Trying to de-cat my TD5

Started yesterday what I though was going to be pretty simple job and take no more than 1-2 hours oh how I was wrong.

Started by disconnecting the exhaust from the turbo and then from the mid box all went fine with the exception of the bolts holding the the two parts of the exhaust together which snapped, ok I can handle that.

Next I went to remove the chassie cross member to drop the pipe, covered everything in WD40 and left it for a while came back and tryed the first bolt snapped clean off.

I put the pipe back together and bolted the mid box on but I don't know what to do about the cross member has anybody had this problem before and what is the best way to get round it, or do I take them all off and if they snap get the drill and tapping set out.

Hi I had the exact same problem doing mine recently i ended up grinding the bolt heads off removed the cross member grinded the bolts then drilled them out very carefully and managed to fit new bolts. I found that HSS bits went blunt so i bought some re-sharpend cobalt drill bits of ebay. Hope this helps and good luck (when i got to the stage your at i wished i had never started but well worth it in the end)...Tony

No help to you now I know but I had the same problem with the cross-member bolts so gave up on fitting the de-cat pipe. then I had to put the truck into the local 4x4 specialist in my village and asked him to loosen them up while he was underneath. From what he said this is far from unusual and while he had it up on the ramp he was not only able to loosen them all but replaced the original 10mm head bolts with stainless allen head bolts which come undone easily.
Might be worth anybody considering having done if the garage is going to jack the car up anyway.

Cheers Tony you confirmed what I though, looks like I'm going busy next weekend and she's already ****ed after this weekend.