Spent Monday night from about 5pm until midnight replacing an exhaust manifold/catalytic converter. I've had an intermittent P0430 code for a while now, it would come and go sometimes and I managed to sneak it past two years worth of emissions testing by clearing the code and running it just long enough to go to a ready state but before it tripped the CEL but as time went on it was on more than it was off and it has been fully on since the last inspection and won't stay off long even after clearing codes.
Fortunately this was Bank 2 so the radiator side. I don't think I could attempt Bank 1, the firewall side one, in my garage.
I expected this to be tough, in the end it was tough, but not awful just tight space to work, constantly banging my hands into things, finding the right combination of tools, sockets, and extensions to reach things. Plus my car has an oil cooler (tow package) that is helpfully in the way of half of the exhaust manifold studs that the car in the YouTube video did not have so that made things even tighter. One exhaust flange nut rounded off (only had a 12 point impact, should have known better and went to harbor freight to grab some 6 pointers).
So once I took a couple cooldown breaks and finally managed to cut the one exhaust flange nut off and get the old manifold studs safely out without breaking anything else, reassembly was pleasant by comparison. Cleared the codes and fingers crossed that's the only issue, the catalytic converter medium visible through the ports was crumbling in spots so it definitely wasn't in great shape. Before my last tuneup I had developed a misfire on that bank, definitely could have caused the damage.
Then Tuesday night was wheel bearings. One rear bearing was making noise and I decided to do both sides just because. I had been sort of dreading this because there are plenty of of horror stories about getting them out of the knuckle (bimetallic corrosion) but it went much better than I feared. A few good tips of how to best use the 'hit the tool with a big ass sledgehammer' lever style remover meant that it took 6-10 good bangs to get them out.
5-8:30 and I was done with both sides.
Was too frustrated I guess to take any photos of the manifold.
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