I haven’t been able to do
much since before Christmas. But now
things have warmed up again (above freezing) I decided to make another
start. Having worked with cables in my
job I know messing about with cables when it is freezing below 1 deg C is a bad
idea as the insulation can crack – Granted I’m talking about Steel Wired
Armoured cable the thickness of my forearm but with a 14 year old wiring
harness and the fact I’m freezing my butt off I decided not to risk it.
So my primary concern is
the hole for this wiring harness from the engine bay. The problem being to keep it away from the turbo
catalytic convertor and down pipe, but not such that it will be exposed in the
wheel arch. I have to do the same with
the throttle cable but that is protected by its metal and plastic sheath. After mulling this over I decided I would
need to put the downpipe in place to see what space I have to play with. The HKS down pipe (marked competition use
only) was not going to be any good as the downpipe I would be using would have
a catalytic convertor round about the area I want to put the cabling
harness. So I put a few questions
together for the lads at MSC one being where can I get a downpipe with a
cat. Last night, having not heard
anything from the lads for a week I went hunting on Ebay.
I have been looking round the
internet on several occasions over the last few months the costs to be honest
depressed me with figures of £400 - £500 for a full system. With all the cars around that have had the
cats removed and downpipes increased in bore you would have thought there must
be somewhere I can get a second hand unit.
The cat is important the reason being the IVA test on emissions.
Emissions levels on the
IVA is one of the more “political issues” on the test. The levels are, I believe, the same as any
MOT test. However, most of the
replacement cats available online that say they will pass MOT will only
actually pass when they are Hot full operating temperature. On the IVA test they put a temperature probe
in the oil dip pipe and take the emissions reading from when the oil reaches 80
Deg C at which point the cat is not fully up to normal operating temperature
hence it can fail on emissions. This is
what I am trying to avoid, obviously.
So back to the internet.
After trying a few more new websites which told me nothing I didn’t already know
I gave Ebay one last try. Jackpot! There
it was a Full classic STI exhaust system original downpipe, 2 Catalytic
convertors and a Subaru back box. It
still had 6 days to run but with no bidders.
My own paranoia made me decide not to bid but to pay the asking price. I got a call from the seller half an hour
later and this morning with the sun shining I drove across the bridge en route
to Horncastle.
The seller wasn’t there it
was his father in law who ran a small garage.
The unit had been his son in laws who had used it to get his Subaru
through its MOT each year until he crashed it a couple of years ago and was now
driving a 2.5litre model. Closer
inspection showed it in good condition with nothing from my limited understanding
to indicate there was anything wrong with it.
So money paid we put it in the back of my car. This leaves me with a
small issue for later on the pipe ID is 57mm whilst the tail pipe unit in the
kit is 72mm. This I will solve
later. It is not a difficult problem.
Other questions I put to
the lads @ MSC were the structural PU
adhesive nobody local or internet could offer me anything that they would
describe as structural PU this had been really frustrating. I chatted with a
mate at work and he directed me to a the U-Pol site. After some browsing I found U-Pol Stronghold panel
adhesive. A fast curing adhesive
designed to stick GRP panels together and GRP to Aluminium which U-pol
describes as semi-flexible. It is as
close as I can find to what Graham had described in previous discussions. It’s not cheap @ £27.00 for a 200ml tube but
at least I can make progress.
My other question which I
need a response to is this cable hole was if they knew of another owner that I
could ask for some photos of the cable routing in the engine bay round the
turbo.
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