Finally finished my roof this week by taking two nice October vacation days thereby freeing me up to pursue the exhaust replacement on the Westy, which I undertook in earnest this morning.  I had done the muffler and tailpipe a couple of years ago and am now doing the four main pipes upstream of the cat.  Although I could find no receipt for it in the paper pile from the two previous owners, this system must have been replaced because it does not use studs at each flange, but only at two of them. Cylinders #1 and #4 have each had both studs replaced with bolts, and despite my fears of dealing with the dreaded exhaust studs it was two of these bolts that snapped off during the removal, the upper one at each of the two flanges.  Damn!  The studs survived just fine, although access to them was so bad I had to Dremel off most of the nuts.

So now I find myself with additional challenge of removing the remains of the bolts, two nubs about 3/8” long poking out of the heads.  I’m doing some other cleanup work before tackling that task so if there are any suggestions for proceeding I’m all ears and will check back for your suggestions.  PB Blaster soaks in progress.  I’m thinking propane torch and Vise Grips.  I’ve heard of welding nuts to what’s left and turning them out that way, but I’m no welder.

I knew going in that this job would be messy, troublesome and potential painful (lucky on that last one so far) and I know why we pay shops to do this kind of work, but I also figured that I could handle it.  Gotta love a challenge.

Stephen