I love bank holidays, especially the two bank holidays around Easter. I get the chance to catch up on any jobs that have always “slipped” my mind or, like today, I get the chance to sit out in the sun all day, crawl around under a car, swear a lot at seized bolts and eat pizza.

Today I spent the day helping Kyle swap the entire exhaust system on his new EP3. (I say new… I think he’s had it for around a year now?) “No drama”, I thought, “The exhaust system will get done in no time, it’s just the manifold I’m not 100% sure on”. I took those words back almost straight away. As soon as I got the car in the air and had a look around the standard system I saw we were going to have a fight on our hands. Some of the bolts looked more like blobs of dirt than a lump of useful metal. Thinking cap on, I broke out the PlusGas, wire brushes and chisels to clean up the bolts as much as possible. It didn’t really work…

I attacked the back box while Kyle dealt with the manifold end. At my end, there was only two bolts and two rubbers. EASY. No. When I ran the wire brush over the bolt head and threads to clean them up I saw that half the threads just fell off. The heads weren’t much better either, both had to be chiseled free from their rusty case so that the socket could stand a chance of being hammered on. It was a good fit, a six sided socket for a six sided nut. It wasn’t going to round the head and it didn’t. The first bolt snapped and the second had to be cut free. Two bolts out, zero survivors. Luckily some new bolts were sent with the new system! Even the rubbers put up a fight but that was mainly down to me trying to cut a corner. I could have taken the bumper off to start with and have complete access to the rubber mounts but instead I tried to fight, one handed with a stiff rubber mount I couldn’t really see. That didn’t work and eventually I had to spend 60 seconds removing four bolts, two screws and one plug to remove the bumper, slide off the mounts and free the old backbox. Lesson learnt. Don’t try to be a hero.

And Kyle’s end things weren’t going much smoother. The two bolts holding the centre section to the manifold were stuck solid and he was having to fight the bolts with a hacksaw blade to free them. The blade won the battle eventually but that meant we still didn’t have a survivor in terms of bolts. Up top things got a little better. The manifold cover came off relatively easily. Two bolts came out with little effort once I’d got a proper socket on them and a breakers bar but the last one, well, let’s just say the shield some how managed to work its way around that bolt… All that was really left now were five bolts holding the manifold to the head and with the help of a proper six sided socket they all came undone without any bother.

So the back was now free, the front was free, it was just the middle left to go. Really all we needed to remove was the rubber mount at each end and unplug the O2 sensors and it would drop down and slide out. Glossing over the fact that even those pesky plugs put up a fight we had the whole system stripped before the pizza arrived. Pizza, pizza, pizza. Thank you Dominos. (Pepperoni, thin and crispy before anyone asks).

Back to work, bellies full, the last thing to really free from the car was the manifold. In standard form it’s not very big at all but with it being at the back of the engine on the EP3, it’s in a really awkward place. Kyle had read that it may be necessary to remove the subframe but I wasn’t going to fight with that. Once we’d removed all the bolts from the head mountings and fought with the support bracket I could see that it was possible to remove it without taking the subframe apart. I had to remove a heat shield and a guard for the driveshaft but with some careful planning, spinning and maneuvering the manifold was free. Cheers all round, we were now on the home straight!

Taking a second to compare the two systems it’s easy to see a big difference. Rust and age aside, the OEM system is small, oddly shaped and well, it seemed quit restrictive. I didn’t like the look of the bends in the system at all. They aren’t smooth, they aren’t consistent. Some parts of the system, in the bends were compressed and were clearly causing restrictions. The new DC Sports system however, apart from being a slightly bigger diameter (60mm internal) was actually that size the entire length. The bends are beautifully crafted and not one restricts the size of the pipe or airflow. Having no catalytic converter in the system helps out too but it will ping an error code for the second O2 sensor…

Anyway onto the fitting. Manifold first and straight away a “problem”. The OEM manifold was tiny and allowed us to rotate it to work it loose. The DC Sports manifold incorporates part of the exhaust system into it to make it a better flowing 4-2-1 design, however this meant we had more manifold to get in the way and try as we might, it wasn’t going back in. There was a simple solution though and that was to unbolt the anti roll bar D brackets, remove the bushes and lift the anti roll bar up slightly to give more clearance. It worked a treat and the manifold went straight in.

The back box was simple as well. A bit of lubricant on the rubber hangers and it was slid into place. With just the centre section left to do we were feeling confident. I bolted together the two sections, slid under the car and offered it up to the manifold. The bolts that are supplied with the exhaust system are only just long enough to go through both flanges, the gasket and the nut. There’s nothing spare past the end of the nut once it’s done up tight. This might not have been an issue but combined with the zero play in the bolt holes meant it was an absolute pain to get it all attached. 10mm bolts, in a 10mm hole, zero play and a gasket that seemed slightly out of shape managed to rework the frustration back to the surface. We ended up fitting the backbox end first before going back to the manifold end and using slightly smaller (and longer) bolts to secure the joint. The supplied gear just didn’t work for us.

Done. Well almost. I’d been soaking the O2 sensors in the old system with plus gas since removing the old gear. I hate O2 sensors with a passion. They always seem to be super tight, seized and only accessible to an open ended spanner which encourages rounding. You can buy specialist sockets for them (to feed the cable through) but I don’t have one. I only have my trusty 22mm spanner and the hope that PlusGas really will do what it says. The car gods must have been with us today because they came undone with barely any effort. Not one wiff of a rounded corner or seized thread. A quick crack with the spanner and they came out by hand. They fit perfectly back into the DC Sports manifold but you do have to add some loom extensions to them (which are supplied).

Everything done. Everything sealed. Bung removed from the back box for extra VTECs. Kyle started her up and after a quick once over I didn’t find any exhaust gases leaking from the joints so we dropped her down, tidied up and headed out for a bit of filming. The filming will come soon once I’ve ended it all but once again I’ve done a before and after comparison, as well as a few drive by videos using my car as the camera car. GoPros are awesome.

So that’s what we got up to today. Shitty bolts aside it was a good day and it was nice to put some good hours into working on a car again. I ope Kyle enjoys the new ASBO cannon on his car and I hope you enjoyed this post. Look out for the videos soon!