So, I’m going through and getting the Subaru ready for inspection as the T&C’s likelihood of passing Maine inspections is less likely than the chance that a bolt of lightning would strike someone. There’s three major issues for the Subaru passing inspection:
- The power steering pump screams like a banshee, which is unacceptable.
- The left mirror is cracked.
- The exhaust has a nice big leak you can hear the all too familiar Subaru “chugga chugga” through.
Now, back when I was a novice driver, after a late night at work, I drove it right over a concrete island, busting the exhaust, so I frankensteined it together with the exhaust from another Legacy. It’s never worked exactly right since, but at least it didn’t sound like a dump truck, and served well until the motor died. When the motor was swapped, the exhaust had to come down, and it made the exhaust much louder.
Lucky for me, getting the Ebay specials at this time is nice and cheap, and delivery taking a week isn’t an issue when nobody’s supposed to be going anywhere anyways. In goes the order for the entire exhaust system minus the catalytic converters.
Then I actually get underneath the car and go looking for the exhaust leak.
Well, shit. See, this is the piece of the pipe that runs between the primary and secondary catalytic converter. For a better reference, here’s a terribly upscaled version of a a diagram for the Legacy’s exhaust, with the relevant area shaded in red:
This is unfortunate for me, because I had just ordered all of the Ebay special exhaust pieces except the catalytic converters. The lizard brain screamed “Well, buy the tiny piece of pipe in the middle!” ... until I did a bit of research and realized that you can’t buy the pipe on its own, nor can you buy the secondary cat on its own. Lucky for me, the Ebay specials saved me quite a lot of money again compared to buying OEM-style ones. and my mockup on the ground tells me that they should fit just fine. More importantly, they come with their own integrated heat shields, so I don’t have to use the old rusty ones off anything except the Y-pipe.
Of course, getting the heat shields off is an exercise in “how fast can I grind through rusty bolt amalgamation mountains” and “why the hell do these heat shields have these really annoying tabs” and “ow that caught my finger I think I’ll just go make myself food now.”