SharkBoy

Ok so here's what's up.. I have a 2005 2door 2.2 LS cobalt, I recently was having exhaust rattles so I took it to a muffler shop, guy says cat has broken pieces in it causing it to rattle. Tells me I can replace it for his 150 universal one or he could just cut it out and straight pipe it for 30 bones... Me being the broke guy that I am tell him to straight it out.. He makes two cuts, cutting my cat and both flanges out and welding a small straight pipe where the cat was. Well now, 3 months later my flex pipe is completely broken, exhaust coming straight out the header.. My question is, will I be able to replace the flex pipe with its current situation? Just weld it in there? Or since the genius muffler man cut my flanges am I gonna have to get a whole new muffler back exhaust system? Any and all help is greatly appreciated, if you need any more info is be happy to share it.. What's the danger level as far as temporarily still driving it, like am I gonna blow a valve or something cause of the lack of back pressure? The mechanic I talked to today said he's be more worried bout the heat melting a gas or break line and catching the whole engine bay on fire.. Let me know what y'all can, really appreciate it!!!

-a screwed cobalt driver..

05g5

My flex pipe was welded in there

They cut it out and welded a new one in for like $60


My exhaust was leaking when i bought the car, they fosund the leak in like 2 min. When they took it out to show me , it was near split in half

ItalianJoe1

iTrader: (10)

Same thing, have them cut out and replace the flex, it's no big deal. Any muffler shop can weld in a piece like that just fine.

SharkBoy

Awesome thanks for the feed back! Gonna see if my buddy's used car lot mechanic can hook me up if I can find the part to order, seen a bunch of different ones, and that y'all suggest? Seems like it's happened to a lot of people... just like my hub assembly's and first and second gear going out on my first tranny..

05g5

Their computers will say the dimensions needed. And the part number he will need. Its also a common piece he prolly sells alot of. So they should be on his shelf..

chris88z24

Get a ZZP down pipe from their website. Both the OEM and those cheap aftermarket flex pieces will fail again. The ZZP part uses a heavy duty flex so it won't fall apart.

05g5

this is the stock flex pipes look like , and this is just slightly worse than mine was
http://www.carcomplaints.com/media/c...abd56764er.jpg

this is what you want in there. ive take my exhaust off a few times ( head related work ) and ive put on 25k kms or so with this piece no problems yet.
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...X6MHgMQ1mhN6GQ

( something similar anyways, looks like that, mesh wise )

ItalianJoe1

iTrader: (10)

Either style will work just fine, most aftermarket ones have the wire braid outer cover anyway.

Problem that kills flex pipes, is they are really only designed to take longitudinal movement, not for bending. If they are bent at all, they fail pretty quickly. As soon as you change exhausts and stuff you change the weight hanging on the flex and hangers which results in some side-loading of the flex. The OEM ones will fail eventually just due to corrosion and constant cycling with engine movement, it's kind of in a weird place, has to deal with a lot of motion.

I melted all of mine with nitrous, never had one fail just from normal use