107 Muffler Replacement - Not Fun, But Doable

[Strife]

I jus finished my muffler (86 560sl) swap with an ANSA replacing the 19 year old OEM muffler. The OEM muffler had rusted through on the rear tailpipes along the seams of the tubing. This was all that I could see rusty. Upon removing it, the muffler sounded like a beer can with marbles in it - all of the internal baffling had rusted away to nothing! Although ANSA's are supposed to be not quite as good or quiet as the originals, I'm very satisfied with its sound (of course, compared to "befrore", it had BETTER be better). It was painted low-gloss black, which I touched up after installation with high-temp engine paint (between shipping and installation, some paint had come off).

Replacement involved the usual misery in muffler replacement; totally rusted bolts requiring cutting and then drill press removal, cutting the rear rubing behind the cat off begind the expanded part where the cat pipe slips into the muffler, and then scoring the remaining section of muffler with a Dremel cut-off tool in order to loosen it enough to slip off. One important note: hang the muffler with nice new doughnuts before doing final tightening on the flanges/gaskets. I didn't do this at first and it came out crooked, not parallel to the body or the road.

A helper is very "helpful", but it can be done by one person with ramps, a jack with a wooden platform board on top, and using electrical house wiring to make long "loops" to hold the muffler up for initial installation.