Fred's Friggin' Junk: How Friggin' Hard Exhaust Work, Really?!

Let me begin by saying DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING TO RALPH's MUFFLER & BRAKE... EVER!

A about a month and a half ago my Grand Prix started making some weird exhaust noise. After some listening, the source was determined to be a hole in the resonator. For those of you who don't know, it's merely a pre-muffler chamber designed to remove drone at constant rpm's.... in other words, who needs that crap. I called the closest muffler shop to make the fix. I mean, who could screw up cutting out the resonator and replacing it with a straight pipe, right? Oh, frick.

So these guys at Ralph's Muffler and Brake cut out the resonator and sectioned in a new piece of tubing... but it's not that simple. They didn't remove the flange mated to the catalytic converter (cat) before they welded on the new pipe. For those who aren't familiar this is bad because of 3 reasons: (1) the oxygen sensor is about an inch from this flange and it's not a friend of welding heat, (2) the flange is bolted together and it's a stamped piece of steel... again, steel under tension + heat can cause warpage, and (3) there's an exhaust gasket in there and it's not made out of NASA heat tile material. To add insult to injury, they flanged the new pipe and slid it over the old one. That's the equivalent of putting a gutter together backwards. Getting the picture? Here we go...

Ok, so about a week and a half go by and an exhaust noise starts. I figure it's nothing and I'm getting used to the louder noise from the straight pipe. After about 3 and a half weeks, the noise is annoying. I had to get time to take it back to the shop. Today I dropped it off so they could fix the issue. After about an hour I get a call saying that both flanges are warped and the gasket blew out. They offered to cut off the flanges and weld it directly to the cat. I told the guy not to touch the cat because it was a custom high-flow stainless steel tig welded piece. I told him to drop the car and I would take it to another shop. He agreed and I hitched a ride with a co-worker to drop it down the street. Imagine my surprise when I get there and they're welding on my cat. It seems that one of those douchebags cut my pipe before they called and they were frantically trying to get it back together before I arrived. That's right Bruce, you tried to hide it from me when I walked up too... dick. To add insult to injury they were using standard wire in their mig welder (not stainless) and were now welding about 1" from my oxygen sensor. They wanted to argue when I told them I was pissed that they even touched my cat, maybe fried my oxygen sensor and didn't even fix my exhaust leak. Long story short, I almost punched this jerk (but I actually prefer work to jail) and before I left I got a signed document saying that they now warranty my custom cat, O2 sensor and the weld they did on the stainless pipe. I was so pissed that I had to leave before I did something stupid. What sucks is the voice in my head that keeps saying... "sue, sue, sue." (and small claims court only costs $35 to file)

So I packed it up and rolled down the street to Midas. They said the stamped flange was warped most likely from the repair weld (imagine that) and that due to the heat the O2 sensor had been fused in the bung. They suggested replacement of the sensor to which I declined saying that if it failed it would be replaced by Ralphs... for free... with a GM part. They also commented on the poor weld and insisted on replacing the shabby work. A few hours later and another hit to the wallet, I've got a quiet exhaust. I pull out of the shop and step down on it only to hear some mo' exhaust leak. WTF?!?!! This isn't friggin' rocket science! I guess the saga continues...

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