I just replaced the muffler last night. On mine the tailpipe portion rusted off, as well as a hole in the bend of the tailpipe. The part was 570.00 less my 10% MBCA discount. I backed it up on ramps and it took about 1 hour to install, fortunately the connection to the front pipe wasnt rusted and I was able to remove the old one quite easily. The funniest part was picking it up, my co worker had to ride in the back seat on the way back to office. I got a few strange looks by people that could see the exhaust system laying from the backseat to the front.

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Dennis
2006 E320 CDI Black/Black Leather. Nav, HTD Seats HK stereo 32000 miles.
2000 VW Passat 1.8t 300,000 miles as of Dec 09, 2009 original owner
1997 E300d Silver 300,000 miles As of Jan 05, 2010
3rd owner SOLD

Is Borla good? I hear than brand name bandied about a lot, but I really don't know anything about them. I need to replace the exhaust system from the cats back on my SEC, and I was thinking about putting something like those on and leaving the resonators off.

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" We have nothing to fear but the main stream media itself . . . ."- Adapted from Franklin D Roosevelt for the 21st century

OBK #55

1998 Lincoln Continental - Sold
Max 1984 300TD 285,000 miles - Sold
The Dee8gonator 1987 560SEC 196,000 miles - Sold
Orgasmatron - 2006 CLS500 90,000 miles
2002 C320 Wagon 122,000 miles
2016 AMG GTS 12,000 miles

Sorry, I didn't realize I was on the diesel forum when I posted that. Don't know if it matters or not.

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" We have nothing to fear but the main stream media itself . . . ."- Adapted from Franklin D Roosevelt for the 21st century

OBK #55

1998 Lincoln Continental - Sold
Max 1984 300TD 285,000 miles - Sold
The Dee8gonator 1987 560SEC 196,000 miles - Sold
Orgasmatron - 2006 CLS500 90,000 miles
2002 C320 Wagon 122,000 miles
2016 AMG GTS 12,000 miles

I had noticed a bad rattle at idle to ~1500 rpms, and assumed it was a heat sheild. I had the rear calipers off last night, and decided to chase the rattle at the same time.

Well, it wasn't a heat sheild. The pipe was cracked about 3" from where it goes into the muffler, almost the whole way around. The rattle was teh muffler rattling against the heat sheild because it was *just* about to break off completely.

Some farmer had been at it previously, with bits of metal scabbed on and some angle iron reinforcements. I should have taken a couple pictures.

Anyway I lined the pipe & muffler back up, tacked a couple quick welds on it to get it straight, then gobbed on some really skanky looking booger welds. It looks horrible, but I'm not going to put a whole lot of time into making it right, when it is already jimmy-jo'd together.

Unfortunately, one of the things I LOVED about my car was the really nice, deep rumble at idle. Now that's gone and it's virtually silent. When I booger welded it up, I sealed up a hole/crack in "the farmer fix" that was 3/4" wide and 2" long. I guess that hole is what gave it the awesome rumble.

I wonder how a cherry bomb would sound on an e300d. Or a straight pipe.

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Jake
1999 e300d PlantDrive WVO/SVO conversion
**note to self: oil changed at 268k kms**
1990 Toyota 4Runner FrankenDiesel swap

muffler on my 77 fell off drove to a local shop, he welded a new pipe on the end, attached it back, charged $10, took him 10 minutes.
ron

Dee8go, since you're asking about a gasser V8 with cats, I have some experience in that area. I used to drive an '86 Lincoln Town Car, which had 4 cats, two on each side, before merging into a single muffler plus a resonator. By the time I got that car, the front of the exhaust, including the cats, was still in good shape. However, the resonator disentigrated, and the muffler rusted through. I tried an aftermarket muffler, but it was too quiet for me, and I had them straight pipe it after the cats. The exhaust note after that sounded very good, but was quiet enough that I drove it cross-country without it bothering me. Straight pipes after the cats are a good thing.

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Whoever said there's nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes never had a cheap Jaguar.

83 300D Turbo with manual conversion, early W126 vented front rotors and H4 headlights 400,xxx miles
08 Suzuki GSX-R600 M4 Slip-on 22,xxx miles
88 Jaguar XJS V12 94,xxx miles. Work in progress.

Could someone explain how a straight pipe affects smog on the merc? I've got some holes in my muffler...you can hardly hear them. I would like to either fix them (using tape maybe?) or remove the muffler entirely, since the general consensus seems to be that the muffler doesn't make much of a difference in sound anyway.

Right now it just sounds like the car is wheezing

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1987 300TD
1984 300D
755,000 KM and going strong
BC Canada

I actually did something similar except I have a straight pipe. I had every intention of buying a new muffler....but I noticed very soon that I had more power and the engine was reacting to imputs a lot faster with almost no increase in noise....Therefore my "Sports exhaust" still remains.

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1982 300GD Carmine Red (DB3535) Cabriolet Parting Out
1990 300SEL Smoke Silver (Parting out)
1991 350SDL Blackberry Metallic (481)

"The thing is Bob, its not that I'm lazy...its that I just don't care."

Mine recently developed a leak in the metal flex pipe from the down pipe to the exhaust system. I think I'm just going to leave it because it sounds so nice, at least until it gets bad enough to start spewing exhaust into the cabin air intakes. With the passenger window down next to a barrier it sounds like the turbo on a TDI plus a little low rumble.

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Dale

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g1...MG_2277sig.jpg

1990 300D 2.5 Turbo -155k
2000 E430 - 103k
2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee Ecodiesel 4x4 - 11k
2014 VW Passat TDI SE - 7k Bro's Diesel
2006 E320 CDI - 128k Pop's Benz

Pre-glow - A moment of silence in honor of Rudolph Diesel