998 Cat/Primary Muffler Removal and Bypass Install
Here is my experience with the Primary Muffler Delete on our 2011 RT's. I did mine first and hers went much faster... I will post relevant pics in subsequent posts in this thread.
998 Cat Removal/Cat Delete Install
Left and Right are as you are SITTING on the Spyder.
Step 1. Remove the body panels on both sides. Finless has a tip in his battery replacement video on how to keep the mirrors and upper panels on while still being able to remove the lower side body panels.
Step 2. Remove the 3 - 10mm bolts holding the lower Cat support arms (the 2 with the rubber grommets). It is much easier removing the bolts and freeing the bracket than to try to fight the cat to slide out of the grommets with the bracket still bolted to the Spyder.
Step 3. Loosen the pipe clamps on each side where the cat pipe join the headers with a 10mm wrench, socket or whatever you can get in there. Loosen them up enough so that they slide down the pipe.
Step 4. Remove the spring from the right pipe. There are likely several good ways of doing it. I used a Vise-Grips to grab the top hook on the spring and simply pulled it up and off.
Step 5. Remove the 15mm bolt and nut that holds the muffler on. You will need a socket and wrench or 2 wrenches for this. It will be a good idea to support it with something like a motorcycle/atv jack. But it will not just drop free yet anyway. There should be 2 washers that drop free when you pull the bolt out… Be sure to watch how they are aligned. There is one that goes in between the muffler and the frame of the Spyder and the other goes in between the nut and the frame. (Assuming that all dealers install them the same way anyway.)
You might be wondering about the 2 bolts and springs that hold the cat and muffler together… I will get to that in a couple of steps. At this point, the cat and muffler will be coming out as one unit.
Step 6. Now all of the bolts and clamps will be off or loose. The cat will need a little bit of persuasion to slide off of the header pipes. Watch the loose pipe clamp on the left side as it will want to hang up on the belt. Pull, push and wiggle it around and they should eventually slide free. The weight and leverage of the muffler still attached to the cat will help in getting the cat to drop free.
Step 7. With the 2 pipes now free, you will see that the cat and muffler are still hanging on something. There is a big rubber hanger in the middle of the Spyder that you can see from the left side. I removed the jack from underneath the muffler and kept a towel under the muffler to keep it from getting marked up and so the cat and muffler are hanging free. From the left side you will need to pull the rubber hanger towards the left while pushing the cat and muffler to the right. It will take some work, but it will slide out and drop everything free. Now you can pull the muffler and cat out from the right side again keeping a towel or blanket underneath the muffler to keep it from getting scratched.
Step 8. Now for those bolts, nuts and springs holding the cat and muffler together. I am told that BRP put Red Loctite on them and require something like 480 degrees to get the Loctite to loosen up. I don’t think that is a good idea to try to heat it up like that while it is on the bike as there is too much plastic and other things there that you don’t want to burn up. But now that you have it all off in one unit, heating it up to remove the bolts is one option. I think it was a 13mm nut and it is a Hex head bolt (not a Torx – I made that mistake before I found out about the Loctite. I managed to get 1 bolt out but stripped the other horribly.)
The other option, which is what I did, is just to cut the 2 bolts with a hacksaw (or your favorite cutting tool). The springs are somewhat loaded so I just put a rag over the spring to keep it from shooting too far. The hex head bolts seem to be pretty soft which is why the heads strip easily and why I opted to cut them.
Step 9. Now that the muffler and cat are apart, use a flat putty knife to carefully pry the doughnut type gasket off of the end of the cat and put it on the new cat delete.
Step 10. Take the cat support bracket with the 2 grommets off of the old cat and put it on the new delete. Be sure to watch the orientation of the bracket.
Step 11. Take the 2 pipe clamps off of the old cat and put it on the new one. Be sure to watch the orientation. While they really can go on in any orientation, it can be tricky to tighten them if they go on in a certain way.
Step 12. Put the delete under the Spyder and hang it from the big rubber hanger.
Step 13. Put the 2 brand new gaskets on the header pipes. Do not put them into the cat delete. I did that on one and it did not go together well and will need to redo it… If you put them on the header pipes first, it should go together much better.
Step 14. With the cat on the hanger and the new gaskets in place, align the Right portion of the delete and the header and carefully push it together as far as you can. It will not likely be much, but should be enough to hold it in place. At this point, I put the jack under the right side of the delete to prevent it from popping off.
Step 15. Now, go to the left side and carefully work the delete and clamp up past the belt and align it to the header. I found that header on the left has a little bit of play. I put my foot on the muffler end of the delete so I could push it a bit and provide some torque so I could pull the header and delete into alignment to be able to push the delete up onto the left header. The reason for this is that the big rubber hanger needs to stretch and be torqued a bit so that the delete can be moved to the proper alignment. Now with both pipes connected up, I used the jack to apply pressure to the left and right sides of the delete to press it up into place.
Step 16. With the jack pressing the pipe into place, align the bottom bracket with the bolt holes and put the 3 bolts back into place. Now slide the pipe clamps into place and tighten them.
Step17. With the clamps and bracket now in place you can remove the jack. Using the vise-grips (or whatever method you choose) you can now hook the bottom of the spring in place and pull it up and hook the top part into place.
Step 18. Using the jack for support, hang the muffler back in place with the big bolt and washers. Align the muffler and cat. Leave it just a little loose until the bolts between the muffler and delete are in place.
I used 2 normal socket type bolts, that were the same diameter but a little longer, and a couple of washers and new nuts to put the muffler and cat back together. A little bit longer than the original is good to have as the original bolts recess into the plate but the new bolt and washer will not. Tighten the new bolts and nuts up and then you can tighten the 15mm muffler mount bolt up and remove the support jack.
Step 19. Roll the Spyder outside and start it up and let it idle for 10 minutes. This supposedly lets the computer relearn the new airflow through the exhaust.
Step 20. Go for a ryde!
