exhaust removal any tips??

[doddze]

Hi

planning to disconnect the exhaust from the the downpipes to see if there are any splits on the top of the box... any tips... the joints where the u clamps are look pretty rusty...

[pic]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v644/doddze/exhaustclamp.jpg[/pic]

aim to disconnect at this clamp point

is it easy to get back together???

[s1.5f]

Easy to get back together but a bitch to get a decent seal. Although saying that the upper downpipe join is the worst!

[esmyth]

You could try and remove the remainder of the system and leave the downpipes attached to manifolds at upper end - however weight of system and access are problematic.
Agree that separating the down pipe from manifold is also difficult. On my old system they just pushed inside one another and were clamped with a U bolt. Once I tried to remove the downpipe the end of the mainfold became distorted. Crap design !
Anyway my new system uses a sealing olive and clamps with nuts/bolts - similar to a cat pipe - to connect the new pipe and I reckon it will be dead easy to remove in future.
If you are going to damage something removing them surely better to knacker a £50 downpipe that £300 of maifold !
Best of luck

[doddze]

so will i need some exhaust sealer when I put the two pipes back together then? also if the baffle sin the exhaust are loose will I be able to hear them moving around if i turn the exhaust on its end when off the car?

>> Edited by doddze on Thursday 16th June 15:28

[MickS2]

I'm sure all exhausts are different, but for what its worth, I found that I could not remove the exhaust by splitting it at the down pipe/exhaust join because this requires the exhaust to slide backwards off the down pipes, but it can't because the silencer box is a snug fit up in the chassis. For it to move backwards you would have to drop the back of the box by about 4 inches to clear the chassis in front of the diff. If you do this then the alignment is all out and the down pipe/exhaust joint won't slide apart, not to mention putting a lot of stress into the manifolds.

So, what I do is loosen off the down pipe/exhaust joint (the one in the photo) and wiggle it about to at least try and get some movement in it, loosen but don't remove all the bolts at the back of the system to give a bit of play and then release the down pipes from the manifold to drop the front end of the system. The bolts at the back end can then be undone and the whole lot falls on the floor. Refitting is, as they say, a reversal of the removal, but it is a real bd to get everything sealed up again.

[Wildfire]

If you're not replacing the pipes, when you fit them back together, use high temp silicone between the joins then clamp a tin around the join with silicone to seal that.

Basically you'll be doing a hole repair over every join, best way to make sure things are sealed properly.

>> Edited by Wildfire on Thursday 16th June 17:08