started 10am this morning
gave up 22:30
Spent the first 30 mins trying to work out how to support the car. No obvious place to put the axle stands, so put them under the sub frame and jacked it up at the rear of the subrame where the big bolts is.
Took off the charge pipe. Worked out I could undo the DP/turbo pipe with a selection of knuckle joints. Two nuts were 17mm, one was 16mm strange but true. Wasn't easy, but doable, took about 1.5hours. Took off the cat, 6 nuts were rusted on, used a nut remover. Took off compression join, nuts rusted on. Took about 45mins. Tried to take DP off rubber block, , couldn't get it over the mushroom end of the support bracket, used a grinder to cut off the end. Tried taking off the heatshield around the drive shaft gaitor. One of the bolts rounded off. So left it. Tried the next 2 hours trying to manipulate the DP. Wouldn't come out.
Put out an SOS on here, very quick responses (THANKS GUYS). decided to cut the DP, grinder took up too much room. Went to buy a reciprocating saw from screwfix and a 10 blades, a box of ss nus and bolts, walked out £92 lighter.
Took 2 mins to cut the double cat flange. Took 2 hours to make the next cut, tried cutting through the driver's wheel well, underneath etc, but it was very awkward. Got the lower part of the DP flange section off, that was easy. The top half, what a nightmare. The power steering pipe, ac pipe and alu heatshield all conspired against my efforts. Spent another hour trying various ways to get the top half of the DP off. In the end, I tried the heatshield nut again and it came off, then the remainder of the DP came out at 22:00. Then spent the next 15 minutes trying to get the Relentless DP in. No dice.
Through the 11 hours I was out there, I got rained on, swarf in my hair and eyes. I give up.
I've broken my car, it has no exhaust.
What can I do now ? I don't have the experience or confidence to take any more bits off my car.
Too much ambition and not enough skill unfortunately.