The glacial pace of this project continues… I haven’t done too much in the past month for lack of finances, but here’s what little is new since the last time.

Here’s what the exhaust crossover looked like before and after a trip through the blasting cabinet. You figure out which is which…

The exhaust manifolds get the same treatment, both to clean them up and to give some ‘tooth’ and open up the pores for the coating they’ll soon receive. I made sure to mask the machined surfaces of the manifold in order to keep them as flat as possible and hopefully prevent leaks. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to use gaskets or not when I put it all back together, though.

I also yanked out the downpipe and catalytic converter. The downpipe is going to get coated, too - unfortunately, it’s too big to fit in the cabinet, so I’m gonna have to do it outside. I’m not looking forward to cleaning up afterwards…

I don’t know why people say the oxygen sensor is hard to remove… With the engine out and the downpipe laying on the shop floor, it just took a moderate effort with an open-end wrench and it came right out… It’s probably a good idea to replace this, seeing how "orange" it is.

Getting the cat loose from the downpipe was another story entirely. Liberal amounts of WD-40 and bad words were used in conjunction with the BFH. Not fun at all, but way easier with it all removed than it would have been if the truck was assembled.

Here’s the inlet to the factory original cat. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be after so many miles (and after I whaled on it with a hammer).

Here’s the other end of the cat. I’m thinking that I’ll probably chuck it and replace it with a high-flow unit despite the fact that it looks like it has some life left in it.

Next time, we’ll see if I can figure out how to work the touch-up gun to shoot the coating on all the exhaust parts.