Did I mention before that the clamps suck on the Magnaflow's?? I was sitting outside a resturant Saturday night, when my wife says, honey, your truck is rattling. After a little looking, those cheap a$$ bolts that came with the kit are stripped out. Plus there is now play in the clamp itself. I think I'm gonna go get some grade 8's, a little loctite, and go play with the impact wrench again. I really don't wanna spend more money to get it all welded.

 

WOW! ....thats wiered I used the clamps on mine and thier fine I woner why

 

Well, it's not so much the clamps, I think the bolts just suck some major rear end. After I replaced the bolts that came with the kit with grade 8's, it cranked down just fine, and is nice and tight.

 

Yep -- Magnaflow's factory clamps are pretty weak, at best. I replaced all of the clamps in my system with stainless steel band clamps that I purchased from NAPA. They are of a much higher quality than the Magnaflow clamps -- here's what they look like:

 

ddellwo, I saw that post a while back, and looked locally. For some reason, everyone was 'sold out' of 3" clamps. I finally got fed up with looking for them, and just got new bolts. That did the trick. Those grade 8s were able to take some actual load and snugged the clamp around the pipes just fine. I was happy when I saw the pipes getting crushed together.

 

Yeah -- the bolts are definitely the "weak link" of the Magnaflow clamps. I twisted the heads off a couple of mine during the install -- and I was using a torque wrench to set them to Magnaflow's exact specs!

 

My clamps are fine, did you have your system on very long? those band clamps look great!