I'm looking for an exploded view of the entire exhaust system for my car so I can remove the utter crap installed as shown. I want to straight pipe it from the exhaust manifold up to that O2 sensor....any suggestions? Thx




2002 Monte Carlo 3.8l exhaust

 

There's a pic of the whole system.

Don't delete the cat though. A basic universal cat is only a couple hundred bucks or less. Theres virtually no detriment to performance, and its better for the environment. The last thing we need is more of the country moving to road side smog checks like CA has because too many people are just doing away with it.

 

I haven't replaced my U bend but early posts claimed you got a performance improvement by going to a straight pipe there. But, then you risk breaking off the O2 sensor because it has to be mounted sideways.

 

The risk is virtually 0. If someone is driving over solidly mounted obstacles that are higher than the bottom of the exhaust, then they're going to be tearing all kinds of other stuff up too (suspension, mufflers, bodywork, etc).

In all the years of seeing people do U bend deletes, I've never personally seen an O2 sensor literally broken off.

 

There is also room to angle it upwards just slightly if youre really worried but yea, thats nothing to worry about.

 

Realistically thats always a good idea when mounting any O2. A lot of the aftermarket sensors I've seen reccomend mounting them with at least some slight upward angle (facing down towards the exhaust) to make sure any moisture drains away from the element on very short drives.

 

Thx, but I guess I should have mentioned mine is from the 3.8l

 

Although the part numbers are different (none are shown in the diagram above anyways), the diagram itself is the same. The only difference being that the 3.8 part #9 has a Y in it for the other exhaust outlet.

 

Ok, gotcha on the exhaust diagram. I was considering cutting the elbow where the O2 sensor is off and straight piping it to the exhaust manifold and just have a bung welded where the O2 sensor should go where the u bend was.

 

If you dont want to do any cutting + welding, some companies sell bolt in downpipes (ZZP being one) that will bolt right in at both ends as a complete replacement to item #5 in the diagram above.

If the O2 sensor bend is what bugs you, ZZP also sells a U bend delete (bolts on at the rear, slips over the front just behind the cat), but of course you'll still have that big mess in front of it.

Either way, get a cat on there while you're cleaning it all up.