Cat Replaced

A week and a half ago I replaced the catalytic converter on my car. As I had said, during my trip to Lakewood, it had broken in two near the flange at the front, so I needed a new one. NAPA surprisingly didn’t carry one for that particular car. I went to Advanced Auto, as they had the cheapest quote that I got. The cats they had, however, didn’t have flanges, so I would have to figure out some way to attach them, perhaps a clamping flange. I paid the 30 extra dollars at Auto Zone for the one with the flanges. It included gaskets as well, but no bolts. I was going to just use the old bolts, but I had to cut two of them with the angle grinder. I wanted to replace them with stainless steel, but no one seemed to carry metric stainless. I bought some cheap regular ones to use until I can find the stainless in metric. Lowe’s amazingly didn’t seem to have metric at all, so my temporary bolts are 9/16″. I grabbed them all from the 5/8″ bin, but they seem to require the 9/16″ wrench. Strange. In addition to stainless bolts, I also wanted a stainless exhaust, but they seem to be way too expensive, even much more than the expensive cost I thought they’d be. Instead, I plan to buy some engine block 1200Β° or 1800Β° paint to seal the exhaust from exterior rust anyways. Hopefully that’ll increase the lifespan noticeably. The rest of the exhaust system seems to be in need of replacement, as it is getting rather loud again, so I’ll try to paint it when I do that.