downpipe removal: WTF?

by secondary crossmember i'm assuming you mean the one that sits sideways uder the car, not the one that goes from front to back of the engine bay. and yes the secondary crossmember has to come out to remove the downpipe. I had problems taking this out too, so i went to a show and had the bolts taken off with an impact gun. if thats not an option for you, just get a big breaker bar and if thats still not enough put a bit pipe over the breaker bar for more leaverage. hope that helps

i did the breaker bar with pipe extension approach, but it broke all 6 bolts on my parts car.
now id like to take the crossmember off my main car to install the exhaust, but i want to reinstall it after, and i wouldnt be able to if i broke the bolts on it with the breaker bar :S

i dont have an impact tool, but i could bring it to a place that does, do you guys think that would work? would be hell to drive there without an exhaust system though, so id prefer finding another way lol...
and yes, i put some loose-nut and heated it up with a torch and nothing changed :S they snap right off after about 1 to 2 turns.

was your part car very rusty around that area? mine were hard to remove but i never had problems with breaking the heads off the bolts

well, the entire exhaust system was replaced 1 year back, so theoretically it cant have been in there for long, and from the exterior it doesn't look too bad.
I'm playing with the idea of bringing to a shop so if they screw it up, they have to fix it for free haha

Older bolts could be prone to snapping. If you can access an impact gun, use it. If you are going to use a breaker bar, there are two things to do to minimize the chances of snapping the bolts. 1) spray some good penetrating lube on the bolts/nuts and let it work it's way in there. 2) ALWAYS keep the breaker bar parallel to the head of the bolt. If you move the handle up or down, it increases the chances of you pulling on an angle which tends to break bolts. I took mine off with just a breaker bar and a mallet, my compressor was shot. All I did was set the bar in place, held the end of the handle nice and square, and hit the crap outta the handle in the middle of the bar with my mallet. Just keep pressure onthe bar to hold it in place so the socket doesn't slip off and round the head.

Sawzall! lol They don't give us much room to work with the exhaust in our cars. I just did my this weekend and even the four cyl is a pain, 6 must be terrible.

I'll trade you to save you more agravation