Muffler Woes

[Spicoli]

I am doing my exhaust donuts and everything has been a breeze except when it came down to separating my Y-pipes from the muffler. I have undone the muffler bolts and the clamps on the Y-pipes to the muffler but the two do not want to separate. Any tricks of the trade?

 

[Teamblue4]

Heat with a torch

 

[Spicoli]

I thought about that but I wasn’t sure since they are titanium. Thanks.

 

[steiner]

This is what I have done with the stubborn exhaust pipes.
Bolt the Y pipes back onto the tunnel support bracket. Use a piece of 2x4 that wider than the width of the muffler. Place the 2x4 on the front side of the muffler and use a large persuader to bang the exhaust off.

 

[Spicoli]

I think I Might try that before heat. Thank you.

 

[thrasher]

There is no need to separate the y-pipes from your muffler when changing the exhaust donuts. So why do you want to do this?

 

[Spicoli]

I don’t want to undo the bolts on the engine on the other side of the flex lines.

 

[thrasher]

Far easier to undo the two exhaust phlange bolts on each flex pipe. You just need to use a universal flex joint to remove a couple of the bolts. When reinstalling use some high temp ceramic antisieze to make future removal easier. To remove and reassemble the exhaust properly, you pretty much need to drop the suspension.

 

[Spicoli]

Any risk in the bolts breaking?

 

[thrasher]

That is always a risk, however, the bolts are short and strong. Just make sure the socket fits properly on the bolt heads. I think if you have managed to remove the allen key bolts from the copper flex pipe clamps without stripping them, the bolts should come out as well. You will also want to modify the copper clamps by removing most of that nub with a grinder to allow the clamps to be tightened more, as they tend to rotate and come a little loose.

 

[Sevey]

I would at least try heat from a heat gun. That should make things a bit easier to come apart. Like the earlier comment, the allen key bolts on the header are pretty strong. Don't be psycho when re installing them, you don't want that allen key to roll and round out the interior , then you are in trouble for next time.
Once the whole affair is apart definitely use anti seize on the header bolts and the clamp bolt. It will smoke a bit when you run it initially, but that is just the excess burning off.
MS

 

[steveg_nh]

I just did this on mine, and I replaced all the clamp allen bolts with new ones to make sure the heads were nice and not rounded at all to make it easier next time. I'm trying to remember when I did mine, but if you remove the 4 bolts holding the muffler in place behind the seat, I believe you can just slide the whole thing backwards enough to slip the new donuts on. This means you need to drill out the hanging bracket for the Y pipes.

 

[Kkurz]

Yes! When I did mine it was a frightening smoke show! And I never was able to get the muffler off of the y-pipe. Didn't matter.