Evofusion's header works very well but it's not a direct bolt on. Here is what it took to get it done for me.
The Evofusion header as recieved by me (header gasket not shown):
Here's what I had underhood to work with:
- Remove manifold heat shield
- unhook precat O2 sensor plug and/or remove O2 sensor
- remove after-cat O2 sensor from exhaust piping
- unbolt the exhaust in front of the stock resonator
- unbolt the exhaust at the bottom of exhaust manifold and exhaust bracket from engine block
- remove manifold nuts and washers, be sure to keep them
- remove power steering pump & bracket from engine and pull aside
- loosen and pull aside radiator fan(s)
- loosen rear portion of skid plate
- remove stock manifold with cat and midpipe from vehicle
Now your engine compartment should look about like this:
And all of this should be removed from the vehicle, with the possible exception of the O2 sensor. Our precat O2 sensor was not removable and I had to buy a new one for $107 after tax.
The header has to come up from the bottom and if you have A/C the passenger's side fan needs to be pulled completely out of the way but the driver's side fan only needs to be unbolted and shoved over as far as it can go. It's a fairly tight fit, and needs to come up as shown, passenger's side first.
Now you should be able to:
- bolt the header to the engine
- bolt the midpipe to the header
- install precat and after-cat O2 sensors
- reinstall power steering pump, fans, and skid plate
And now it should look like this under your hood:
You still have an issue though...connecting to the stock exhaust. I don't know how it works if you buy the catback and install that at the same time, but this product does not bolt up to the stock exhaust. You can get one bolt in (if you buy bolts, the stock midpipe had studs and the Evofusion one does not) and you'll be able to drive that way to an exhaust shop. 3/8" x 1.5" bolts work well. The stock exhaust is almost small enough to fit in the Evofusion midpipe flange and all.
You can see the problem here, one bolt is in place in the picture and you can see into the midpipe:
I know local laws may vary, but here in Washington State it is illegal for an exhaust shop to do work on a car that has had the cat removed. Due to the size difference in the pipe, difficulty locating a flange compatible with the flange on Evofusion's header, and a tight schedule I did not attempt to mate the two together myself. This meant I had to pay $280 for a new compact high flow cat that would fit in fromt of the after cat O2 sensor and behind the flex pipe. Total bill from the exhaust shop was $357.
1.6l DOHC Evofusion header install
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