Those friggin' donuts!

[ZitRemedy]

how have you made out zitremedy?

Hi Everyone...sorry for the late update. The holidays and lack of snow put this to the wayside for a bit. I had no luck removing the allen bolts holding the ypipes bracket...tried all sorts of heat and other methods but they are stuck good. I ended up drilling out the rivets and loosened the rear exhaust bolts. This gave me enough room to slip the donuts on. Just waiting on new clamps and rivets from the dealership and I'll put it all back together. Hopefully this will be all I need this year and I'll tackle the bigger job of fixing it all up next year. Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[Winderallday!]

Hi Everyone...sorry for the late update. The holidays and lack of snow put this to the wayside for a bit. I had no luck removing the allen bolts holding the ypipes bracket...tried all sorts of heat and other methods but they are stuck good. I ended up drilling out the rivets and loosened the rear exhaust bolts. This gave me enough room to slip the donuts on. Just waiting on new clamps and rivets from the dealership and I'll put it all back together. Hopefully this will be all I need this year and I'll tackle the bigger job of fixing it all up next year. Thanks for everyone's help.

While you are down this far, and you have the bracket rivets drilled out, get the Y pipes out completely so you can work on them by pulling the muffler back/out. Then you can drill out or cut/grind off the heads of the buggered Allen pan-head bolts. Once this is done, in my experience, you can grab the threaded portion of the bolt below the nut with a vice grip and work them out clockwise easily if you have lots of penetrating oil in there already. Would run a tap through the nuts after to make sure they are ok.
Just saves you another tear down after this season, and you can check the round/tubular gaskets at the muffler/y-pipe union for wear.
It seems the larger surface area of those pan head bolts are what locks these fasteners on so darn tight, similar to Allen flat head screws. Suggest replacing them with flanged hex head bolts and you should be golden.
Cheers

 

[twyztid]

There can be a problem getting the y-pipes & bracket assembly out with the tunnel protectors in the way.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk