Exhaust Flexipipe - How to fit.

OK, First you have to purchase the new Flexipipe. I bought the stainless steel one from Autobits with the 'Fitting Kit' to save me any hassle with missing bits. Total cost was around £65.00 delivered. The exhaust looked good and there were plenty of bits in the fitting kit..........BUT.........the nuts and bolts in the kit were the WRONG size!.....not good, so you may need to have some new nuts to hand.

Here's a list of things I needed:
Exhaust
Exhaust Kit
7 new nuts (not in kit)
15mm Socket
17mm socket (new nuts)
8 inch extension bar
Pry bar
Hammer
15mm combination spanner
17mm combination spanner
Lead light.


1: Jack up the car chock the front wheels and put axles stands under the subframe. Try and get the car as high as possible to give you enough room to work. Basically there are 7 nuts to undo on the F (9 on the TF I think) and one rubber exhaust bush. The first picture is undoing the exhaust to catalyst nuts (3). These can be tough so a good soaking with Duck Oil or WD40 will help.



2: Next is to undo the 4 nuts on the exhaust to manifold section, Now this is not easy! The two lower nuts will come off using a socket but the two upper ones are real Bas***ds and I ending up using a ring spanner and turning one flat at a time because there is no room for a socket.





3: Once these 4 bolts are undone the exhaust will be supported by the exhaust rubber. slide this off (with force). Then at the catalyst end you may have to undo the nut for the 'strappy thingy' thats wrapped around the rear silencer, then wiggle the exhaust back box away from the catalyst. The flexi-section should then wiggle out, make sure you remove the old gaskets as well.



4: Compare the old and new.



5: Now to fit the new exhaust. First throw away the bloody useless nuts they give you in the kit because THEY DONT FIT! Position the exhaust loosely in place. The exhaust is a really, really, tight fit.I put the manifold section in place first and bolted it in place. DONT FORGET YOUR GASKET!. The catalyst section was about 1/2 inch out on the catalyst holes and I needed the pry bay to get the holes to line up.





6: Eventually I managed to get all the holes to line up. I undid the 'strappy thingy' so I could get the bracket to go on and DONT FORGET YOUR GASKET! I did all the bolts up and then attempted to put the exhaust rubber back on.

7: Another problem. The position of the hanger bracket was about 1/2 inch or so out from the original. This made putting the rubber back on almost impossible, so I had to 'adjust' the subframe hanger bracket with a pry bar and hammer to get it to fit well.



8: I also had a lot of problem with the 'strappy thingy' going back on but after much struggling and hammering I got it to fit.


9: The fitted exhaust




10: Started the car and tested all OK. I would say your looking at about 2-3 hours if you have a few problems, less if all goes easy (so budget on 2-3 hours!!)

My overall impression of the new flexipipe was it's good quality, crap fitting kit (but still worth it for the gaskets) and its a very tight fit but it did go together and the exhaust note is good.

Did this today (with a little bit of tightening to do tomorrow morning)...

Car is on ramps at rear, managed to slide under on my back.

Nuts on cat-downpipe (17mm) easy enough to come off - just got lots of rusty bits landing on my fizzog from the antique silencer casing and holder.

The 15mm nuts downpipe-manifold are a bit trickier, but I found by lying underneath and using my left arm to keep the ratchet+extension in place and right arm using as much torque leverage as possible, the bottom 2 came off easily enough.

The top (higher) two I managed to get off a bit easier than ZipiMini i think. The right hand one using the same technique as above came off with both ratchet extensions on. I was then able to feed the ratchet + no extension between the right hand side of the downpipe pipes and the heat shield, moving it around to in front of the downpipe pipes and offer it up to the last bolts ok. It could then sit in place with just enough room to the oil filter to do quarter turns... knackering on the arms when lying on back for a weed like me, but came off in the end.

I then penetrated-sprayed the rubber mounting and pulled that off relatively easily - there was a lot of play in the old flexi-pipe. Putting the new one on was relatively straightforward: the trickiest bit was getting the silencer mounting, gasket, new pipe, nut, washer and bolt all to sit together nicely with one pair of hands.

Managed to remove the cat-downpipe nuts and the 2 easier downpipe-manifold nuts in my lunch hour, the rest and reassemble took about an hour after work.

Hope this helps!

zipimini wrote:
Here's a list of things I needed:
Exhaust
Exhaust Kit
7 new nuts (not in kit)
15mm Socket
17mm socket (new nuts)
8 inch extension bar
Pry bar
Hammer
15mm combination spanner
17mm combination spanner
Lead light.

Looks as if you have used NYLOCK (blue nylon insert) on the manifold nuts??? If you have, the inserts will melt and the nuts will become loose very soon. OEM ones are deformed with a flange washer and are self locking and you must use these or the stainless steel ones with the split head.

I did mine last weekend. This is a very useful guide, in my case I used it as a "forearmed is forewarned" way, if that makes any sense.

I bought the cheapest pipe off ebay, it came with a fitting kit of four bolts, seven nuts and both gaskets.

I was able to get the car up in the air the night before, lash loads of WD40 onto the fixings and cross my fingers. The lower cat nut was so badly corroded & eaten away, I didn't even attempt to undo it, just ground it off. The other two came undone with plenty of WD40 and 1/2"-drive six-sided socket and 18" breaker bar.

Onto the manifold nuts. Three of them came off with the 1/2 drive kit, the last one was a tight fit and I was just able to wrestle it free using 3/8"s drive kit. This one drew the stud out with the nut, not that it really matters. The whole process took about two hours, 45 minutes of which were drilling out the bolt I had ground off earlier.

It took 20 minutes to fit the new one. It offered right up, everything in the right place. I used all the original nuts as the new one supplied didn't fit. Where I had ground off/drill out the bottom cat flange nut, I used one of the surplus nuts and bolts supplied as part of the fitting kit.