After I got home from work last night, I pulled the 91 Golf into the garage
and started to attack the exhaust system. The old system was a pain to remove
because it was all welded together. With the old system out, I took a look
at the innards of the catalytic converter and I was surprised to see that it
looked excellent. The previous owner must have installed that cat not long
before I bought the car (it is supposedly a Techtonics high flow cat, but I
haven't verified that yet).
Installation of the new system was problematic at times, but I worked through it.
The diameter of the pipes was so large that everything just barely fit. This
system is supposed to be the same diameter as the stock PF engine'd 8 valve
GTIs. I had no idea any of the factory systems were that beefy. Since I was
installing an exhaust that technically was made to fit a different car (mine is
a Golf GL, RV engine code), I wasn't surprised that I ran into little problems.
The forward-most hanger had to be removed from the body of the car and then rotated
almost 180 degrees. The over axle pipe just
barely missed the brake
balance controller (there's about 1/8th inch of clearance). The intermediate
pipe rests firmly on the rear subframe, and there is absolutely no adjustment
in the system to raise it. It's so close to everything everywhere that once
everything physically fit, there was no adjustment for anything. My rear-most
hanger was missing (since the last system didn't use it), so I had to make a
hanger to mount to the stud coming out of the body. The other issue I ran into
was with some of the hardware that Bosal provided with the system. I nearly
stripped out 2 of those nice copper nuts because they got cross threaded... and
I was trying to be incredibly careful for that very reason. I had to chase the
threads out with a tap in order to use those nuts, but that destroyed the nuts'
self locking ability. Bummer.
With everything installed, I started the engine to make sure there were no leaks
and to see how bad the rattles would be. Amazingly, the system does not rattle
at all. Some vibrations come through the body because one of the pipes is resting
on the rear subframe, though. I will insulate that with some rubber, I think.
The system is quieter than I expected, but the rear muffler appears to be glass
packed which means the sound will change as it gets broken in.
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Date: 12/06/06, 02:09:08 PST
From: Dad
Comments: Looks great Max. Any chance that you could replace the rear brace that the pipe is resting on with a custom modified one that has a "U" shape to provide clearance?
Dad
Date: 12/06/06, 06:28:59 PST
From: Max
Comments: Well, I'm sort of toying with the idea of making a couple of long metal pieces to block between the body and the rear subframe. As long as I make the blocks long enough to duplicate the amount of surface contact between the subframe and the body, then I think that should minimize (if not entirely eliminate) loss of rigidity.
