Someone welded my downpipe to the "Test Pipe"

[nullrout]

The title pretty much says it all...I went to take my downpipe out to take it to an exhaust shop to have them weld in an O2 Sensor bung to be able to tune with a wideband and lo-and-behold I found that the a$$hole that hung my exhaust took it upon himself to weld (not just tack weld, but weld the entire diameter of the pipe) the friggin downpipe to my test pipe. I cannot express how pissed off I was when i took the band clamp off and discovered this!

I'm looking for advise here...I hate to spend money needlessly but I'm thinking instead of driving it to a shop and having them weld in the bung that I might be better off to cut my losses and buy a new downpipe and test pipe. I was thinking I would check out my wastegate puck to exhaust housing fit and do a little porting while I was at it and certainly won't be able to do that with the downpipe welded solid like it is now.

I'm guessing that it will not be possible to cleanly cut the weld and have either the downpipe or test pipe usable afterwords right?

 

[dsapper]

I had to weld mine too for the crossmember I was using for the new trans. You can still pull it out of the car with the test pipe and down pipe welded. I dont think its an issue unless you want to use a different downpipe, just one less spot to leak.

For mine I'd have to pull it out from up top out of the engine compartment and slide it forward with someone else on the bottom guiding it though. 10 minute job at most and my text pipe has a bend in it, so a straight one should come right out

 

[nullrout]

Your test pipe has the 4 bolt oval flange attached to it?

 

[dsapper]

Yes.