Demon Bolts
 

Hey guys. I just ordered my Berk CBE and HFC. My car has about 24k miles on it. I also have the Stillen Gen3 intake. How hard is it going to be for me to get these bolts off? I will have a breaker bar and sockets. Also, when installing all the new bolts, do they need to be torqued?

Soak the bolts on the exhaust system overnight with some pb blaster. Use a 6 point socket. DON'T use a 12 point. Also have a person underneath the car to hold on to the socket while you try to break the bolt loose from above the engine bay so you don't strip the bolt.

It would be nice to torque the bolts on so they dont fall off.

The bolts probably do have a tq setting but I dont know what they are. I had my local performance shop do my Test Pipes because of all the crap I heard about how hard they where to come off. They took the bolts off from the top of the car using a bunch of extensions reaching into the engine bay down to the bolts.

How hard is it to connect the HFC? One would think pretty tough since it's so hard to remove the old ones.

I just installed FI non resonated test pipes a week ago. About 20-30'' worth of extensions are good enough. you can rent a breaker bar from autozone that's pretty solid. There are 2 bolts you need to remove from the engine bay, You dont need to completely take off the g3 intakes, you need to take off the 3 point strut and just the top tubes so just loosen the clamps and pop those out and put it on the engine cover. The passenger side bolt is very easy, the driver side however, is difficult due to the steering column. A 1/2 drive extension will not fit, use 3/8th extensions and make sure its long enough to give you room to break that bolt's torque. A universal adapter is a lifesaver but I broke mine trying to get the driver side bolt out. As for the rest of the bolts, since i didnt have a universal adapter anymore i had to jimmy 2 wrenches together to get them out. Taking out the bolts is easy just time consuming. PB blast it overnight, it kinda helps to soak tissue or toilet paper with PB and smudge it onto the 4 bolts under the car so it can continuously soak the bolt overnight. Also, becareful w/ the o2 sensors :P I was lucky enough to not strip any of the bolts. Have fun and good luck :D

Make sure you have the socket sitting flush w the bolt so you dont strip it either. Use a 6 POINT SOCKET not a 12 point socket

Thanks for all of the advice guys!! I took a look under the hood tonight and can see why it gives everyone so much trouble...they are way down in there. Fortunately my friend has a breaker bar and I have my ratchet set. Like you said...just take our time and I'm sure it will be fine!

Spray PB overnight
Remove upper half of intakes therefore you WON'T have to use a swivel. It's a straight shot
30-32'' worth of extensions (hopefully only two)
6 point ''impact'' socket a must IMO
2' breaker bar

As long as it's seated should break loose. Went smooth for me but my car was brand new and I think that can play a factor over older models

^ Agreed completely with Spohn. I soaked one bolt with PB blaster and did nothing with the other. I then started the car for 10-20 seconds to get the bolts slightly warm. The one with the PB blaster came off nice and cleanly. The one I didn't? I sheared the stud off completely.

I used all 1/2" impact extensions, a 6 PT impact socket, and a 3' breaker bar. I also did not remove any of the intake, I only had to loosen the driver's side slightly to squeeze the socket and extensions through.

I did this all on the garage floor and it took me about 4 hours with little mechanical experience. Installing the new cats is soooo much easier, you will be using all new bolts which makes future removal much easier as well.

I'll be going out today to pick up some PB blaster. I plan on doing this install next weekend so I can soak the bolts Thursday overnight, drive it to and from work on Friday (hopefully the heat will help) and then soak the bolts again Friday when I get home before I pull off the exhaust later on at night when everything's cooled down. We'll see how it goes...

Good post! I have my Berk HFC and CBE coming next week as well. I have the tools all set, just need to find time away from my 2 year old to get the job done.

Joshs09slvrZ post back when you're finished your install. Let us know how well it went.

Lol...it's like we have the same setup...Berk HFC and CBE on a silver Z lol. I'll definitely post some updates. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's going to go smoothly.

Took me 2.5 hours with hardly any mechanical experience at all. Only soaked the bolts for 20min or so and my mission was to just snap the bolts without attempting to waste time and effort removing them. It went very quickly. The hardest part was getting the sockets onto the bolt on the drivers side. I broke a 3/8" swivel on the drivers side. The 1/2" worked great.

^ that's one reason I recommend against the swivel (reguardless of size) especially when it's not really needed. It flexes causing you to lose torque along with trying to apply force at a angle that can cause the socket not to stay on evenly.

Imagine trying to take a lug nut off at an angle.

anyone got a pic of these demon bolts?

Is there anyway to get at these bolts from underneath or is it necessary to go in from the hood?

Yes you have to go under the hood. But I have heard of people going threw the fender (at least on the drivers side) to have there torched off due to the bolt being stripped.

Hmm...I have a Dremmel...I wonder if I could just cut the damn thing off lol.

I wouldn't... I would keep soaking them all in pb blaster. The bolt is at an angle that is perfect to reach with 30" of extensions just put your socket set-up on the bolt and make sure it's at that same angle. I actually removed the strut tower brace, the post maf tubes and that really gives you a lot more room to see the bolt easily.

^ correct

Sounds like a game plan to me!

Not to raise a dead thread but I am going to tackle this job sometime this morning. Any last words of advice?? I have all the necessary tools to do the job but was just wondering if there were any more tips or tricks I could apply.

PB blast the bolts for a bit if you can, use a 6 point socket set and try to not strip the bolts. Remove the CAI for better access and good luck! Yer gonna need it!!! :happydance::driving::eekdance::nutswinger::owned:

PB Blast the car now for tomorrow. Remove intakes. No reason at all you should need a swivel. Makes it that much worse. It's a straight shot. Six point socket (hopefully impact socket) and a two foot breaker bar helps a lot.

Got the bastards! Used Liquid Wrench instead of PB and the came off without a problem. Barely a creak out of the drivers side and the passenger side came off even easier. Slow and steady pressure was key here! :ughdance:

This was a new car with 1200 miles so I am sure that helped as people have said.

Could not figure out a way to fit my impact socket on the drivers side. Ended up using 1/2 universal and socket. Thanks for the advice guys. Couldn't have done this job without this forum!!

been a while since a clean success story was posted lol.

^This guy mentions using new bolts. I bought my HFCs used and the guy didn't give me any bolts. Is it necessary to use new ones and, if so, where can I buy them from?

Same situation I had, if you know the sizes you can just goto home depot and buy them. I was told by the company that made my hfcs some mixed (and wrong) info...basically theres one stud attached to the header side, so you'll at least need two new bolts n nuts per side.

OEM hardware could work but thats provided nothing breaks during removal

Never worked on an exhaust before or really any car before, and I had a clean run :) thanks to all the past failures lol and knowledge here.


what i did:

jack up car. spray bolts with PB Blaster. drive car around to heat up exhaust again. jack up car. spray bolt before using a 6 point deep impact socket and breaker bar. tighten bolt first to get it moving. go the other way and losen/remove bolt.

for the two bolts that had to be removed through the engine bay I used a breaker bar and only impact extensions, most of them were swivel extensions. didn't have to remove the Z1 post MAF tubes. for these bolts i placed the impact socket on the bolt first and from under the car and then had someone feed me the extensions so i knew it was flush and wouldn't strip and pressed into the breaker bar with one hand so it stayed flush as i was turning the breaker bar.

used so much force on the top two bolts that i fell once they loosened and wasn't sure what happened at first.

success, no broken bolts and a clean install thanks to the forum members here.