I'm trying to find out if I can get this installed at a national chain place or something. It's supposed to be easy as pie to do if you have the right tools, right? What about you guys in NYC? Will places like that put a y-pipe on for you? Will they say no because of the technical illegality of replacing the stock y-pipe?

 

yeah but it will cost you as much as the pipe, i looked into it

 

There was a recent post regarding this same question. He ended up getting the shop to losten the bolts on the cat which are typically the toughest to get. He seemed very happy that he did it himself. Try to find the post, it was in the last couple of days. Good luck.

 

they will... but you'll pay an arm and a leg. if you can get yours hands on the right tools it shouldnt be too hard to do yourself

 

Do it yourself and feel good once you are done.. if anything it shouldn't be that rusted being a southern car. Like the other guy said the only hard part is getting the bolts to the cat off.

 

Yeah, I had mine installed at Midas for $100, at first they said they couldn't because it would be illegal, then they realized that they didn't know what they were talking about.

 

You can always try calling them and asking them. Otherwise, from what I've found out, small independent body/mechanic shops will do it for about $40-$50. Midas charged me $95 to have it put on my 00 Maxima years ago.

 

They are technically illegal, so they did know what they were talking about...

 

you cant knowingly install somethign that tampers with the cat converter of the pre-cats. so they did know what they wer etalking about. they typically ask over $100 to isntall, just get teh bolts torched off at the cat converter

 

Have you put the car up on jack stands or anything to check the bolts out on the cat? They may not be as bad as the cars up here in the northeast. You really only need a handful of tools for the install, so take a look at it yourself before you go spend the money at Midas.

 

as we already persuaded armani to do his himself, u should def consider it.

there a couple of how to's out there, ex: vqpower.com
get a friend that has a lot of tools to help u

for the cat bolts, u can either cut them or try to blow torch them which i did.
just get new bolts and nuts for the cat and u can reuse the ones on the y-pipe

 

Man everybody talks about a y-pipe like it's a click-out-click-in install. My car did come from Ohio, too. It was manufactured in May 1997 according to the carfax report, I think. I got it in January 2001. So I'm guessing the previous owner had it in Ohio for three to three and a half years before the place I bought it from got it. How much salt rusting can be done in 3 or 3.5 years? Well, a piece of the heat shield did come off like a couple of years ago. But that was no big deal. What kind of tools might I need? I don't have a jack worth jack and I have like no tools. The independent people are looking kinda good, now. There is this guy in Birmingham, AL that I trust. He's very neat with your car. Does good work and doesn't even leave oil handprints on the arctic white paint job. I'll just run over there I guess. Thanks for the help, though. I guess I should delete this thread now since it is duplicitous and redundant.

 

how is a y pipe illega?

 

I think he is referring to the issue with people removing the pre cats that are part of the stock Y pipe? Not really sure why people say that it is illegal. If it was a legality issue i'm sure that everyone would be making y pipes just like the oem ones.

 

I got mine installed at Merlin Mufflers, which is a chain up here like Midas. (Don't know if you have them or not)

I think it cost me 50 bucks or so.

I could have done it myself, but I got the pipe in the middle of the week and I wanted it before the weekend (it's that whole 'instant gratification' thing) so I stopped by on my way to work and they installed it in about 30 minutes.

I'm glad I didn't do mine. The rust on the exhaust after 6 winters up here and 200,000 miles was pretty bad. They had to torch the Cat bolts off.

 

I was glad to pay the $60 cash at my local muffler shop after I watched them b***CH & curse trying to get the rusted bolts off torching them. Just my 2 cents

 

Okay so I'm looking at maybe 150 bucks for the y-pipe if I can get one off ebay and then another 50 to 100 bucks for the install. Then I want to get some shocks and springs. I keep seeing the name Tockico. How much do these things run?

 

Best price ever so far on Tokico Illumina's was on the group deal $408 shipped

 

.........

 

408 shipped?!?!? are you sure about that?!

 

Like someone already said... just get em to torch the bolts and nuts off and replace the ones that are overly rusted and then do the rest yourself. I had a Meineke do that for me for $30 and it made my y-pipe install much easier. And yeah, they would've refused to do the y-pipe install because y-pipes are not street legal.

 

Got them myself, I believe the distributor was performance peddler