Unrelated Events?

Walker muffler, less than 2 years old. Welds broke clean at both ends, allowing the muffler housing to slide around.

After getting the motor mounts permanently solved, I went to chase another problem. An exhaust rattle.



Found it in the downstream muffler. The body of the muffler had broken free of both welds. The welds broke clean, and the muffler was less than 2 years old. So I suspect a quality problem. I checked in with Walker, the manufacturer, and just got a "thank you for this information" for my efforts. Sigh.

A replacement muffler isn't expensive, but it's not in the budget for now. Need tires more (look at the poor tire in that pic!). So I decided to cut this one off and leave the holes exposed. I used my angle grinder with a cutting wheel.

The metal cutting part wasn't bad at all! The metal was nice and thick, but not particularly challenging. What got me was the insulation inside. I'm hoping it was fiberglass! It looked like long brown hair and disintegrated when touched. I ended up with its shards embedded in every inch of exposed flesh. Happily I wore my goggles, so the crap stayed out of my eyes.

At the end, it was off, and my exhaust had no more rattle. The exhaust note is a bit deeper, but really not much louder. It'll do until I can replace the muffler and get my "whisper" exhaust back.

With the muffler body removed, leaving behind just the "cheese grater" pipe.