By the way this was my own fault, not JDM's.

I started the install around 8:30 last night. No problem getting the stock piece off and all looks good. I get the JDM up in there, and get the tailpipes on as well. I get paged out for a house fire, and I am gone for about two hours. I get home and am tightening things down... I was tired. I looked up and noticed that the front end of the mufflers (X-pipe side) slid back on the cat pipes a bit and that I tightened the clamp onto just the muffler pipe - not both. So, now the pipe has a nice crimp in it, and I cannot fully pull it back onto the cat pipe. It sits on there a small amount, but nothing to really get a clamp on right now. The pipe that is screwed up now is the passenger side pipe... currently, there is a square notch cut out that is exposed. I gave up at 2:00 this morning because i really didn't know what to do, and i was dead tired. I thought about haveing it welded together to fix it... is that a bad idea?? I could always yank it back off and try and get a pipe expander in there, but i really hate those things. Any thoughts or comments?

 

well, you could heat it with a torch and soften the metal around the crimp enough to get it on there, but I'd recommend just pulling the pipe off and take it to an exhaust shop, they can expand that pipe back out in like two seconds with the proper machine. just my .02 but we don't do exhaust work here, so maybe somebody with more exhaust experience will chime in.

good luck.

later,
chris

 

Get it professionally welded or I don't think it will ever be tight enough or sealed properly. There is a tremendous amount of pressure put on our exhaust system(and its connections) by the hp/tq our engs. produce.

Dan

 

I'm with Chris on this one. Take it to "dare I say" your local Meinake (sp) shop and have them expand the pipe back out. Let me know if you have any problems. By welding it you may have trouble getting the tailtips where you want them.

Hope this helps

 

It's on the truck now, and I drove it to work this morning. It's fairly tight aside from the one pipe that isn't held in place. The exhaust tips want to twist around and touch the plastic after a short drive... most likely because the other pipe is not secure. I would say that this is from the enormous pressure that the exhaust sees.
I can possibly heat the muffler tube up while it's on the truck, and loosen everything to move it back into position??

 

Well, I have an appointment tomorrow to get the thing corrected at a muffler shop. They estimate $30 to fix... does that sound right? Boy do I feel very stupid....