While my headgasket was blown, I decided that my old muffler had seen better days. So I decided to cut it off.
Now, it didn't quite look like that when I first cut it off. It mainly looked like somebody had shot it once with a shotgun. I ripped it open just to see the insides. I drove for over a year and a half without a muffler. The noise was canceling out some of the bass from my subwoofer and the exhaust fumes would fill up when I'd push it too hard. I finally had to do something about it.
There's my old catalytic converter. I have noticed it has seen better days as well. I was going to gut it, but I want to be nice to our environment and keep in legal. I also figured it's starting to plug up after 212,000 miles. So, Uncle Sam gave me my tax refund and I went to town!
I ordered a new Maremont catalytic converter and a new Maremont cat-back muffler. Basically a standard muffler already welded to a brand new pipe. This is all bolt-in. The catalytic converter came with brand new gaskets as well. I had to buy the new bolts separately.
I had a fun time trying to get the old bolts off. I really had no choice but to cut them.
After burning out one high speed rotary tool, using a hacksaw, and using a Dremel, I got the old exhaust off. The new exhaust system sounds great. It's very quiet and my music sounds a hell of a lot better.
I decided to inspect the old catalytic converter. It's starting to clog up around the outer part of the catalyst. But I can still see daylight through the other end. So, it looks better than I thought it would be. There's also a crack going through the catalyst on the engine side of the converter. This new exhaust system definitely restored some lost power. The throttle is a bit more touchy.
Here is a 117 Meg video of the installation to give you an idea how it went.
Right click, save as.
Then I let my brother take it to the store and filmed him coming back in. Here's an 8.9 Meg video of that.
Right click, save as.
Then to give you a little "before" here's a couple clips from a while back.
My brother bitching because I'm going too fast.
Flooring up KM Mountain with Bone Crusher - Grippin' The Grain.
