Hey guys! ChrisFix here and today I'm going to show you how to install an aftermarket exhaust system with common hand tools so that you could easily do this at home, in your driveway, with no lift and I'm also gonna give you the best tips and tricks so this install goes really easy without any issues. So let's get started and the first thing you're gonna want to do is grab your penetrating fluid because every stock exhaust that I've ever seen has rusty fasteners, so what I've been doing for the past few days is driving up on ramps, grabbing my penetrating fluid and going underneath the car and you're going to want to spray down every nut, bolt and connection where the exhaust is held in and I highly suggest doing this once a day for a couple of days before you go and install your exhaust. Trust me, it's gonna make it so much easier for those nuts and bolts to come out. You won't strip any, you won't round any and you won't snap any. Now as these bolts are soaking in penetrating fluid, I have two main goals with installing this exhaust. The first goal and the most Important goal to me is how this exhaust is going to sound and to give you an idea, this is what the stock exhaust sounds like. *pretty quiet rumble* So there you go, pretty quiet as a stock exhaust usually is, but I know this car has a lot of potential. Mustangs usually sound pretty good and I've heard this exhaust on this model car, it sounds phenomenal and just wait to the end when we get that installed, you're gonna hear it, i-it sounds great. So that's the first and most important goal of mine. Now the second goal is, to make more power. The stock exhaust is pretty restrictive, but our new exhaust is running two high-flow cats (catalytic converters) into an X-pipe and then it's going straight back. There's no restriction all the way out the tailpipe, so we should be making more power and a lot of people always argue, will an aftermarket exhaust make more power than a stock exhaust? Well guess what, we're gonna find out today because we're gonna take this car completely stock, we're heading to the dyno and we're going to see what kind of baseline power numbers we're putting down, then we're gonna go and install our exhaust, head back to the dyno and see if we increased the power, decreased the power or if it's the same. So let's get in the car, head to the dyno and get those baseline numbers, and we are at the dyno. This is a hub dyno, so you have to remove the wheels, bolt on an adapter directly to the hub and then slide the dyno onto the adapter, think of this as like a, treadmill for your car to see how much power she puts down. The stock engine makes 225 horsepower and 290 foot-pounds of torque, so what do you think the car is gonna put down at the rear wheels? Well, let's find out. All right, so we did better than I thought we're gonna do. We made 189 horsepower and 255 foot-pounds of torque. That is a lot of torque and one thing to notice, take a look around 5200 RPMs, our power just DROPS off all the way to the redline. At redline at 6000 RPMs, we're making like a 110 horsepower. That is horrible and that's definitely due to some type of restriction in the intake and probably the exhaust, so let's get back to the house and install that exhaust to see if we could get rid of that restriction, make some more power and more importantly, get this Mustang sounding like it should. All right, back from the dyno and we have some improvements to make, so I'm gonna use ramps to lift the front of the car and then a jack to lift up the rear. Be sure to slide jack stands underneath and carefully lower the car securely on the jack stands. I also like to slide an extra wheel under the wheel and that gives us an extra layer of safety. So with the car safely supported, now we could go and work on the exhaust. Actually the exhaust is gonna be pretty hot because we just got back, but that does give us a good opportunity to use a little trick, so grab a spray bottle with ice-cold water in it and head under the car. Now since our exhaust is too hot to handle, we don't want to undo these bolts right now, you'll burn yourself, so instead we're gonna use this heat to our advantage. Grab your spray bottle and spray down the fasteners so it cools rapidly, you can hear that cold water turning to steam as it cools that hot exhaust and what this trick does is it cools the metal really quickly, so that cracks the rust inside the threads where we can't get to, especially with the penetrating fluid and that's gonna make taking these bolts out a lot easier. Now we need to let the exhaust cool, so we could handle it without getting burnt and about an hour later, the exhaust is cool enough to handle, especially in the rear, where we're gonna start removing it. Let's swing around to the other side and I want to show you how the exhaust is run, so it goes up and over the axle into the muffler, so from the muffler all the way up and over to the tailpipe is one piece, which makes it difficult to remove because there's axles in the way, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna cut it right there. To cut the exhaust, you can use one of these inexpensive hand saws or even better if you have, I'm gonna be