The other day I put the max up on jack stands and crawled on my back for about 30 minutes trying to get any of the bolts to budge to no avail. I even copied someones write up with pictures so I would be armed with as much knowledge as possible ( Nice pictures...but I couldn't distinguish the bolts to remove). I obviously didn't make it very far into the installation before I decided that this is going to be a beatch!

Has anyone else done this install with the car on jack stands? If so....you are more of a man than I could ever wish to be. Maybe if I had a air ratchet I could have got the bolts undone.

OK...Here is my question...if you paid someone to get this job done...how much? I asked my Nissan dealer just for the heck of it.....and they told me $160 bucks!!! I am thinking of taking it to a local muffler shop that has a lift and the appropriate tools to get the job done. I was thinking of 80-100 Dollars....what do you think? Please give me some advise.....I AM THINKING OF BLOWING THIS WHOLE THING OFF!!! If I could get some better directions on how to get the convertor off I might try to do it myself....AGAIN...I was just unsure of what bolts the picture was showing to be honest.

 

I did the install without removing the catalyst. I just took the bolts off of the heat shield and slid it towards the front. It was a little crammed, but just take your time and you can install it.

On another note, remove the shifter from inside the cabin before you try to push out the ball and bracket...it takes a lot of force to do so. I had to pry it out with a screwdriver. Adding a little grease to the rubber hlped it slide in easily...just hope that the grease won't destroy the rubber

If you have any questions...just drop me an e-mail. I just installed it last weekend. I didn't dent the heat shield or anything like that, obviously...but I didn't set the shifter too short either. I can hear it banging into the heatshield if I hit the shifter hard, but otherwise, no rattles and no other sounds...but lots of fun!

Good luck.

Green

 

Thanks for your advise....

I finally got it installed. I took the car to this muffler shop this morning. It took 30 minutes to do the install there. It was much easier to see what was going on under there with the car on a lift. I set my shifter to the shortest throw and instead of deating in the heat shield I used a marker and had the guy cut a big hole in it. My Nissan dealer was telling me that a shifter will START at $160 bucks......this guy did it and told me $20. I hooked him up with $40 and told him "Thanks for the help!"

I love the way it shifts now...but after looking at the linkage underneath I thought to myself......hmmmm "it would be pretty easy to make the linkage under there a little longer and move the shifter back in the center console a little bit. Here is my thought....put the shifter were the drink holders are at. How sweet would it be to have your arm on the arm rest and be able to shift from there? I will probably never do this.....but I think it could be done.