Planenut, if I were to attempt writing a How To guide I am afraid I would get sidetracked and would be found babbling under a shade tree somewhere.
I can say that the AR Stage 1 swap was pretty straight forward. The most difficult part was getting the OEM mufflers off. I used some penetrating oil, same as I use on my air tools, to try and free the joint from the head pipes. I lashed the head pipes to something heavy, in my case a heavy duty floor trolley, and then used a strap wrench to rotate/wiggle the muffler from the grips of the white cement the MMC uses in that joint. Once clear I f the pipe I used more of the same oil to desolve and clean the ends of the pies with a scruffy pad to a smooth surface.
I put Never Seize in the inside of the new muffler connection and a small amount on the first 1/4” of the headpipe. The new mufflers slipped right on without and drama, using the strap wrench to rotate into position. I put the bobbins on first before sliding them into position. Once in position position the bobbins where you want them and then bolt them down firmly and then put it back down into the mount. Putting the heat shield on was a bit more difficult because of the one bolt that has no captured nut (lord knows why they did it that way). It took being creative by taping the nut into a box end wrench to be able to reach it. I honestly think MMC and AR never intended for the heat shield to be used.
On the air cleaner install it was very straightforward, no bending of any tabs BUT I did have to bore out the cover plate for the two mounting posts that take the quick release pins. Easy to do but a PITA if your drillpress is 100 feet away up a hill; it took me three trips since I did not want to take more than necessary.
Hope that helps, oh almost forgot, there is a hole that needs to be plugged in the backingplate/mount and the plug that S&S supplied was to small and it took another trip the the hardware store for a larger plug.
The light at the end of the tunnel is actually a train. 2019 M3W
