Stupid exhaust ...
 

.. or stupid me - I can't decide. Feeling pretty confident after changing my struts/springs myself and helping out with my axles, I thought I'd tackle that leaky manifold to flex pipe gasket. I got a quote from Meineke for $95 and I was like "the hell with that", so I stopped by Mazda this morning and picked up the $8 part. Well, I don't know what kind of crap Mazda uses for the bolts and studs, but it sucks. Looks like brass or some really soft metal. I ended up stripping one of the studs (even though I got the nut off), and snapped another stud completely! Guess where I'm heading tomorrow morning? Yep, Meineke - to get rid of the Harley sound! Too bad I didn't already have a Genie ordered ...

Re: Stupid exhaust ...
 

yea sometimes the shop is the place to be but shop around a lil before you do it there for X amount of dollers, for myself i only fix the parts of pipes that are stright cuz the curves are too hard to line up right, just too hard

Well, it ended up costing me $120 for the repair. They had to replace all three studs and bolts. It took about 2 hours to do it too. They ended up having to remove the part of the manifold with the o2 sensor, heating up the studs, drilling out the holes to 7/16" and installing new studs. A real PITA the guy said. Oh well, I guess I'm keeping this stock manifold for a while longer now - at least it sounds good!