9/1/2003: Removing the exhaust
I put the car up on jack stands (eep) and removed the exhaust tonight. Since the pipes seem to be in reasonable condition, I did try to avoid cutting it when I removed it, but it was necessary to make one cut- the entire exhaust, from behind the axle to the header connection, is all one piece. There was just no way I could maneuver this to get it over the axle. I’m not sure how my dad ever installed it :) It might be possible if I lifted the car by the body rather than with axle stands, but I am not willing to do that at this point, since I don’t have any jacking points I trust.
Anyway, the exhaust is out now. I’ll set it aside and decide whether to reuse any of it down the road. At the least, I will need a new header pipe made up for it, since the old one was jury-rigged with that “flexible pipe” stuff. It fell apart readily. (The stock exhaust for these cars is a single pipe at this point, but the aftermarket exhaust that is presently in the car has two pipes at that point, merging them instead at the first muffler- so it looks like the front pipe was cut before the merge, and then connected to the rest of the exhaust with flexible pipes)