cats. So I shell out some more money and get the Motordyne ART pipes. Those come in the mail and I'm back at the hobby shops to do the install. And what an install it was. I am not sure if anyone has ever done this but be prepared for some frustration. The bolts that connect to the headers are in such an awkward locations that you literally have to take the tires off and go in from the top with a long extension to get to them. So I get 2 bolts off of each cat and I am stuck with the retarded ones at the top and on the outside. If you have done this you know these as the devil bolts and they are definitely the worst ones to get to. On another note the passenger side O2 sensor in the cat become completely threadless on it removal so that was another $150 for a new one.

So now I was stuck with the 2 bolts so I break down and head over to get a new O2 sensor and to head to a muffler shop. You should have heard this thing. On the highway when I got on it it sounded like a freaking race car. It was probably literally 130 decibels, no exaggeration. So I go to a local muffler shop and they literally have to take a blow torch to one of the bolts to get it off. So after all this, along with an O2 bung I finally got everything on and the car sounds the way it's supposed to. Which is very nice, though there is the tiniest bit of rasp. I will say that the car definitely pulls harder so I wouldn't be in doubt if the car got an extra 20hp and 15ft lbs.

Just thought I would share that with you guys and post some pics of the setup. It's always one f*cking bolt isn't it, in my case two.

 

Man, that's a nice looking exhaust! Good job on the install, and yes, there's always one bolt...happened to me when I installed my HKS exhaust too, it makes modding..."interesting"

Congratulations on the upgrades!

 

Looks good but u make me nervous saying there is a bit of rasp as I wanted to add the art pipes to my ark exhaust but don't want that rasp at all

 

Nice exhaust!

 

Very nice exhaust!!I'm sure you get a lot more than 10 hp with art pipes )

 

congratulations..looks great!!