So like title says one of the springs bolts broke between exhaust manifold and downpipe/cat . The bolt broke inside welded nut so there is not just shoving another spring bolt in there (ive tried to the tune of a burnt forearm and much cursing) On the bright side the Tanabe Medallion axleback is on and sounds pretty good for me.

My question I pose to you guys is, Is there a downpipe/cat that isn't hollow (T1R) but isn't $350 (yuck) for a stock (yuck) replacement. I enjoy the current sound and don't want to introduce mega amounts of raspiness from a cat delete.

Thanks for the help,
Jake

 

I realize this is a four yr old thread but nobody answered you. Maybe someone will benefit from my experience. Having taken my complete exhaust system out of my 2007 Fit Sport, I know very well what you are up against. My car has 9 western NY winters on it and over 220K miles. Plenty of stuff under the car is rusting. The B pipe cracked apart where it exits the silencer (resonator) integral with the B pipe. The rest of the exhaust system is still good even after nine salty WNY winters. We avg. 100" of snow per year and they salt most of it away unless it's about 6" or more deep - then they plow. If you don't know what I'm talking about you are lucky. Twisting wrenches on cars driven in the winter is a real challenge. You learn all kinds of tricks to get rusty fasteners apart.

The nuts holding the B pipe forward flange to the cat converter exit flange were rusted so badly they no longer looked like nuts, they resembled waffle cup for an ice cream cone. Think of a SNL cone head from the 1970's. I tried oxyacetylene torch heat and ViseGrips to no avail. Had to cut them off with an angle grinder. That worked for the lower two nuts but the upper nut was so inaccessible I had to resort to a 90º angle grinder and a diamond cutoff wheel the size of a nickel. That took about an hour just to remove that one nut. After the nuts and studs were cut through the flanges came apart readily.

Now that I have the entire system out of the car I will weld the B pipe back together because everything else is in pretty good shape with only surface rust on the pipes. The resonator and muffler are still silver with aluminized coating.

Now to your problem. If you remove the three 6mm nuts (10mm wrench) attaching the exhaust header heat shield and take the shield out, you can gain access to the spring bolts which attach the inlet to the catalytic converter to the exhaust manifold. Then you could wire brush any rust on the threads of the long stud which protrudes through the welded nut and then put two nuts on the stud which broke off within the welded nut. Jam the two nuts together and after generous penetrating oil application, you should be able to back the broken stud from above and clear the threaded nut for installation of a new pair of spring bolts. I always apply high temp Nevr-Seez to exhaust system bolts. It makes future work much easier.