Ok, was back at it yesterday, the day before I removed the stock headers, replaced the spark plugs, coil packs and installed the Porsche heat shields. Soul headers are in! A few notes that aren't in the directions, I removed both diagonal braces. This gives you ALL the room to work and I'd highly recommend doing it. I removed the two brackets that hold the stock header mount, the Soul headers don't use them and they got in the way of the Soul header fitting on the drivers side and was uncomfortably close to the header on the passenger side. For the rear O2 sensors to reach the bungs, I had to remove them from their wiring hold downs. I did check where the wiring is, it shouldn't chafe or burn through, but I'll be checking it closely. I had to run out to Harbor Freight to buy a different external torx socket, I needed a deep one as it had a thinner neck, there were a few header bolts that sat really close to the header runner and I couldn't get my shorty e12 socket on them. A wobble, plus wobble extensions are necessary to install the Soul headers. I didn't need them to remove the stock ones, regular extensions and my regular e12 socket got it done there.





Here's all the tools I used



My spark plugs and coil packs were perfect, they had 3300 miles on them. I didn't need to replace them, at all even though they were 10 years old. Porsche wants you to replace the plugs every 4 years due to potential for them to gall into the head. I mean, ok, sure? But mine had been in there for 10 years and came out fine. I'm sure the plugs in my old 996 Turbo had been in there even longer and they also came out fine. I did them anyways just because access was never going to be better, and even with the headers off, access still wasn't great.

So was it worth it? In a word, yes. These were a big purchase, even with the Black Friday sale price, which was a big discount over regular pricing. There's a noticeable increase in power, especially from 4000rpm on up and the mid range torque dip is totally gone between these and the Softronic tune. The sound is OMG amazing. Soul has a lifetime warranty on the cats, even with track use. That was a big part of my decision making vs waiting for a used set of catted headers to pop up. I live in an emissions state, I need cats and don't want to have to mess with O2 extenders or have to pay to replace a set of expensive headers if the cats go bad. A friend with Fabspeed catted headers has to run rear O2 extenders as his cats went bad and he bought them used.

I did a series of youtube videoson the entire process on my channel, mostly shorts. It's @docwyte, but here's what they sound like...

 

Nice!!

-Josh