I've been reading threads and looking through my haynes manual trying to figure out if I'm missing anything getting ready to put the Racing Beat exhaust system on my 85 GS. I've also looked through the FSM and the only thing I'm confused about is the air pump and the valve system just under the carb on the intake manifold ( air control valve?? ) and if I'm going to have to cap something there or pull it off and put a block off plate like I've seen in some other pictures on here. My brother has allowed me the use of his garage and help tonight to get this done but I'm finding it difficult to find specific guides for the exhaust. I'm hoping it is as straight forward as it seems.

 

i just installed mine not to long ago..i just pulled the pipe..you can cap it off if you like..but remember just to make it easy..so that you can pop the stock stuff back on for smog check..what took me a long time..was all the exhaust shroud i had to take off jsut to get to everything...that and the bolts might take a while to take off..make sure you have some brand new gaskets to pop back on...the header, presilcer and muffler..

 

I started on mine today and damn near every bolt on the shroud snapped off! What a pain! Are you guys going with a RB carb setup as well?

 

i will eventually..with money...yah...well..what's funny..is it took for ever for me to separate the cat and the stock pipe....well.now i just need to buy a muffler..but am also having a hard time breaking the stock pipe from the muffler...i have an exhaust leak and check replace it bc..the bolts wont come off

 

Thanks for the info. As far as the RB intake setup goes, i won't be doing that anytime soon. I got another stock carb and intake set for $40 that I'm going to strip and rebuild, to put on when I pull the rats nest. I don't have to contend with smog checks up here and the car is far from being a daily driver anymore. Its just gonna be the fun car when my wife and I can get out w/o the kids (almost never) and when the local car show comes around every year. Gotta educate on them rotaries. Mostly I just love driving it when I can.

 

Yea its a pretty simple and strait forward install.

 

Thanks again everybody, I got it all changed out last night, and it is pretty straight forward. It took me about 3 hours total to get the old off and the new on. getting the new stuff on was only about the last 40 minutes. I've never tried anything of this scale on a vehicle before so I was pretty pleased when it still started after I finished.

I will say though the heat shield and skid shield bolts and nuts were crazy rusted and I had to find a punch to get them out of my sockets because they were soft enough they kept getting really stuck. Also using penetrating oil on all the bolts before getting going helps greatly as the first 6 or 8 bolts I tried to get at just snapped off, but the rest that had been sitting started getting easier to pull without breaking.

Is it just me or the passenger side nut behind the hanger plate that holds the connecting pipe to the main cat absolutely impossible to get a tool over to remove? I must of spent 30 minutes on just that one joint. Also it should be noted somewhere that to get the muffler pipe up over the axle to remove/install it the rear passenger side needs to be up in the air a significant amount.

Really worth the time and money though. When I was pulling the pre-cats the leading one was riddled with small rust holes. and the main cat had obviously been replaced at some point the welds were terrible and it was destroyed inside. The top of the main cat actually had TOP stamped in huge letters on it. And my muffler was just a hollow tin can. It sounds so much deeper and probably half as loud now. It sounds soooooo much better. And I'm pretty sure the collapsed cats etc were really robbing performance. When I pulled out of the alley onto the street I let the clutch out the same way I always do and it cut loose on the gravel fishtail the rear out onto the pavement and caught me a bit by surprise. After I got past the stop signs I let into a bit and it has way more obvious response getting on it. It also really smoothed out my idle, not perfect yet but 100 times better.

Damn didn't mean to write a book. Thanks again everybody.

 

any pics of the install??

 

ahh..my muffler bolts are stuck..i have a leak on the stock muffler..trying to put a new gasket, but i believe the bolts are 25 yr old. the exhaust leak is loud and the presilencer and header make it loud...i have tried rb buster....still won't budge...

 

liquid wrench should work

 

Muffler bolts? Like on the flange? Torch or grind them off, ok grinding would be better, less heat and no warpage then use new bolts when you put the new muffler back on

 

I had to cut off the bolts with a die grinder. Liquid wrench, PB blaster, none of that even phased them,lol.

 

dido on that !!

also remember when getting there to keep the agression to a minimum ... alot can break when you get flustered !!

 

It was a nice day out today, so I got mine all torn apart, rats nest gone, exhaust gone, manifold and carb gone. Tommorow I'll put it back together!

 

I do have a few in progress shots I don't have any completed shots yet, I'll get those in the morning. The car has been running maybe a total of 30 minutes since I put it on and the header already has a nice orange heat discoloration to it. Pretty fun learning all the little quirks to this car/ obsession. I'll get some pics on here later tonight or tomorrow. I have them stored on my other PC and can't get them at the moment. I used WD-40 at first then switched to Seafoam Deep Creep or whatever its called and that seemed to work much better for getting the bolts loose.

 

Ok so here are a few shots I took while swapping the exhaust. I did clean up around the exhaust ports in as much area as the gasket covered so that it would be flush but you can see how much cruddy oil buildup there is on there. Going to be getting that all cleaned up and getting the front plate and the oil pan resealed as one of my next projects, because it all apears to be coming from those 2 locations. All but one of the manifold shield bolts broke. Plus all of the cat shield bolts broke.

 

Here I shot of the pulled Exhaust and some after shots. Sorry I didn't get more progress shots, but I got so involved in what I was doing I forgot to grab the camera.

 

Looks awesome congrats.. I love my Rb exhaust, i have the SP exhaust and when i got the car it had a magnaflow on it and was incredibly loud.. once we put the Rb muffler on it was like a whole new car,.