It was not a difficult job but like most not easy either but that puts me one step closer to a stock set up and I believe that the support bracket does provide a more stable exhaust cutting down on vibration and as someone said earlier, there must have been a reason that Opel/GM chose to include that bracket. The real job was fixing my earlier attempt to attach the head pipe to the exhaust manifold using nuts and bolts smaller than what was required not knowing that the method that I chose had a zero chance for success and I ended up with a bad exhaust connection which made my 2.0 sound like, well a well equipped V-8. Turns out all of the holes were stripped so again not really thinking it through, due to lack of experience, I came to realize that I needed to tap each of the 6 holes to accept a bolt that would fit. Removing the bots or screws and nuts was easy and putting in the proper gasket was also easy however I chose to tap the holes while the exhaust manifold was still attached to the car. No the best of Ideas you say........The only good thing was that everything was new so there was no rust. So I purchased my first tap and die set and proceeded to tap each hole while laying on my back looking up. My tools of choice was the tap set, a quarter inch socket set with several extensions, seems like a swivel connector, and a pair of vice grips. After a mere 9 hours I was able to tap each hole properly and insert a new bolt and remove an issue that had plagued me for years, that would be the smell of exhaust and exhaust noise from under the hood that again sounded like a Large V-8.
So Terry, per your observation, I will add that wire to my list of things to do, which is actually still pretty long, that is if going for a perfect GT. Also keep in mind to avoid rust is really quite easy, do not drive in the rain.
