halo13
03-27-2007, 10:21 AM
Well I finally installed my trubo back AFE exhuast system this past weekend and I thought I would share my experience. Started out by taking out the old system which took like 10 minutes and then put in the new system piece by piece. The turb pipe fit good, no problems there and the mid pipe where the cat is on most trucks went good, had to cut off 10" for my extended cab though. Then the muffler and the over the axle pipe. Next I took the three clamps that have the hanger bars welded on them (which I think is crap, the hangers should be welded to the pipes or something a little more stable). so I pretty much have the whole thing under the truck and hanging loosely in about 30 minutes. For the next 3 hours I have to twist and jack up the entire system so it doesn't hang down 8 inches below the truck, and while I have the system in such a good bind, I have someone else tightening the clamps so that nothing will move during tightening. This really sucked, it should have been a one person job, no problem, except for the stupid hanger/clamp (dual purpose crap) they use in this kit. So after all that I have everything connected real good and no leaks and nothing hanging way down below the truck. So now I move on to the last two pipes, the over the axle pipe and the turn out pipe. no matter which direction I spin it, the turnout is like 56" off the ground and no where near the bottom of the fender. It doesn't really look that great. Then on top of all this, a u-bolt broke off of the clamp and I was only tightening it to the 30-40 lb-ft it says too. (Nice cheap crappy u-bolts). Oh and incase anyone didn't know, the AFE kit is just a magnaflow muffler (probably the magnaflow system, someone might be able to verify this from my descriptions with their own magnaflow kit). I think that AFE just repackages the Magnaflow system. I think that I am going to cut the over axle pipe shorter and then re-install the turnout and hopefully this will fix the problem of hanging too low. The only other problem area is the pipe the goes under the cross memeber pipe at the rear of the cab. because of it being a 4" pipe it hangs down low as well and I have it just far enough away to not make contact with the cross member while driving around. Just though I would give everyone a heads up on this system and see if anyone else has had any similar problems. Let me know your thoughts and I want to know if anyone with my cab and bed configuration have had better luck with any other systems out there?