Rep Power: 278

I thought I knew how to work on a car well. I've had enough experience with engine swaps, rebuilds, and other stuff. So I figured I could add a few extra things to my nice new pretty civic. When installing my cat-back I stripped two of the bolts on the catalytic converter. I tried using a tap and die kit on it. It just made the bolts worse. So now I have only one bolt holding my exhaust pipe to the cat and it sounds like shtuff. I figured why stop there, I went and put a injen cai in, sure enough I confused lefty loosey with righty tighty and stripped a bolt on the inside . I cant get it out worth a $%#, and my cai is loosely hanging and tapping against my wheel well. It sounds fine when I'm blaring down a highway, but you don't want to be in my car when I idle, ugh.

 
Rep Power: 469

gj

 
Rep Power: 0

That's funny, I installed a CAI, then swapped to an SRI, then installed a catback... then removed all of it, all without incident. And I don't know anything about cars!

 
Rep Power: 0

you have the same problem that I have with stripping screws. Somehow I striped one of the screws holding the rear struts when I was trying to install a rear strut bar, and messed the threads up when trying to remove my strut bar to do some cleaning. The die/cast kit worked well on all though so I got lucky.

 
Rep Power: 0

No offence here, but how did you get away with engine swaps and re-builds if you don't know which way to turn the bolt to loosen? (kidding ) I know sometimes I would get confused if I was working on something upside down, but you really had to give it hell to strip or break the bolt. I used to hate drilling out broke off bolts and re-tapping them, it can be a real bitch, good luck.

 
Rep Power: 278

Thanks, I appreciate the luck. Meinike offered to weld the exhaust to the cat but instead I just bought a hi-flow cat. Might as well since I'm trying to squeeze out horsepower.

 
Rep Power: 366

^better squeeze harder than that...