Now for the install....oh man here we go.
I first noticed the mani didn't come with a plug for the EGT bung. No big deal, head to Home Depot and picked up a 1/8" NPT brass plug.
Obviously, the intercooler was removed. Pie.
Next, gotta remove the studs on the OEM manifold. Not exactly easy to reach, and an absolute nightmare to break loose. Ratcheting wrenches were our friends. Thought we got all of them off but there's one that is absolutely impossible to get to that's underneath the middle of the mani. Ratcheting wrench wouldn't loosen it, and if we got a ratchet in there the left side of the mani was covering it so there was no way to loosen it. Fix? Grab your stepdad's sawzall and cut the old mani in half and get the bitch out! Well, we attempted that but it was too thick, and we were just wasting our time. After staring at it hoping our magical mind powers would loosen it my buddy wedged a belt loop onto a ratchet and tugged up like a pulley and with the help of PB blaster that son of a whore was loose!
With joyful glee we advanced onto the next step - the turbo flange. 4 bolts on top, all easy to get to. Got those out. Sweet.
With the aid of a prybar, we got the old mani out and stomped on it a few times, and later poured a marginal amount of Courvoisier to commemorate my ugly and now dead brother.
We could see unicorns and rainbows dancing in heaven. The end of this joyful excursion was near. Fitting the new mani in took a solid 15 minutes of Tetris memory recollection. To reference this, it pretty much went down like this:
[video=youtube;cg_V1_3t04g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg_V1_3t04g[/video]
Alas, we got it in. It's basically gotta be tightened down one side at a time as very few of the studs protruded enough to even get the nuts on. It was a VERY tight fit. Once some of the top row nuts went on, it settled and we were on top of the turbo flange. We tightened the rest of the studs, and came to the turbo flange.
FUCK. The flange wasn't clocked correctly and now the turbo flange studs won't go in. It was a Saturday, PG was closed, we were tired, bruised, cut up, and now incredibly frustrated, and essentially completely fucked considering we cut up the stock mani. Time to think things over, and find a friend's vehicle to borrow for a few days and wait for another mani. After thinking about it some more, I had an idea of loosening the nuts on the head, and tightening down the turbo flange bolts first. I had to work all day on Sunday, so I had to push those efforts over to Monday and get an explanation from Jeff @ PG and go from there...
After sending Jeff @ PG the pics and an explanation, he promptly sent out another mani on Monday. He also said
the turbo bracket must be loosened to twist the flange enough to line up for the manifold. Well, now that both manifolds were off the car I figure what the hell, let's take another stab at this. I didn't get my new(er) manifold yet, and I needed to get this damn car back on the road. Tuesday evening comes around, I'm off work and ready to get this bitch done.
The turbo bracket is easy to get a bolt or wrench on, but that's where the easy stops. The bracket to the engine block has one easy bolt to reach, but the other is conveniently blocked by a coolant line. We decided to opt for the one bolt connecting to the turbo instead. How are bolts on a 3 year old car this freakin' tough to remove? Getting enough torque from the top wasn't working so we had to go from the bottom. What do we see there? A diff. Sweet, no cleararance. Fuck it, we head to Sears to grab a 3/8 and 1/2 universal. The 1/2 worked and the one bolt on the turbo bracket was loose, allowing plenty of movement to correctly clock the flange over and get those studs in. Next was to finish tightening the studs on the head and put the intercooler back on. No problems there, she fired up and I gave it a few quick revs to listen for leaks. Had one at the turbo flange but we tightened it with a wrench, so after getting a ratchet on there we were solid.
Maybe it's just me, but this manifold actually made the exhaust slightly quieter (at least at idle and low revs). I've only gotten on it a couple times, and it's definitely a deeper tone as well. The grunt of the power can be EASILY felt after 4,500rpm. It pulls and pulls and does not quit. It does feel similar to a downpipe install power-wise. I will be doing some more driving today as this adventure has finally ended. I will also hopefully be getting video this week.
All in all, I honestly commend Jeff @ PG and his efforts to help me. I truely had no idea the turbo bracket had to be loosened so after hearing that I had much more confidence that the manifold I had would actually work. I haven't seen any exhaust mani how-to's but seriously, that
MUST be noted.
I'll update this with video later, but for now I only have this installed pic:
