1.9 60ft is not that good, remember the better the 60ft the faster the car is! Stall , gears and tires are a a must for an A4 to be quick!

 

Long-tubes on an LT1 a piece of cake??!! You're a better man than I am. I've done 2 long-tube installs, both on '02 LS1 WS6 M6's. The 1st one took about 10 hours.

A year later, I did the second one. I had the entire exhaust system off in 3 hours. I then spent 4 to 6 hours a day, FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS, putting the bich on. It fought me every inch of the way. The 1st car didn't have traction control, so there was a little less s#it under the hood. The second car was a no-good, rotten PITA. I had a hell of a time getting the driver's side header in from the bottom, and I have a lift! For a while, I thought Kooks sent me the wrong headers. All it took was removing ONE spark plug, and it slid right in. On the 1st car, I put the new plugs in 1st, and both headers slid right in. Go figure....same cars, same year, same headers, same cat-backs.

Even though I mocked-up the entire system on the floor 1st, to make sure nothing was out-of-round, and everything fit together, when I started to bolt up the Y-pipe, the passenger side wouldn't fit over the collecter. Because I was able to manipulate the pipes at any angle I pleased on the floor, everything fit together perfectly. I couldn't move the pipes any way I wanted to under the car, however, and one spot on the passenger's side y-pipe had a flat spot in it. I straightened it out with a c-clamp, but there went another 1/2 hour shot in the a$$.

Then, the straight pipe rubbed against the drive shaft when I tightened down the band clamps. It took me 4 hours to go from the collector band clamps, all the way back, to figure out a tightening sequence that would bias the straight pipe AWAY from the drive shaft when I started tightening bolts. A few times, I got so pi$$ed, I had to walk away and stick pins in my nostrils to calm down.

The over-axle pipe was a piece of pure evil designed by satan. That one took hours to get on just right so it wouldn't rattle against the fuel tank heat shield.

You would think that the second job would go easier than the 1st, due to experience alone. I do have to add, however, that I did this job just one month after undergoing cervical spine surgery. My arm, hand, and grip strength weren't back to 100% yet, and I could tolerate leaning over the hood, or doing overhead work for just so long. I'm not asking for a pity-party here....it was a combination of me having my head up my a$$, and being impatient to hear what the car sounded like, and feel how it performed, that caused me to use poor judgement. And it didn't help matters any when the parts boxes showed up on my back porch 2 days before my surgery.

I admire you guys who do LT1 long-tubes in your driveway in a matter of hours. I know I couldn't do it. For that matter, I couldn't do it on my lift in a matter of hours.

As far as the guy quoting you a price, yes, by all that's right and Holy, he should stick to his word. Now, looking at it from another perspective, if someone had asked me to install a set of long-tubes just after I had done the 1st one, I'd have probably figured anywhere from 12 to 16 hours, throwing in a fudge factor in case I ran into problems. Using my shop, lift, tools, and doing the job myself, I probably would've charged around $100.00....I DON'T DO WORK ON ANY CAR BUT A FRIEND'S, OR A FELLOW CAR-CLUB MEMBER. Let's see, three days work for $100.00....I'd have taken it in the shorts on that job.

 

My car turned out really good. I'm taking it back to him in the morning. He wants me to come in, so he can re-tighten all the header bolts and make sure everything is working out. Also, when I get on it from a low roll, I can feel something kind of hit the bottom of the car slightly. It doesn't do it all the time, it kind of depends on where I'm at. It is barely noticable though. I'm going to tell him though, maybe the exhaust is slamming up a bit. Maybe he could possibly put something there, so I won't notice it?

 

He could always bend the collector down a little bit by heating it up. How does it feel performance wise? I don't think 1 day is enough time for bolts to loosen. Maybe a few heat cycles.

 

It will be 4 days. It feels awesome performance wise. Big change.

 

glad things worked out. exhaust isn't easy. i just put on a cat back a few days ago, and i should have been a 2 hour job at the most. boy was i wrong. i started on a friday and started with unbolting the 2-bolt flange. the day before i soked it with half a can of pb buster. when i got out there i used a boxed end wrench, a 12 sided one, to loosen it but it was just too hard. so i tried sticking my jack under it to try and turn it jacking it really slow, but then i heard a pop and thought great i stripped it. also the bolt head was so rusted i had to use a hammer to get the wrench on, and i also tried a socket but it wouldn't slip on even hammering it. when i looked under it i saw that the bolt head didn't strip, the bolt was so hard it made the wrench actually expand and slip. i gave up and tried again the nexted day, only this time i was fed up and desided to just use my dremel and cut the bolt in half to get it out and then drill the rest of the bolt out and use a nut insted of the threds on the flange. oh btw, the other bolt was so easy to get off i actually used a cresent wrench lol. anyway, i started drilling with a large bit, but too me that was taking a little too long. so i thought i would drill a smaller hole and use one of those extractors you hammer in and use a wrench to trun. big mistake, the little bugger sheered off. i spent the next 2 hours trying to drill through it only getting maybe a 16th of and inch in it. i finally had enough so i went out and got a hole saw and cut around it. after all of my fighting when i got the new exhaust on i found out the new nut for the bolt was too big. so i said screw it and figured i would just let a muffler shop clean it up cause i had to get my new hi-flow cat put on. man does it look nice under there now, and i got all the joints welded up.

moral of the story is never say, "oh thats easy to put on, its just a bolt on." my simple bolt on took a total time of about 12-14 hours...