MK3 Centre Exhaust

[poing]

I'm having no luck with the MX5 recently and it's costing me a fortune, MK3 MX5 2007 with less than 50k on it and always Mazda service history until the recent one a couple of weeks ago but seems to be going through a bad patch at the moment so this is the last thing I needed.

I noticed the exhaust was a little noisy and it sounded like the rear so bought a new rear section (MX5 Parts ebay page) which will be delivered Monday. However this morning it was noticeably worse so did the unthinkable and went to Kwik Fit where they said it was the middle section. On the way home it got a LOT louder so once I got home had a look underneath and the CAT has parted company with it's pipe.

No problem, I'll just buy a new centre section (ideally stainless but happy with normal) so headed for MX5 Parts page where it's £613 which is the price I can buy an entire MK1 MX5 for!

Lots of internet digging later and I just can't find an alternative for sale, or rather not one that isn't part of a full system. Can anyone please tell me where I'm not looking?

I've done the worlds worst bodge repair and frankly I'll be chuffed it gets off the driveway before failing again.

[Gilhooligan]

I'd imagine it expensive due to the replacement exhaust having the cat included? Can't you salvage the cat on yours and get a garage to weld it to a new bit of exhaust pipe?

[poing]

My wonderful local garage have done a load of phoning around and have sourced one for around £300 so will fit it with my rear box at the same time. Not a Mazda part but it's not like the Mazda part was exactly long lasting so got to be worth a try.

Now lets see if my bodge-it special fix will last until Friday! It's done 40 (very careful) miles so far which is about 39.8 more than I expected.

I did spot after some extra digging a Racing Beat centre without a CAT for £377 or something but I also discovered that the front CAT has a bad habit of failing around 50k miles which is about 4k away! If it does then I'll take the opportunity for a full stainless Racing Beat (or similar) system which includes manifold and front high flow CAT. Then I will just pray to the emission Gods every year at MOT time.

[g40steve]

Firstly why are you not on Nutz.com?

You can remove the centre cat & weld up pipe £25.

Why anyone would spend best part of £600, without asking for info???

Have a skim through this, any questions just ask.

http://www.mx5nutz.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1...

Edited by g40steve on Monday 14th April 20:49

[poing]

I forgot nutz even existed, stopped using it when they moved the forum and it all went a bit strange! Can't believe I forgot to have a look on there, I have no excuse beyond stupidity.

I know that if the damn car hadn't cost me so much recently in other areas then I would just be going for a full system and be done. Once I've decided if I'm keeping the car (meeting with mortgage person soon!) then I will look into doing it properly. Then I'll upgrade the brakes and the... well we all know how that ends up.

Amazingly though my "fix" is holding after about 85 miles. I am chuffed about that beyond and reasonable level, it's my best car fix since I fixed my old Micra throttle with blu-tac.