Crap. Now you guys got me second guessing my exhaust install today. I'm not gonna have the patience to deal with jacked up bolts this morning lol.

But yeah, livinglegend and Toretto both had good suggestions. Heat the flange and hammer the bolt out or shoot it, one will help fix the problem the other will make you feel a lot better.

 

Had the same issue a few month ago and this worked for me: Seafoam deep creep which is torch safe for an hour, the used a metal rod put on end of the cut bolt and pound away with a METAL hammer. Must be metal, rubber mallet won't do a thing.

 

The only torch I have is for sweating copper pipes. It does not get near hot enough and as much as the good torches run, I can pay someone else to deal with it. My cats should be delivered Wednesday and I will just take care of them now before they go bad which I am sure will be soon. Especially with my luck. I have swapped exhaust in all of my cars but none of them have been 10 years old. They were all only 2 or 3 years old.

 

Exactly....^....if your coupe was on a rack that's one thing but laying on the ground fighting those frozen/rusted bolts is a flipin nightmare. If you can't saturate them with WD40 and break em loose, let someone else get er done....Gary

 

I concur with the torch. That's what I was taught to do. Forget about thermal expansion here - the heat will break off the rust.

Shooting it with that shotgun in your avatar can be just as fun. It might hurt the chest a little more, but it won't be as much work on the arms.

 

I just got my car back from the shop. Cost me $135 to change the cats and bolt up the exhaust. Man is this exhaust ungodly loud. Sound nice except when cruising at 1800 rpm. I hope it softens up some when the cats break in.

 

What exhaust and cats are you running?

 

Injen Track Edition with Kinetix cats. I never thought this exhaust would be louder then my Mustang with Mac exhaust and no cats.

 

Normally when dealing with this situation, you should be able to cut the heads off the bolts with a hand dremel or angle grinder and a cutoff wheel, and then use a punch and hammer (a thick old nail or bolt will work as a punch) to push the remaining pieces through. You may need to give them a good hard smack with a big mallet to push them through, especially if the ends of the bolt that you cut off are now somewhat expanded as a result of the cut-off process. If that doesn't work, you can heat the remnants of the bolt up with a small, cheap torch and then spray Seafoam Deep Creep on the red-hot bolts. Deep Creep is not flammable, and is safe to use with heat, and it will get sucked into all the small crevices between the bolt and the surrounding metal and should help free it up as everything rapidly contracts with the sudden application of a cooler liquid to a red hot bolt. I've used this trick many a time on exhaust bolts without fail (knock on wood!).

If you don't already own a torch, I'd go buy one the next time this situation comes up. It's well worth it to have and they aren't that expensive for butane ones powered by a small canister.

So what's the verdict... do you like your new exhaust setup or is it too damn loud for your likes?

 

I think it's too damn loud. Sounds great from outside and when going down the road. Just the noise inside is almost unbearable when cruising around 2000 rpm.

 

If you really can't stand the noise, you can add a layer of sound dampening to help cut down the noise (not the Dynamat stuff, but actual soundproofing material).

Just out of curiosity, how far do your exhaust tips extend out? I had a buddy who installed the same exhaust, his tips were kinda tucked under the bumper more than stock. We extended them about 2 inches and a little past stock length, and the change in noise level was significant; our theory was that with tips tucked in, the exhaust sound was getting trapped under the chassis and resonating. Not an engineer or anything, but just a shot in the dark.

 

you could have the shop add a resonator. or two if its a dual exhaust all the way back. it will tone down the noise a little and take out the annoying drone inside the car. Ive always used Vibrant perf-core resonators. they can be had for like 60 bucks a piece online and most shops can put them in pretty quickly

 

They stick out a little further then the stock I think.
What type of soundproofing material do you mean? Do you know a brand?

 

Well I just figured out why my exhaust was so loud. The shop forgot to tighten the one clamp so I had a bad leak right under the trunk. I got it tightened up and it sounds much better. Still a little loud but manageable. Before I thought my head was going to explode.