using one of these electric reciprocating saws with a metal cutting blade because this thing cuts the exhaust pipe like a hot knife through butter Now with the exhaust cut, slide the tailpipe out of the hanger and carefully remove the exhaust by turning it over the axle, just like that. So with the driver's side exhaust cut and removed, let's do the same thing to the passenger side and perfect, there we go. So with both tailpipes cut out, now we could go back under the car and remove the mufflers. Each of these mufflers is held in here and here, right after the H pipe, so we have to undo this bolt here, and there's a bolt here on the other side that squeeze this together and hold the two pipes together, but before you go grab your ratchet and try to undo this, spray it down one more time with penetrating fluid, then grab a metal wire brush and we want to clean the rusty threads on the bolt. The goal here is to get as much loose rust and debris out of the threads, so when we unscrew the nut, it doesn't get clogged up and make it hard to remove. Now we could get the ratchet and crack the nut free and unscrew it the rest of the way. Good. Do the other nut as well and you can see how easily these are coming out because the simple tricks we used and now we could slide the coupler back and hold the muffler down like that. Now the only thing holding the muffler up is the exhaust hanger, which is held in by these two bolts, so let's remove this one, good, and that one and hold the muffler up because this bolt is all that's holding this in. Awesome, and that's one muffler out and we did the same exact thing to get the other muffler out and with both mufflers removed, there's only one more thing that we need to get and that is the H-pipe, which has catalytic converters in it and then it bolts up to the exhaust manifolds and since we're working with catalytic converters, we're also gonna have to deal with oxygen sensors. There's gonna be sensors after the cats and there's gonna be sensors before the cats up there, so instead of removing the sensors under the car because you could get tight in here, we're just gonna disconnect the wiring harness. Now we could go to the upstream sensors and those are located near the front of the car. If we look in front of the first catalytic converter, you can see the sensor And then here's the pigtail, just disconnect it and we'll do the same thing on the other side. So now that all four oxygen sensors are disconnected, the only thing holding the exhaust up is the exhaust hanger right here and then four nuts: two on this side and two on that side. So let's go remove these nuts, starting at the driver side exhaust manifold and these can be very difficult to remove, so I have a little trick and that trick is instead using the conventional ratchet and socket like we've been using, we're gonna be using an impact gun. Now I understand not everybody's gonna have an impact gun, but trust me, rent one, borrow one from a friend or, I'll link this in the description and you could buy one because an impact gun is gonna remove these bolts without snapping them, watch this. Just get the impact socket on the nut and the hammering action of the impact gun loosens the nuts right up without ramming them or snapping the stud, that's the bottom. Now, let's do this out and with the driver side undone, now we could come to the passenger side, which is gonna be a little trickier. Sure, we could easily get to the top nut, but the bottom nut is buried tight all the way back behind the oxygen sensor, which we're gonna have to remove, so heat the threads up, which is gonna make this easier to loosen and there really isn't much room to get the wrench in here, but luckily this loosened right up. Now this is so hot and I can't handle it, so I'm gonna cool it down with some water and now we get hand-loosen it the rest of the way, then grab the impact with a swivel socket and impact that nut loose. Beautiful and for the final note, we could just as easily get in there with our impact and budge it right out, but instead of doing that, I don't want people who don't have impact guns to get discouraged. If you can't get one, if you can't borrow one, (if) you can't buy one, don't worry. This job is completely doable with common hand tools and to prove that to you, I'm gonna remove the top nut with a ratchet. Just extend the ratchet for some more leverage, crack the nut loose and loosen this up all the way, good. Now this is gonna be pretty heavy, so carefully wiggle it and pull it out and then slide the exhaust out from under the car. All right, out with the old and in with the new. Check that out, that looks so good! I cannot wait to get this exhaust in the car and since we do have the two exhausts side-by-side, I want to show some of the main differences. The first thing that stands out right away, SIX catalytic converters on the stock exhaust, that is insanely restrictive. With the aftermarket, we have two high-flow cats, which is awesome for exhaust flow. Speaking of exhaust flow, we have a stock H-pipe right here on the stock exhaust and we're going to an X-pipe which is going to help with exhaust scavenging, hopefully giving us more horsepower, we'll