mk3
Veteran Member
I have driven my car up onto some solid concrete blocks so I could do an inspection before winter and I found some imminent problems with the exhaust.
1. The area just behind the weld on the rear of the cat is thinning and has a hole
2. The area at the front of the splice clamp has corroded and lost about .7mm material.
3. The hanger behind the splice clamp rusted off (no pictures, I can repair this with U-bolts but the part cannot come out from the car withouit cutting it)
These relatively small-looking problems are theorically big $$ to fix with new parts. More than $600 for the front pipe with CAT.
Here are some pictures and notes
This is the whole pipe (below) with the pertinent areas noted.
This is just behind the cat - notice the thin material and the hole
The front bracket is pretty rusty - I wonder how much longer it can last
This area by the flex joint looks good!
There are some orange-colored bubbles in the bottom of the pipe -curious. They look a little like stalagmites and are sticking out out of the soot which is very thin.
The clamp was pretty easy to remove. note there is about 25mm to 30mm gap between the two pipes. You can see the soot showing where the gap was. I did not have to use anything other than a breaker bar and socket along with a prybar to spread the clamps apart. I counter-held on the front pipe to keep from stressing the flex pipe.
This is the end of the front pipe - the area adjacent to or just under the end of the clamp was very rusty. This is what is left after I knocked the rust off. I am concerned that if I repair the area by the CAT, this migh just end up breaking next. It's interesting that most of this pipe has no rust at all (still shiny silver). Just behind the splic clamp the pipe has a patina of rust. I'd bet all of our cars look the same way - the alloy is clearly different.
The OEM flex pipe is nominally about 8 inches long and looks to be in very good shape.
The OEM flex pipe is nominally 2.5 inches OD
I bought this reducer adapter at Farm & Fleet. It is potentially a repair. I can have this welded on for low cost I would guess. The down side - the peice is not stainless and the new welds might quickly rust anyway..
I'm not too thrilled with the idea of any non OEM parts. I had a few bad experiences over the summer trying to fit air conditioning parts that were not 100% fits to OEM. I know that tdiparts.com has a nice looking system but it is not the stock shape and I am just super-paranoid about making any changes. I'd love to have some suggestions about other repair methods that would be long-lasting such as stainless peices or good weld techniques.
I'm happy to have the chance to repair this at my leisure instead of one day just having the pipe snap off as I've heard happen to others. This is the first time I've had any of my cars up high enough to comfortably crawl under them and I think I'll make it a bi-annual habit to do so for repair of undercoating, exhaust, etc.
1. The area just behind the weld on the rear of the cat is thinning and has a hole
2. The area at the front of the splice clamp has corroded and lost about .7mm material.
3. The hanger behind the splice clamp rusted off (no pictures, I can repair this with U-bolts but the part cannot come out from the car withouit cutting it)
These relatively small-looking problems are theorically big $$ to fix with new parts. More than $600 for the front pipe with CAT.
Here are some pictures and notes
This is the whole pipe (below) with the pertinent areas noted.
This is just behind the cat - notice the thin material and the hole
The front bracket is pretty rusty - I wonder how much longer it can last
This area by the flex joint looks good!
There are some orange-colored bubbles in the bottom of the pipe -curious. They look a little like stalagmites and are sticking out out of the soot which is very thin.
The clamp was pretty easy to remove. note there is about 25mm to 30mm gap between the two pipes. You can see the soot showing where the gap was. I did not have to use anything other than a breaker bar and socket along with a prybar to spread the clamps apart. I counter-held on the front pipe to keep from stressing the flex pipe.
This is the end of the front pipe - the area adjacent to or just under the end of the clamp was very rusty. This is what is left after I knocked the rust off. I am concerned that if I repair the area by the CAT, this migh just end up breaking next. It's interesting that most of this pipe has no rust at all (still shiny silver). Just behind the splic clamp the pipe has a patina of rust. I'd bet all of our cars look the same way - the alloy is clearly different.
The OEM flex pipe is nominally about 8 inches long and looks to be in very good shape.
The OEM flex pipe is nominally 2.5 inches OD
I bought this reducer adapter at Farm & Fleet. It is potentially a repair. I can have this welded on for low cost I would guess. The down side - the peice is not stainless and the new welds might quickly rust anyway..
I'm not too thrilled with the idea of any non OEM parts. I had a few bad experiences over the summer trying to fit air conditioning parts that were not 100% fits to OEM. I know that tdiparts.com has a nice looking system but it is not the stock shape and I am just super-paranoid about making any changes. I'd love to have some suggestions about other repair methods that would be long-lasting such as stainless peices or good weld techniques.
I'm happy to have the chance to repair this at my leisure instead of one day just having the pipe snap off as I've heard happen to others. This is the first time I've had any of my cars up high enough to comfortably crawl under them and I think I'll make it a bi-annual habit to do so for repair of undercoating, exhaust, etc.