mopar bob

penetrating oil will work only about 75% of the time when you in the midwest or the east coast with the road salt. You start with penetrating oil and if you didn't already break the stud you give heat. Keep the bolt or stud cool and will buzz off. I did this to many times to think about and not say I'm glad I'm not a wrench anymore.

Bruce In Philly

FYI, I soaked the bolts with PB Blaster a week before. Still broke bolts.

Mumbles

Glad you got er done Bruce......

nwGTS

Reviving this thread to get help on what sized bolts are needed. Might as well prebuy a full set for a few bucks rather than make a trip to the store with a car half assembled.

Can anyone provide the size and count of the nuts and bolts needed?

nzskater

I can't speak to an NA car, but they were in the catalogue for the turbo on the page showing the turbos themselves, not the page with the exhaust details.

CT944

Yes - I literally just finished my SW bypass install yesterday, I broke all 6 cat bolts and both of the exhaust sleeve bolts due to rust. It was not fun and I needed up having to take off the bumper and the side cans in order to access the broken bolts and press/drill them out, but I worked through the issues and it all worked out great. I spent a lot of time at Sears Hardware, but ultimately the M7 size 1 3/4 inch bolts are perfect for the cats, get 6 of them. I had to go to Porsche to get new 2 exhaust sleeves, as the old ones were rusted so I had to Dremel them off. Finally, tighten all bolts (side cans, cat bolts, sleeve clamps) to just 15lbs of torque and you should not receive any vibration. All this on a 13k mile car!

CT944

Rusted cat bolts, and Yes, I used plenty of PB Blaster and a torch but to no avail.

CT944

M7 1 3/4 bolt

CT944

Dremeled exhaust sleeve.

CT944

Left side starting to come back together

CT944

Right side.

CT944

SW bypass fully mounted.

CT944

Side shot

CT944

Side cans mounted and ready for bumper install. Came out great and sounds really nice. While it was a more painful job than I expected, it was relatively easy and fun.

StormRune

I guess I'm lucky to live in Central Texas where we don't get all of the winter treatment on our roads, my exhaust bolts look fantastic compared to the photos I see here. Wow. But that doesn't help you.

As you can see in the photos posted by CT944, there are 6 bolts. Five are pressed into the cat-side flange, three on the driver side and two of the passenger side. The top one on the passenger side is a normal bolt with a normal nut (which also makes it a challenge to remove). You'd have to get the pressed-in ones from a dealer and might as well get the other one the same way if you are replacing it. Or you can take the route CT944 did and get something that doesn't have to be pressed in. He's already done the legwork for you on sizes so that is certainly a reasonable possibility.

Ideally, the nuts should be replaced each time they are removed. More importantly, they should be copper-coated nuts. I'm not sure if the ones from Porsche are copper-coated or not. See this thread I was involved in not too long ago: https://rennlist.com/forums/997-foru...-and-nuts.html. Note in post #13, Flat Six strongly recommends the copper coated nuts as the way to go. You can read the whole thread for more info.

I actually bought the copper nuts from the local BMW dealer. They use them on their high end model exhausts. I'm virtually certain there were the M8 size just like the ones you'll see in the photos in the links below. You can buy a package of 8 on eBay here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/VW-AirCooled...640&rmvSB=true (copying Flat Six's recommended link).

I did several exhaust experiments on my cars over a couple of years and the copper bolts always came right off... but again I do have the southern US advantage with respect to corrosives on the road.