find out in a little bit, then after that, we're coming back down, we have the stock mufflers, highly restrictive. Well you know what, instead of me just telling you they're restrictive, check this out. I'm using my plasma cutter to slice through the outside shell of the muffler so we can look inside and this thing is so cool, that's the power of plasma. Now this is a really cool cutaway, I've always wanted to see the inside of this muffler. Now, the stock muffler is going to be restrictive, that's just how it is. They need to keep the noise levels down so they could pass all states, all countries, sound regulations, so what we have here is we have the exhaust flowing this way and then the exhaust has to come out that way to go to the tailpipe and in order for that to happen the exhaust has to flow here turn a tight 90 degrees and then fit through this tiny hole, go through this tube, which is then bottlenecked and then goes out that way and then this tube here, if you're wondering what that's for, some of the exhaust is going to go into here, but a lot of the sound waves are gonna go into here and get cancelled out and not be as loud, same thing with over here, you can see these, all these little holes here, the sound waves will bounce off this and then bounce through here and then bounce around and and kind of cancel each other out, but the exhaust flow has to go here and then here, that's the only way it could actually travel out of the muffler, so that's the restrictive stock muffler, let's go check out the aftermarket muffler. I don't even know if you could call it a muffler because it is straight through. This thing is gonna sound SO good and the exhaust flow is going to be incredible. Hopefully, that'll help us get some more power out of the engine and then after the mufflers, it's pretty much an identical setup and it just goes back over the axle, out the tailpipes, so enough talk about the exhaust system, I cannot wait to get this in the car, hear how it sounds. By the way, this is an SLP exhaust, I'm gonna go put a link in the description so you can easily find it if you like how it sounds and I'm curious to see how much power we're gonna get. Are we gonna get an extra 10/11 horsepower so that we could break that 200-horsepower mark? Let's go find out. First thing we're gonna want to do is we want to get these oxygen sensors off the old exhaust and put them on the new exhaust and there's a little trick to get these off because they could get pretty stubborn and that trick is to use some heat, have a little propane torch here and just heat up around the threads, then you can easily get a wrench and pop this right off, unscrew it the rest of the way by hand and that's all it takes to remove (the) oxygen sensors. So this oxygen sensor with the blue pigtail goes on the driver's side. Before you screw this in, to make them come off a lot easier next time, what we're gonna do is we're gonna get a little bit of anti-seize and add the anti-seize to the threads, you want to be careful 'cause you only want to get it on the threads, not on the sensor and the anti-seize is gonna make this sensor come out a lot easier next time if you ever need to replace it, you won't even need any heat. Then all you need to do is snug down the sensor, it should be tightened to about 25 foot-pounds of torque, so follow the same exact process for the other sensors. So the after-cat oxygen sensors are in, now we need to do the before-cat sensors and follow the same process again, making sure it's tight and there's nothing to it and a quick tip with your old exhaust, some people need the old exhaust, so they might buy the tailpipes from you or the mufflers from you. If you don't feel like selling it, take it to a junkyard, take it to a recycle center. I was offered 17 dollars for each cat and there's six cats, so that's a pretty good amount of money and you could be offered up to 50 bucks/cat, so that's pretty good compared to throwing it out and there's actually some value here, I just want to let you guys know that. So now we are ready to install the exhaust, we're gonna start from the front and work our way back. This is so easy, it's gonna go by real quick and the real good part about this, is this exhaust comes apart, so we could do one piece at a time, makes it real simple and since the exhaust comes apart we do have some exhaust clamps, so in between each section that comes apart, we're gonna put one of these and then tighten it down. We also have a gasket which goes on the passenger side and that'll fit right there, so let's get started we'll grab this piece and we'll go underneath the car. Now before we go and just install the exhaust, we want our studs to be nice and clean and prepped like that top one. the bottom one's all rusted, it's just gonna make it hard to get that nut off if we ever need to remove the exhaust, so grab a metal wire brush and clean the rust off the threads and then get your anti-seize and add anti-seize right to the threads so that the nut won't get stuck on there. Now, let's attach the downpipe and add the top nut, but keep it loose and keep the bottom nut loose as well and don't forget the oxygen sensor wires, which just click