I've done it... Just a sec while I copy and paste the photos from another forum. All up ist was AUD $100 for the second hand manifolds and down pipes and $200 for new set of down pipes to be made up... Certainly makes a difference!
I bought the manifolds and the down pipes to suit. Thing is the down pipes do not suit my car so all I essentially needed from them was the flanges.
The first thing I noticed is that the down pipes are actually squashed and the squashed section of pipe is placed inside the flange and welded. Since I was going to be getting an exhaust place to do up a new set of down pipes that suits my configuration I had to decide how I was going to cut the pipes off. Whether to leave stubs of the original pipes or remove them completely. I checked to see how the gasket holes lined up with the ones on the flange and I found that the squashed pipes had a smaller inside diameter than the gasket (and manifolds).
I decided that I would remove the pipes completly including the squashed sections. So I took to them with cutting disk and a hack saw to remove all the weld and the squashed section of pipe.
I cut the squashed pipe with a hacksaw in 90 degree increments and I found that they were actually relatively easy to remove provided enough of the weld was removed. Sometimes they just fell out while cutting. Anyway I proceeded to remove all of the pipe.
A much better lineup
A little tiding up
And this section of the work is done!
I just realised that it is a lot of photos for something that is pretty simple and boring... but... you get that.
The next step will be to pull the guards off my car (again) fit the manifolds and somehow get my car to the exhaust place to have the new down pipes welded to the flanges and the rest of the exhaust system.
Well, i was back at it again today.
Finally got round to fitting those EFI manifolds that I bought. Thankfully they fit without any problems! Ok so the photos.
I pulled the guards off the car... AGAIN! Left hand side:
Right hand side:
It doesn't look like much when both guards are off:
Just a random photo I took of the guards:
Ok, well, I took to the exhaust with an angle grinder and made the necessary cuts and then removed the manifolds. They came off without too much hassle.
Then I got to putting the EFI manifolds on. Here is the right hand side done:
And then the left hand side... I came very close to stripping some threads here because for some reason the manifold I bought doesn't align perfectly on the top row of holes for some reason, but in the end I was able to carefully ease it in:
The doesn't seem to be a whole lot of room between the left hand manifold and the chassis rail:
The obsolete exhaust manifolds:
And that was my sunday!
I fired the engine up for kicks with just the manifolds and no exhaust... wow is it loud! I took some video which you can watch from the link below. It's only clear from outside the garage. Once you go inside it's nothing but distortion!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhkjq3zGzj0
The next step is somehow getting this damn thing to an exhaust place... I'm thinking I might just drive it to work on tuesday and hope I don't get pulled over... It's 6km to the nearest exhaust shop.
The car should end up with a slightly different exhaust note when this is done. We shall see!
For the sake of completion, these are the downpipes the guy at ferndale exhausts did.
LH side:
RH side:
It's interesting, the engine behaves completely different with these manifolds. When I'm driving I find that i'm changing the gears at a much higher rpm (4000rpm or there about) because it just revs out so easily. And also when I stuck my head in the engine bay with the engine running. It's actually quietened down the engine too! It still needs a bit of a tuneup though.