After much knuckle busting and countless expletives, I got all of this stuff installed last night. I ran into a couple of snags during the installation. Several of the original exhaust bolts cracked when I was trying to get them off since they were extremely rusty. Fortunately, only the converter bolts cracked off and not the exhaust collector bolts. Also, the Cattman pipe did not line up well with the RT converter. I had to unbolt everything after I had it all together because there was a big exhaust leak at the front of the converter. The second time, I used two gaskets and made sure the pipes were lined up exactly before I tightened everything up. Now there are no leaks.

While I had the exhaust off, I installed the Stillen short-throw shifter. The %&^#@ bolt holes on the shifter base were not lined up properly with the shift assembly on the car! I had to get my dremel tool out and grind some material away from one of the holes in the shift assemly to make it work. Once I got that done, everything went together nicely.

My impressions? There seems to be a little more low end torque and some top-end horsepower nothing to get too excited about. The car is noticeable louder with the y-pipe but I like the aggressive growl it makes combined with the Flowmaster. While I was under the car, I noticed that it has custom 2 1/4 piping from the converter back to the muffler. That was a nice little surprise :-)

I'm looking forward to getting the JWT chip installed because I think it will really wake the motor up. I'm going to overnight my ECU to JWT instead of paying the rediculous core charge to have them send me one first. Once I get the ECU installed, I plan on yanking the intake, plenums and heads and having them all extrude honed. That should be good for at least 230HP NA and then a 65 shot of NOS to bring it up to around 300 on the juice. Once this clutch blows up, I'm going to go with an aluminum flywheel and heavy-duty clutch.

Never thought I'd started modifying a Maxima but it's kind of fun, he he. Also much less expensive than my old '91 Vette.

-Jeremy

 

and how did you get the stock shifter out? I tried to get the bottom of the shifter though the base hole but it was a no go. Did you ruin the shift **** unscrewing it?

 

Jeff, the car already had a Momo **** when I got it so that was no problem. To remove the whole shifter assembly, you need to remove the converter and the heat shield under the car. Then you can access the three bolts that hold the shifter in place. Actually, the Stillen shifter was rubbing the heat shield so I had to bend it a little to make it work.

 

but once I unbolted the one 14mm bracket bolt and the two smaller 10mm or 12mm shifter bolts, I could not get the shifter out of the "hole" in the bracket. How did you slide the shifter out??

 

You have to tilt the shifter at an angle and when wiggle it to get it out. To get the Stillen shifter in I had to pull the two nylon bushings out to make it fit through the hole. I don't think it could be done without pulling the heat shield off and disconnecting the entire shifter assemly and associated linkage. It was a pain in the *** but well worth it. This shifter has a very solid feel to it and I don't feel like I'm rowing a boat anymore.

 

at the tranny side and unhooked that side too? I can't do that because when you try to slide it off the bolt, it hits the Y pipe. I wonder why they didn't just make the hole 3mm bigger all around?? sheesh