together, good. With that done, let's do the passenger side. Now on the passenger side we do have a gasket we have to install, which means there should be a gasket on there, you want to make sure you get that off before you install a new one, so pull the old gasket off just like that and now we'll install the brand new gasket, which just slides right in. Perfect. Next, install the down pipe by sliding it over the studs, then hand-tighten the top nut and hand-tighten the bottom nut and since this pipe has a gasket, we could tighten it down all the way starting right now at the bottom and then tighten the top to spec. Next, add the oxygen sensor and tighten it down so it's snug and finally, connect the sensor wire so that it clicks. All right, with both down pipes and oxygen sensors fully connected, we have one thing that everybody needs to do anytime you change your exhaust off and that is run straight out of the headers or in this case, exhaust manifolds. No mufflers, no cats, straight down and out, let's hear what it sounds like and just to be clear, I am running the back two oxygen sensors. I just connected it real quick. You could do this and not throw any codes if you run the car for a minute, two minutes, three minutes and that'll just prevent any Check Engine lights, so let's go hear what this sounds like. Holy smokes! Now we can't let it run too long, but I do want to warm up just a little bit before I start revving it up. OK, here it goes. Oh my God! Woo! OK, one more time before the neighbors kill me. Oh my God, that sounds so good. OK, that's enough. Ohh, I cannot wait to get this exhaust installed completely. Even though this sounded good without the exhaust system on it, it's gonna sound even better once we do get it on there, so let's finish up all it is is a couple of bolts and clamps, so let's get back under the car and finish up this exhaust. So that's a pretty important step, now I'm sure it's a rule anytime you change your exhaust system, you have to run open headers to see what it sounds like. Now when you do that, make sure that you don't have anything behind here that could melt or burn. No fuel lines, no hanging wires anything like that because these exhaust fumes are hot. Anyway, the next thing we need to do is install the catalytic converters, so grab a cat and grab one of these exhaust clamps, slide it on there then we're gonna push this right on, just like that and we keep it loose because it could be up too high, it could be down too low and we'll tighten it all together and adjust everything once we have the X-pipe on, so we got the cat on this side and the cat on the other side. With both cats installed, now we can install our X-pipe. For any of the larger, more cumbersome pieces like this X-pipe, it's a good idea, you could use a jack and all you have to do is slide it underneath the car and then just jack it right up into place. Now the X-pipe is gonna slide right into the cats on both sides, just like that and once you fit the exhaust the way you want it, hold it in place and now we could tighten down the nuts starting with the two connecting the exhaust manifold, which should be tightened to about 30 foot-pounds, good, and then we're gonna work our way back, tightening down the exhaust clamps so they pinch the tubing in front of the cat and behind the cat. We also have to do the cat on the other side, so tighten down the clamp at the front and the rear of that cat as well. With the X-pipe in completely, we can connect both downstream oxygen sensors and I'm using a zip tie to keep the sensor wires off the hot exhaust so they don't melt. Now the exhaust should be able to hold itself up, so drop the jack and pull it out. OK, so that's everything from the downpipes, cats, to the X-pipe and now we're gonna install the pipes that run to the back of the car and from this point on, everything we do on the driver's side is going to be identical to the passenger side so with that being said, let me show you the driver side, we'll speed through the process because I really want to hear this exhaust and I want to get to the dyno and see if we got any power out of it, so before we add any pipes, the first thing we're gonna do is add our exhaust hangers. These hangers mount in the stock location and use the stock bolts, so hand-tighten them to hold the hanger in place and then with the ratchet, we're gonna tighten the left and right bolts to spec so it's nice and sturdy. Now since we're already here, let's get the over-axle pipe and slide it over the axle right there. Now grab your soapy water and spray it onto the rubber hangers to lubricate it and make it a lot easier to slide the metal rods into the rubber, so slide that top hanger in place. Good, and then do the bottom hanger and they just slipped right in nice and easy. So I went ahead and finished up the passenger side exhaust, which was simple, so let me show you the driver side and the first step starts at the coupler over here, so grab the pipe and line it up, then move the two flanges together and get a bolt in there so you get a hand-tighten the nut to hold it in place. Then, get the bottom bolts in and hand-tighten that nut so it's loose, like that. Next, slide the