I've fitted an exhaust system before so I knew what to expect. The key is getting the car up high enough. It doesn't bear thinking about what would happen if the car fell whilst I was working underneath. Therefore axle stands were a must. I bought an extra pair for £10 at Halfords. I jacked the car up to maximum height and sat it on the four stands. This allowed enough space to crawl around underneath. It was hard work crawling around under there and left me with kneck ache. But it was sort of fun.

Getting the old system apart was the first headache. The back box took about 25 minutes of straining, hammering and wriggling to get off. The rest came apart pretty easily. Since the Jetex kit contained a replacement downpipe I removed the existing one. Unfortunately I sheared a bolt off at the join to the manifold. Thinking about doing things properly I decided to remove the manifold. This proved tricky since one nut was locked up and pretty rounded off. So I removed the plug leads and dismantled the oil breather pipe to get better access. After 20 mins with the blow torch and some graunching spanners I managed to shift it. When I removed the manifold the gasket fell into pieces. There was a missing nut and evidence of exhaust blow by. That would explain the blowing noise that had come been present for the last few months. The nut was missing because the previous owner had left a sheared off stud in place. I thought about trying to remove it. However, as luck would have it, I was planning on replacing the cylinder head in the near future. So I saved myself some effort and left things as they were.

Eventually I got the manifold and new downpipe back in. Fitting the centre sections and the back box was easy enough. The trouble began when trying to arrange the various sections in the optimum position. By twisting various bits it was possible to make the rear box parallel with the edge of the car, make it level, make the tail pipe clear the rear valance and make the clearance around the rear beam decent. But I couldn't produce all four things at once. It took me the best part of an hour and a half of adjustments to get things about right. It was worth spending the time because the other option was to get it a bit wrong and then jack the car back up later and fiddle around more. A disadvantage with a non-round tail pipe is that it has to be level or it looks wrong.

I started this job at 9pm thinking things would be easy but I didn't get things back together until around 2.30am. That was with a knackered exhaust manifold gasket refitted. Most of the delay was due to rounded and seized nuts.

The next day I went out and bought a new exhaust manifold gasket, new studs and nuts (from Vauxhall). I also replaced the missing bracket that holds the downpipe-exhaust connection. The previous owner had removed it for some reason.

The hard work payed off because when I lowered the car back down the rear pipe looked just right. The clearance around the rear beam was fine as well. No further adjustments were necessary.