Hi everyone. I recently installed some hooker 2055 and I’m really happy with them. I haven’t got to drive the car yet but they look, fit, and sound nice. Anyway I’ve moved on to my next project, installing a hooker cat back. The hooker is now in place but I haven’t welded, or clamped anything yet. Just kind of a loose fit to check my clearance. Anyway there seems to be enough clearance over the axel but the pipe is touching the pan hard bar. At least I think that’s what it is called, it part of the suspension. By moving things around a bit I can get anywhere between 1/2 – 1 inch of clearance. It looks like the bar will move and flex with the car so I’m not sure if the pipe is going to hit when the car hits some bumps. Any idea how much clearance I should have here? The picture shows where it is touching.

 

That bar should be stationary (going from memory here - been awhile since I've been under there). It's just a support bar for the panhard bar mount. All you'll need is enough clearance so you don't get rattle contact.

 

As five7kid stated, that support is stationary and doesn't/shouldn't move. But I think you should have a little more room than that though. I have a little more than 1/2 inch of room on mine and that's with a 4 inch exhaust. Anyways, you should be fine.

 

Have you driven the car yet? I installed the same catback on my 4th gen and ran into a problem with banging in the rear under bumps. Do you see in your pic where the muffler bracket has 2 bolt holes where it attatches to the hanger? The topmost portion of the muffler bracket was hitting against the metal case of the muffler hanger. I had to take a cutoff wheel to the muffler bracket and remove the top hole, and only use the second(lower) hole to attatch the muffler.

 

Oh, and if you still have a problem with it hitting the panhard bar, you can always buy an aftermarket panhard bar. They are a little smaller in diameter than the factory one, and might provide the clearance you need.

 

Well what I ended up doing was readjusting the passenger side bracket. You can see in the picture that the bracket has two bolts in it. I unbolted it and moved it up so that the bottom hole on the muffler went to the top hole on the bracket. Now it’s only using one bolt but I gained about an inch of clearance. I went skiing yesterday so I haven't worked on it anymore. I won't be able to drive the car until next spring after the snow is gone so I won't be able to check for noises or rattles until then.

I am planning on putting in another hanger on the intermediate pipe just before it turns to go up over the axel. Has anyone put in another hanger here? If so how did you go about doing it? I just want to keep everything tucked up as much as possible.

 

when my car still had the v6 and what seemed to be stock exhaust with a flowmaster replacement muffler, there was a hanger coming off the tailshaft of the tranny, maybe you can put one there?