Fitting Sportex exhausts on Essex V6 Capri
Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2018 10:57 pm
Hi all,
Having just spent 2 day's fitting Sportex exhausts to my car I thought I would share my experience in case anyone else is contemplating taking this job on.
Unless you have access to a ramp then you will need 4 axle stands (2 front and 2 back) for the clearance and for your personal safety - you are going to be spending a lot of time under the car and you will need as much room for manoeuvre as possible.
I started by cutting off the old exhausts with an angle grinder, I didn't even attempt to separate the old piece's of exhaust as they looked like they had been on the car forever, but the grinder made short work of them, removing the exhaust support brackets from their rubber mountain points is a pain in the arse.
With the old exhausts or what's left of them now off the car it was time to put the new pipes on, the Sportex kit for my model contains 2 rear boxes, 2 centre boxes, 2 middle pipes, 2 centre box support brackets and 2 connectors/adaptors to connect the Sportex pipes to standard Essex manifolds, I started by putting the back boxes on first as they have very little if any adjustment so I thought they would make a good starting point in getting everything square, the rear boxes have brackets welded to them which hook up to the mountain points on the car via the standard 'figure of 8' mountain rubber, however, it soon became apparent that the fixed brackets on the boxes are woefully to short and if used with the standard rubbers the pipes will jam up against the rear valence, luckily I had some spare universal mountain rubbers which are bigger in height and this allowed me to fit the boxes and get the required clearance from the valence.
The next issue was with the centre box support brackets that are supplied with the kit - they simply do not fit 3.0 or 2.8 cars as the supplied brackets are wider than the floor brackets on the car which means the mountain rubbers do not line up and will not push all the way on and under normal use will keep popping off, for some reason the floor bracket on the 4 cylinder model's, for which these brackets were obviously designed for, is wider than those of the 6 cylinder cars, my car used to be a 1.6 laser so the passenger side bracket does match, for the drivers side I have just pushed the rubbers on as best as I can until I can source a 4 cylinder floor bracket to replace the current 6 cylinder bracket.
So to sum up, the rest of the exhaust piece's went together well and the sound is really nice but your going to have to work for it especially if your working on your own laying on the floor, the sound of the pipes is much better than that of the Peter Lloyd pipes that came off although to be honest the Sportex pipes look almost identical to the Peter Lloyd's to me....perhaps made by the same people...who knows, who cares, I'm going for a beer or two...
Wayne
Having just spent 2 day's fitting Sportex exhausts to my car I thought I would share my experience in case anyone else is contemplating taking this job on.
Unless you have access to a ramp then you will need 4 axle stands (2 front and 2 back) for the clearance and for your personal safety - you are going to be spending a lot of time under the car and you will need as much room for manoeuvre as possible.
I started by cutting off the old exhausts with an angle grinder, I didn't even attempt to separate the old piece's of exhaust as they looked like they had been on the car forever, but the grinder made short work of them, removing the exhaust support brackets from their rubber mountain points is a pain in the arse.
With the old exhausts or what's left of them now off the car it was time to put the new pipes on, the Sportex kit for my model contains 2 rear boxes, 2 centre boxes, 2 middle pipes, 2 centre box support brackets and 2 connectors/adaptors to connect the Sportex pipes to standard Essex manifolds, I started by putting the back boxes on first as they have very little if any adjustment so I thought they would make a good starting point in getting everything square, the rear boxes have brackets welded to them which hook up to the mountain points on the car via the standard 'figure of 8' mountain rubber, however, it soon became apparent that the fixed brackets on the boxes are woefully to short and if used with the standard rubbers the pipes will jam up against the rear valence, luckily I had some spare universal mountain rubbers which are bigger in height and this allowed me to fit the boxes and get the required clearance from the valence.
The next issue was with the centre box support brackets that are supplied with the kit - they simply do not fit 3.0 or 2.8 cars as the supplied brackets are wider than the floor brackets on the car which means the mountain rubbers do not line up and will not push all the way on and under normal use will keep popping off, for some reason the floor bracket on the 4 cylinder model's, for which these brackets were obviously designed for, is wider than those of the 6 cylinder cars, my car used to be a 1.6 laser so the passenger side bracket does match, for the drivers side I have just pushed the rubbers on as best as I can until I can source a 4 cylinder floor bracket to replace the current 6 cylinder bracket.
So to sum up, the rest of the exhaust piece's went together well and the sound is really nice but your going to have to work for it especially if your working on your own laying on the floor, the sound of the pipes is much better than that of the Peter Lloyd pipes that came off although to be honest the Sportex pipes look almost identical to the Peter Lloyd's to me....perhaps made by the same people...who knows, who cares, I'm going for a beer or two...
Wayne