muffler in place then attach the exhaust tube after the axle and finally, the polished tailpipe slides into place and then push the rod into the exhaust hanger to hold it up Alright, so with the tail pipe in, we are completely done. We just want to make sure that the exhaust is not touching any part of the car body, making sure it's not hitting the brake lines over there and it's not, so we are good to go. Now we just need to tighten it all down. Start tightening the two exhaust flange bolts and be sure to tighten them down evenly so there's no exhaust leaks. Then, tighten down the exhaust clamps holding the muffler in place so they pinch the pipes tightly together and next, tighten the pipe over the axle, good, and the last piece is the tailpipe. Now you want to try to make sure that the tailpipe comes out as far as you can and as far as it still looks good and in this case, I'm gonna pull it out past the bumper like that. Now you want it past the bumper because the sound waves are gonna be coming out of here and if you don't have it past the bumper, they're gonna bounce off in the bumper, underneath the car and you're gonna get a lot of interior resonance and it's gonna be annoying to drive. If you have it past the bumper, then the soundwaves are going to come out, out here and it won't be as loud inside the car, so that looks pretty good like that. I have both tailpipes set up, I like how it looks, let's go tighten it down And that's going nowhere beautiful and we are done installing an entire exhaust system, that looks so good. All right, now let's go start her up. I cannot wait to hear what this sounds like. Aw man, that sounds so good. I want to hesitate to rev it up and let's go check underneath the car for leaks. So you're gonna want to grab some soapy water, we're gonna quickly check for any leaks. Starting from the front, you just want to spray down all the seams and look for any bubbling. Anywhere there is air coming out will be signified with bubbles and this is all looking good. So I'll check the whole exhaust and just give it a quick spray down. All right, at the back of the car, checked everything for leaks, there are no leaks that I could find, so now let's get the car off the jack stands and ramps and hear a Before and After and then head to the dyno to see how much power we made. And what a huge difference the performance exhaust livens up this car and makes it sounds so much better, now it sounds better, but does it perform any better? Let's go find out. So after three very similar runs, we made 270 foot-pounds of torque and 199 horsepower, SO close to 200 and comparing Before, which is the lighter line and After, which is the darker line, we gained 15 foot-pounds of torque and 10 horsepower and if you look at the lower RPMs where a lot of people say if you reduce back pressure, you're gonna lose horsepower and torque. Well, we actually gained horsepower and torque not only at the lower RPMs, but along the whole RPM band, which is pretty good, but you can still see at 5,200 RPMs to redline, we still have that bottleneck, which is probably due to an intake, so I ordered a high-performance intake and we will be doing a video on how to install it, so stay tuned for that. So, 10 horsepower, we can't really complain about that, especially when all we wanted was this. That sound, that sounds SO good I love it! So there you go, that is how you install a complete exhaust system from the tailpipes to the catalytic converters and down pipes, all the little tips and tricks. I hope the video was helpful, if it was, remember to give it a thumbs up. Also, if you're not a subscriber consider subscribing. We're gonna try to get that horsepower number over 200, way over 200. We've got some cool things coming up, you guys are going to love it. As always, all the products and tools I used in this video are linked in the description, so you can easily find them, so stay tuned.
Apparently Chrisfix was sick for a while. It's so great to see him back.
What really matters is the butt dyno
His mom (assumption) at 15:05. lulz
Is it just me, or is 189HP pretty low for a v8?
Love the POV and really enjoyed the production too. Concise and intelligent editing and narration. I wonder how much of the voice work was done after vs live.
Considering most old V8s have been choked to hell and back, I would say definitely. A modern honda? Maybe a couple extra HP.
The stock 96-98 intake manifold is your next big bottle neck. A PI intake from a 99-04 Mustang or ~01+ Crown Vic/Grand Marquis/Town Car will give you another 500 RPM of usable power (although I don't recommend buying used ones anymore because they're prone to age related cracks around the coolant passage gaskets - get a new FRPP PI intake).
A set of PI cams while your at it will give you some more and the cams combined with the intake will let it pull all the way to 6000 without completely falling off a cliff like it does now. This isn't a bad swap if you have bolt on cam gears but it's a very time consuming one if you don't.
Anyway, nice job and that was a pretty impressive pull if that motor was still completely stock - those early 2V 4.6L are known for some depressing baseline pulls.
Answer: Yes...duh...