Well, I finally took the plunge this weekend, and took on the Stage 2 mod. Everything was going great...Both O2 sensors came out with no issues whatsoever, heat shields came off, and 3 of the nuts to the turbo came off like butter. Then came bolt number 4 (top right), ended up rounding the POS.
So WTF do I do now? Tried heat and a bolt out socket...No dice. It was completely circular at that point, and would not budge. There was nothing left to do but swallow what pride I did have left, and call the exhaust/muffler shop close by. They said they could get me in, in a couple of hours, which allowed me to get everything re-installed so that I could drive it. Minus all of the heat shields of course.
The mechanic gets it on the lift, takes a look at it, and says "You sure did a number on that one". And he tells me, "At this point I'm going to have to torch it, and use the air chisel". I said lets just do it. He gets that sucker glowing orange, gets the air chisel on it and says that he thinks it moved, but he wasn't sure. So he gets it glowing orange again, gets the air chisel on it again, and Boom! The POS broke loose, and it finally came off.
Then the guy tells me that he's not going to charge me, but I gave him $40 anyway. He saved my a$$, not to mention my whole project.
I think everything is looking and sounding good at this point. Keeping an eye on the AF Learning, which hit 14.74 a couple of times, but Feedback Knock and DAM are all good.