KevinD ftw!, hey kevin are you going to be free later today? cause i'm going to by in arlington for a ticket and i'm going to be around your area. So you can check if i had any knock and stuff.

 

sure, can do. when are you gonna be in arlington? i'm at work until at least 5...

 

after 5 is fine, gotta get there b4 it closes. so yea

 

first thing you need to know is if you need the lead donut connecting the downpipe to the o2 housing. some exhausts need it, others like the buschur don't. you can reuse the stock lead donut if you need it, provided it isn't to deteriorated. next, you need a gasket between the downpipe and the cat... and after the cat to the straight pipe... another between that and the axle pipe, and the last one between the axle pipe and the muffler. so a total of 4. i would go without any gasket at all before i put high temp silicon in. you can get a pretty good seal without a gasket... if you want to put the system in, i would just suck it up and go to alamo and get the gaskets if they are close and have them in stock. i buy stuff from alamo all the time, brice is by no means charismatic, but he is local and he does have many hard to find parts. hes gone pretty far to help me out in the past, so he's a good guy to have on your side. i for one will go to alamo for parts when i need them. as far as alamo work goes, i can't comment as i do all my own work. i will tell you that quite a bit of the work/customers i do is because of inadequate work from alamo though. guess thats what you get when you hire people who aren't as careful as they should be.

 

YA if you were the customer I would ask you which exhaust and look online and thats! it! problem solved, UNLESS they dont have internet.

 

i have a few greddy 3" gaskets new in packaging. they are the ones with the steel ring in the center. let me gather them up tomorrow and i'll let you know how many i have. there is a chance that their bolt holes won't line up though. i'll also post the distance between bolt holes. got a company function tonight or i'd get something sooner.

btw i've never had any issues with Brice or Alamo other than techs that were not the most pleasant, but they knew what they were doing. last few times i was there everyone was very personable, but that was probably a year or so ago.

 

aight guys...thanks..i really wanna install the exhaust asap but i think i will just suck it up and go back to alamo one of these days to buy those gaskets...i'll post again if i need any help. thanks!!!

 

Alamo has been a great help with parts/fluids. They do good work when they have good help and right now I haven't heard many bad experiences. My neighbor had quite a bit of work done there a few months ago and everything went smoothly.

 

That freaking sucks!! I saw your car up there a couple of times over the summer I believe. At the time I was running the white rabbit with meth but looking to upgrade and thought about giving those guys a try after meeting with them and seeing their shop. I went up there a total of two times once in June when I was home for leave and the other back in September. Both times they showed me the work they did on your car which looked pretty good from the outside. I went with Alamo though because of price. Sorry to hear about your motor man!

 

i don't know why everyone has had bad experiences with them when i got my clutch installed they accidently touched my ignition onto one of my oil lines and the car was literally smoking i took it back and they worked on it for 3 hr.s after they closed and the apologized for it , ever since then i've gone back there for misc. parts oil, my greddy ti, dc down pipe, and the owner brice has been an awesome guy to deal with hunting down the dp for me and giving me a good price on the greddy way lower than i've seen from vendors, sorry you guys have had bad experiences with them but not me

 

Thanks for clearing that up, Kevin.

I would be surprised if rings were the only parts damaged...it's hard to see how the factory pistons would live through abuse like that that. Although if the runs were brief and high knock/EGT not sustained, perhaps you were fortunate. But I agree with you John that it's best to do it right while you have it in there. If you have a slightly cracked piston, for example, trouble could ensue from stresses at a later time.

And Jotech certainly enjoys a good reputation as far as I know. Brett also had a great experience there. They are one of the few real race shops...

 

Yup, I will certainly vouch for them any day of the week.

-Brett

 

I've been to Alamo a couple of times. I used to have a VW and got a few parts for it from Alamo and picked up some brake pads for the EVO about a year ago. They were really nice to me and gave me the pads at an awesome price. Maybe the guy you dealt with was on his period or something, who knows. I'm trying to find some rear pads again so if you guys are trying to get rid of some give me a shout. I'm in Duncanville now so I might have to run to ALAMO.