I've been working on the exhaust the past couple of days and unfortunately things have not gone smoothly for me. One of the threaded studs that hold up the first cat just sheared off! So that has set me back an entire week while I wait for the right tools to get here so I can drill it out and re-tap the hole.

I should explain the preparation that I had to do in case anyone in the future would like to do the same thing, that is replace an entire exhaust without ever having done one before... The first thing I did was paint the welds on the muffler with high-temp paint as was suggested by Buckaroo. The tail pipe actually came from the factory with the weld on the flange already painted, so since I had an entire can of this paint I decided to paint all the welds on all the pieces, after masking off the inlets, outlets, and O2 sensor holes. On my old exhaust the flange welds is actually where all of the leaks were. Speaking of the O2 sensors, in both of the catalytic converters the threads in the hole and on the studs had some weld splatter stuck in them which would have made it impossible to install the sensors. Fortunately, specific O2 sensor thread chasers are available and inexpensive and cleaned the holes right up. As for the studs I used a crappy nut I had laying around and used that to clean the thread, which might not have been the best idea but it worked out for me (in my case, the front O2 sensor is attached via the studs while the rear sensor is screwed directly into the hole). After that it was all ready to be put on. Well, it would be if that bolt didn't break.