Working with faulty equipment is becoming a standard for me. I was all ready to start drilling, and the side handle on my drill snapped off. After some pondering, I figured a way to put it together, and I am pretty sure I just improved on the design and stability and the handle. As far as the 5/8" UNC, I'm lucky to have my Dremel here. For what unknown reason, I sold my bench grinder a few weeks ago, and I had to grind down the threads with the Dremel to fit my 1/2" chuck. I also used the Dremel to cut the rod to length.
What I did was thread the rod into the core bit, and threaded it in there about 5 to 6 inches. That way I new the cat wouldn't hit the rod until I was 3 to 4 inches complete with the drilling. Rather than working with a rod that's sticking out between the bit and the drill of 7", I figured this would get me more leverage and a steadier drill to get the process started. I got in about 2.5", when I loosened up the nut and backed out the rod a few more inches, now that the core bit has a good clean path cut to keep the cut moving nice and straight. I'm about 3.5" through now and it looked like it was getting a bit late to keep making noise. So far, I've only got about 10 minutes into the actual drilling and it is going quite well. I'll finish that step in the morning.
The longest part of the process was grinding the rod down with a Dremel to fit in the drill and to make some additional grinds to get the entire rig to spin fairly true. I must say, this is a ton easier than trying to get those welds out on the mufflers. But I did accomplish that this morning also. It's best to save finishing the cat until tomorrow...I wouldn't want to have this much excitement come all in one day.
Why do I feel the worst is yet to come? For some reason, I just have a bad feeling that it's going to be a real frustrating experience trying to get those mufflers mounted back onto the exhaust. I hope they just slide right on, but I'm wondering. Can anyone ease my mind about that? Are they tough to get back on?