I have a 93 SL and it has a hole in the exhaust pipe between the manifold and the CAT. The Saturn dealership wants $450 to install a new pipe.
Does this seem reasonable? Seems high to me. Does anyone know if the hole can be repaired say by welding a piece of steel over the hole?
The likelyhood of there being good metal to weld to is probably slim, since the hole is probably there because it rotted through. I bought a new downpipe - cat assembly from Joey @ 6thplanet cheap. Check with him......
Have you checked out a local exhaust shop to see what they would charge?
Not yet but I am going to. Does anyone know if this section is stainless like the rest of the exhaust ?
This pipe is available from Walker at local auto parts stores. I paid about $95 for the pipe and the 2 gaskets which are sold separately.
I replaced this pipe myself, and what a pain in the ass it was. ALL bolts/nuts were rusted solid. Fortunately, I was able to let the car sit for about 2 weeks, during which I repeatedly soaked the nuts/bolts with PBlaster penetrating oil. I then used a propane torch on the nuts/bolts, and to my astonishment none of them snapped.
My car is a 92 SL2 5 speed with 119k miles. The pipe sections were solid, but the corrugated/flexible area covered with mesh had been bad for quite a while.
Not including the time I spent spraying everything with PBlaster, I would guess I spent about 3 solid hours on this job in the driveway. Of course, most of this time was spent trying different techniques, etc. not just remove & replacing the pipe.
If you can't do this job yourself (I was very tempted to let a shop do it coz I did not want to deal with snapped manifold bolts) call around to see what you could get the pipe for, and don't let a shop charge, say, $250 for the pipe only. A shop should be able to do the job quicker too since the car will be on a lift (I jacked the car up one side).
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