When I first received the kit I took out the side pipes and figured I'd better paint them before they got rusty. I didn't know how long it would be before I'd have a chance to use them. I brought them to my Dad's house and bead blasted them clean. I then used some high heat primer on them. Then followed that up with a couple of coats of Rust-Oleum High Heat Ultra "Semi-Gloss" black paint. I don't know how well it will last, but figured I could easily touch it up later if I had to. Also wanted to go with black to match the black wheels.

I wanted to get the pipes on for the first start to see how loud it will be with these. I thought it might be tight fitting them on. I went to put the driver's side on and try to slide them on the header. Nope, wouldn't go. I jammed wood shims in the headers and a clamp on the muffler to bring the two pipes closer so they would fit. Nope. Ok, let me try one of the two pipes onto one of the header pipes. Nope, not even close. Time to start grinding, sanding, filing, dremeling, etc. At this point I didn't care about scratching anything, I just wanted to be able to slide the pipes on. Finally after a few hours of taking a little bit off at a time of both the outside of the header and the inside of the mufflers, I was able to slide the driver's side on. Put on the clamps and called it a night. The passenger side would wait until the next night.

Time for the passenger side. Looking at the two pipes of the muffler for the passenger side, I could see that the metal at the end was much thinner on one of the two pipes. That side would easily slide over the header. The other one was the same thickness as both of the driver side pipes. This needed grinding to fit on, but at least I was prepared for it this time. I ground away and was able to get this side on much easier. Put the clamps on and went to bed.

Back to the drivers side, the header was slightly touching the corner of the driver's foot box. To gain more clearance, I cut the footbox and bent it in. I still need to make the outside piece fit, and will get to this soon.

Here you can see the cut in the footbox that I needed to make (as well as the grass still on the tires from my first go kart) to provide clearance for the header. Since my foot could never get in that corner, it shouldn't really impact the room in the footbox.:




Here are a couple of pics of the passenger side of the car showing the black pipes and how the car sits now:




I didn't install the hangers yet and will wait to do this after the body is on.

-Matt