as I left the office, my car was doing its best to let me know what I was in for
we get it! my CEL is on and even my radio thinks I’m a failure #420
blocks from arriving at my wife and kid’s special dinner I came to a lane that was suddenly unplowed, and a huge chunk of snow bottomed the civic out and...
not an entirely unexpected event. you can see in that pic that there are two shoddy welds at the rear of that resonator, there’s more stick welding at the rear of the exhaust and when I bought the car that joint looked like this...
so a good hit was all it needed to break through. I was prepared, and have a spare exhaust at home, in part becuase I knew this one would fail and suspected I’d need a good one to pass emissions, but importantly because the location of the Cats is different between the d15 engine and the d16 I’m swapping in
but first, how to get home. at my former rally car driving dad’s advice I pulled up onto the curb to get some access, a trick he’d apparently used frequently for roadside repairs
being a prepared man, I donned my gardening gloves and grabbed my tie down straps I keep in the car and tied up the exhaust
then ran it over the car
all wrapped up like a present. (on the drivers side I ran it behind my door to avoid having to climb in the window)
got her home, jacked her up (my dad was in town, so both kept me company in the garage and documented the events)
did I mention the shoddy welding on the exhaust? the rear bolt on part had been cut off and solid welded, so I needed to cut it of. of COURSE this part was good solid steel, and didn’t just crumble when breathed on
then wrestle the front broken parts off their hangers
I highly recommend a rubber hanger removal tool after years of not having one, it makes this a doddle
oh boy, rusted right around in ~1 year :D
more work with the grinder (12 minutes until the 10pm noise rules are in effect!) to remove the rubber hanger... which oddly had been welded in also
the only tricky part: on my current engine the cat is mounted as part of the header, just in front of the engine. on the new engine the cat is mounted aft of the engine. The result is to use the new engine’s exhaust I had to scavenge a part of the old exhaust (about 1.5feet of it) and slip it in between. on this night I just kinda jammed it in (sounds fine, couldnt be worse right!), but I’ll mock up a true connection for longer term use until the actual engine swap occurs
the EG SI stock exhaust is slightly larger diametre, has a different design of muffler, and a little tip for added slick looks
and drove it to work just fine this morning :D