Starting from the top. Remove the engine cover. Disconnect MAF and remove intake.
Remove the intake pipe. There’s a torx screw and clamp.
Set the pipe off to the side.
Remove heat shield. This is annoying because 2 of the bolts are pretty tucked away. There’s room to wrench but awkward angles for your hands. 10mm for the nuts, 13mm for the small bolts, 18mm for the big ones. There, now you don’t have to guess while blindly trying to find them.
Lower right is the hardest one. You can barely see it in this pic. I opted to not put it back in after dropping the bolt a few times.
Where your wrench needs to be to hit the above bolt.
Dunno why there needs to be 2 nuts and 4 bolts on this thing.
Unplug and then remove the o2 sensor. Mine came right out with some soaking. 22mm o2 socket. The manual says to do this before the heat shield, but I found it too awkward with the heat shield in the way.
Remove the 2 top and 1 bottom turbo nuts. The other top one is tucked into the manifold, but not hard to get to. We’ll get the last one from underneath.
Done on top. Jack up the car as high as you can go and remove the splash guard. I measured 16” from floor to frame rail.
Remove the 3 driveshaft bolts. You may need to turn the driveshaft a bit to get them all. Put it in neutral and spin both front wheels at the same time to move the driveshaft. I was able to get 2 out in one go and then spun it a bit to get the last one. Make sure you mark it so it goes back indexed to the same orientation.
10mm 12pt socket on a big wobble extension.
Loosen the driveshaft carrier. It the big 2 bolts in the heat shield. Do not remove them because you want to keep the driveshaft supported. This will give you some play to pull it out straight.
Remove the 2 pendulum mount bolts. These are torque to yield so you should replace them.
Now the engine/trans is free to be moved a bit. This will help removing the driveshaft. Pry the engine towards the front and hold it in place with some wood. Then pull straight back on the driveshaft until it’s clear. Move it as far out of the way as you can.
Remove the last downpipe bolt. It’s tucked away pretty good but not bad once you get a wrench on it.
Remove the tunnel brace and hanger bracket bolts.
Unplug and remove the rear o2 sensor. The connector is in this little box. Unbolt part of the heat shield to get to the wire. I couldn’t get mine out so left it in and dealt with it outside the car. More on that later.
Remove the exhaust clamp nuts and slide it forward onto the downpipe until it’s free. I had to use a grip-it socket on mine because they crumbled apart. You should just replace the clamp anyways, it’s $10-15.
Wiggle the pipe off the turbo studs. Now that its free, rotate counter clockwise and slide it out. This maybe took 30 seconds or so.
Even with heat, the sensor stripped and i ended up resorting to this. Went inside to grab another beer and order a new sensor, then back to work.
Mocked up dp sections. It’s easy to tell how it’s supposed to go, just look at the o2 bungs.
I bolted the cat section to the turbo section, and resonator section to the adapter piece on the workbench, then connected the 2 sections together under the car.
Install the new gasket on the turbo and slide the pipe on the studs. Put anti seize on the studs and nuts - 42DD included a packet. You can reach 3 nuts from the bottom and all 4 from the top now, take your pick on how you want to tighten them. Do it gradually in a star pattern. Here are the torque specs for the exhaust.
Don’t worry if the pipe looks like it doesn’t fit right. Remember that the engine is tilted. This will fix itself later. Install the new hanger bracket and tunnel brace, but leave the bolts that attach to the dp loose for now.
Install the next section. I spread some anti seize inside the clamp too. Leave it loose for now.
Line up the driveshaft with transmission and remove the wood block. Now you can slide the driveshaft on straight. Be careful not to damage the seal inside the shaft. Torque the driveshaft bolts, then the driveshaft carrier. Now the driveshaft is secured.
Line up and install the pendulum mount bolts.
Take a look at the exhaust pipe from both sides and make sure it all fits right. This is why you want to leave it a little loose until the engine/trans is back in place. Mine fit perfect with no adjustments. Tighten the rear clamp and exhaust hanger.
Install and secure the rear o2 sensor. Use anti seize. Torque to 30lb-ft. Recheck everything and then install the splash guard.
Lower the car, the bottom stuff is all done. Install the top o2 sensor with anti seize. Install the heat shield.
Reassemble the intake pipe and intake. Done! Start it up and check for leaks.
Sound is deeper than stock at idle, and quiet with low load or below 3k rpm. It really opens up above that. Glad I went with the cat and resonator - didn’t want to be confused with my dick neighbor who has a straight piped riced scion that he loves to rev.
Overall awesome mod. Nice DSG farts and aggressive sound when on the gas, but you wouldn’t know it was modified otherwise.
The car is APR stg 1 right now - apparently their stg 1 and stg 2 files are the same except for disabling emissions for stg 2 test pipes, so I should be getting some power/torque gains without retuning. I guess they stopped offering the dp only stg 2 at some point and now skip right to dp+hpfp required stg 2+ file. Despite not having the emissions disabled, I haven’t gotten a check engine light yet with the sport cat. I honestly can’t tell if it’s actually faster or just sounds faster. TBD on that one.
The install went smoothly minus having to wait a few days for a new rear sensor. I can see how seized sensors or downpipe nuts would make it a pain, though. Think it took about 5 hours with a few large breaks.
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