Tales from the workshop

VOLVO V40

Mismatched exhaust

At 23-years-old the owner of this Volvo V40 was watching the pennies when it came to looking after his 1997 Volvo V40 1.8 estate. The motor was still going strong but he was aware that spending out more than the value of the vehicle may not be a wise move.

This is though a subject which has often been bought up and as this owner so rightly pointed out to me when I asked him if he was sure on the work being carried-out, if he was to buy another vehicle he wouldn’t know what had been done in the past and would not be as confident that it wasn’t going to let hm down.

So the job in hand was to fit a complete new exhaust system, which should have been quite straightforward, but turned out to be quite time consuming. None of the factors I regularly use could supply the complete system, and so I ended up getting one section from a different factor. This also turned out to be a different make and so the problems began.

Fitting the system up under the vehicle all looked good, until I began to tighten up the flange joints, it was at that stage that the positioning of the exhaust was drawn too close to the body.

The end result was that the whole system was taken off and sent back, and a new system fitted by a local exhaust specialist who fabricate the system.