Fleetwood Exhaust Failure

[Adam]

Drove down Rt. 6 for a while last weekend, then this happened:

Yup, broke all the way around. No amount of muffler weld is going to fix this. I replaced the center pipes and mufflers not quite 3 years ago with Walker parts, so they have completely rusted though.

So I decided to re-purpose the Pypes system from my Caprice since it hadn't been installed in anything else yet. This should be pretty straight forward.........yeah.....

Got some new flanges and adaptors. Painted them and touched up the paint on the Pypes system.

The Pypes system with extensions (D-body is longer) laid out next to one side of the Walker part. Notice they front flange is completely missing. In other news the tail pipes and resonators are factory parts still. And they are fine. At 234k. The Walker parts have just over 20k on them...

That's about the end of the good news.

All the front flange bolts broke. I had to break the clamps at the rear of the muffler. The driver's side tail pipe came right out of the muffler after a bit of wrestling, but the passenger side has not come apart yet.

The broken bolts in the converter. Notice the converter is not in the car.

The passenger side converter hasn't come out yet. The studs that attach to the manifold were rustier than the driver's side. Not sure what I'm going to do there besides soak it in penetrating oil and apply some heat.

Another task will be to attach the hangers from the original mufflers to the Pypes system so I don't have to rig up hangers like I did on the Caprice.

Some size comparisons between the old and new mufflers. The Walker mufflers were actually smaller than the OEM ones that I removed 3-ish years ago (due to rust).

I will provide more updates as stuff comes apart. Since the exhaust is off, I'm also going to use this time to clean up the floor boards. There is a bit more surface rust then when I got the car, but it's not terrible. I plan to wire brush it then use Rust Encapsulator then Chassis Black. I'll post those pics in the rust section.

[Adam]

I finally got the other tail pipe off. I ended up using an angle grinder with a cut-off wheel to put a slice in the side of the muffler outlet (muffler goes over the tailpipe). I then peeled away the muffler metal using a chisel until I was able to remove the tail pipe.

Now to get those broken bolts out...

I supposed worst-case I can just drill them out and use a nut on the other side.

[Adam]

What the passenger side muffler looks like after taking the tail pipe out.

[Adam]

I gave up on getting the broken bolts out, so I cut them flush and drilled them out.

Time to make some muffler hangers. Step 1 was measure the relative location of the hangers on the muffler. Step 2 was remove them from the old mufflers. The easiest way to do that was cut the case apart.

I then cut the case off the hangers by cutting through the weld. This one wasn't that nice looking, but good enough.

I used a bench grinder to clean up the hanger metal as there was plenty of surface rust. Also needed to grind what was left of the old weld down to get a good channel in which to weld. First one attached.

Second one attached.

I need to repaint everything, but need to wait for the muffler to cool off. Which it probably has since I did the welding yesterday. The other side hangers are apart and ready to weld on. No pics of that side yet. The only thing left to do is reassemble. And cut the extension pipes down. And paint. And heat cycle the paint on the exhaust. So close...

[kevm14]

Looks mint.

[kevm14]

I'm realizing I will either have to do that or rig up some other kind of hanger if I want to put my Caprice's Pypes system on the Roadmaster.

[Adam]

I'm realizing I will either have to do that or rig up some other kind of hanger if I want to put my Caprice's Pypes system on the Roadmaster.

When I had this system on the Caprice, I used this:
http://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS-Performance- ... 5/10002/-1
I connected it in a 'J' shape to the rear clamp and used a nut and bolt to attach it to one of the OEM rubber hangers. Worked well enough. Also, now I own a welder.

[kevm14]

So for my Caprice, my original Dynomax system actually had the OEM style (94-96) pieces on the mufflers. Which I cut off. What I used instead (and am using on the Pypes system) is this:
I had one of these already on my passenger side as this is the factory hanger for the passenger side.
http://www.rockauto.com/en/parts/walker ... lator,5844

I then bought another one, and I assume drilled holes and mounted it with simple hardware. Or the holes were already there. I forget.

Then you insert this into the U-clamp and that holds the whole thing up by inserting the tongue into the hanger:
http://www.rockauto.com/en/parts/walker ... acket,5804

It was recommended to me by some folks back when I did my initial conversion in 2004/05. I don't know if the frame is clear to add these or if I'd need to cut off the original hanger.

Some reference:
Walker 93 9C1 exhaust diagram.
http://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php ... 27&jsn=678

[kevm14]

By the way - that bracket is actually intended for a 2.5" exhaust because that's what the 92-93 9C1 had as a catback (single). And 2.5" is the size of most performance cat backs for the LT1. Which is another reason it was probably recommended to me. I just bought two of the hangers and two of the clamp brackets. Rockauto said they were down to around 14 for one and 10 for the other so who knows. I just ordered now for when I put my Pypes system on my RMS. It was less than $26 shipped.

[Adam]

Or the holes were already there. I forget.

The existing bracket holes are not compatible as they go in horizontally. I'll take a picture of what is there before I reinstall tomorrow.