Thursday, 6 October 2011

The tinworm strikes

One of the first projects due on the new WRX STi was to take care of that terrible exhaust leak.



What you see here is the downpipe - or at least what was left of it after the car arrived in Canada. The downpipe takes the hot exhaust gases from the turbocharger, runs them through a catalytic converter, and then connects to the long exhaust pipe that runs under the body of the car. At least that’s what it is supposed to do. In this state, it takes the exhaust from the turbocharger and converts it directly into noise.


A quick-and-dirty patch job with some muffler cement found at an auto parts store lasted a surprising 4000km, but the downpipe finally gave up being a downpipe and left this totally broken scene.



No, you should not be able to see light behind that pipe.

Finding a replacement part wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to do, as my Japanese is all but nonexistent and these things aren’t available here in Canada. Thankfully, this is a part that can be changed out for shiny aftermarket parts. No, I’m not replacing it with shiny aftermarket parts (what am I - made of money?) but I can make use of the discarded original pieces from those who are made of money.

What I came up with was this.



I’m jumping ahead in the project a bit here, but you can clearly see that the pipes are similar, but different. This would have to be changed.

This project will take place in three parts:

1. Removal of old part

2. Modification of new part

3. Installation of new part

Look for more on this later.

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