Tedro951

In searching it appears that breaking the studs on the pipe cause mandatory turbo yanking.

I'm planning on breaking all 3 studs sometime this week, and it looks like it might be possible to drill them out in place. Then tap and install new studs, or bolts dropped through the top.

Is this crazy?

I could see a simple bypass going horribly wrong.

Example: I broke a stud on my DP, so I took the turbo out to get to it. Might as well get a little bigger turbo, 3" DP, MAF, injectors, WB02, 3" from DP back, etc.

I just want to get the bursch on. Thoughts?

Seattle944

Do you want to add that that stuff? I just pulled the stock turbo and it was more time consuming than difficult. I went in to put a 60-1. But then the dp, exhaust, sfr pipes.. All came with it

Tom M'Guinn

If you are talking about the 3 bolt flange that the cat or test pipe bolts to, then yes you need to pull the turbo to get that pipe out of the car. However, you 'might' be able to drill out the broke stud with the pipe in the car... Worth a shot anyway as it would be a ton less work. You can ditch the studs and use bolts (assuming you drill out the studs without ruining the threads -- in which case a helicoil or timesert would fix it up). I'd try reverse drill bits with lots of penetrating oil and see if it turns itself out after you start drilling...

Tedro951

Tom - I'm going to go for it. I have several smaller pneumatic drills that I think will fit once the cat pipe is out of the way.

Seattle - I'm trying to avoid a $4000 "while I'm in there" kind of thing. I just want to delete the cat and install the pipe that I've had for 5 years laying around.

I'll post up the saga when I get it done.

pontifex4

All three of mine broke with minimal provocation, and two of those had to be drilled out once I had the pipe out of the car. They had never been released before. If I'd known how much trouble I would have getting the studs out of the pipe, I might have tried to use a nut splitter on the nuts first, but even that might have made a huge mess.

Tedro951

Yeah, I don't see an elegant way of doing it. Mine appear to be original and frozen by 26 years of rust. I figure the sooner I bust them off, the sooner I can start drilling...

pontifex4

I had very little trouble breaking all three off with just a 1/2" ratchet, sadly. Here's a photo of their replacements, for motivation: