I live in Boston and have a 1994 E320 Wagon. The exhaust is six years old from the cat back and was a factory bolt-on replacement for the original. The resonator has a hole in the middle and the rear muffler has a hole where the pipe curves into the muffler.

I ordered the replacement parts from Phil and they arrived two days ago. Last night I started with removal of the bolts that hold the resonator flanges to the cat flanges. Each of the two flange assemblies consist of a single flange on either side of the joint with two bolts. The joints are offset so you can get at them individually (but keep reading!).

As expected, the four bolts (two through each pair of flanges) were quite rusty but with PB Blaster one nut came off without much difficulty. It was much more difficult to remove that bolt - I had to twist and turn it and punch it out with a steel punch and a small sledge hammer. The other bolt on that flange was stuck way up above the second joint and not really accessible so I concentrated first on that other joint.

Those nuts would not come off after wire brushing and PB Blasting and cursing and banging. I wished I had 12 and 13 mm impact sockets as all I did was round off the nuts. So I used a hack saw, on my back under the car and in about an hour I had those two bolts sawed in half. The flanges were now free. However, I still could not easily access the last bolt holding the other (upper) flanges together, and to make matters worse, the bolts I sawed in half were each stuck solidly into the flange holes. Since the flanges were free to move, there was no way to hold them and get those bolts out.

That was when I went inside and told my wife we were going to the mechanic to let him deal with it. She wanted to know why I do any work on that car. I asked myself why I violated my rule of not doing exhaust and suspension work since you always end up with a stuck nut from rust and taking it to the mechanic anyway.

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Chip Johnson