This is true Steve. Although any monkey with a wire-fed welder should be able to set you up with a decent 3" exhaust. What I would do is ask around to see who does custom work if you supply all the parts. In otherwords, you buy the cat, muffler, resonator, tubing, flanges, O2 bungs, and gaskets that you want. Then you walk into your pre-determined muffler shop, hand the over the box of parts, plus $200, then point and say, "I want this stuff to go from here to here, up of over this, jig right here, angle left there and I'll be back in 2 hours."
On a greasier note, my fucking VC (I think it's the VC) is
still leaking. Ref the pictures below, I'm getting a little pool of oil right around my coolant sensor and I don't know why. I shot it with Simple Green when I got home to clean it up and have a looksee. As you can see in the pics, there's plenty 'o RTV there to make sure nothing comes out between the VC gasket and the head.
The only place I can think that it might be coming from is that rocker end cap bolt closest to the front of the car, that you can see with the VC still on the head. That's the one I had to have drilled out and re-tapped. When they did it, they made the hole bigger and I think I may be getting oil shooting up that and coming down on top of the water neck. I don't know. I'm about out of ideas.
I've checked the bolts on the water neck, EGR valve, and have replaced the VC gasket twice. I've also checked and RTV'd that plastic plug that covers where a dizzy would go on a D16.
The good news is that I'm chasing the leaks to the top of my engine. My headgasket doesn't leak any more, so the leak gremlin has moved up a level to the valve cover. After I fix the valve, I think the next leak will be either the oil cap or dipstick. Frustrating.
I'd welcome anyone's ideas.
This is a leak gremlin. If you see one, step on it.
