isolde's muffler

Isolde was my first love. We met twenty-six years ago.

She is the first vehicle that I purchased brand new. It was a stretch with my very limited budget at the time and I had to take out an auto loan to acquire her. As in Oregon she is classified as a motorhome, I was able to deduct the interest of the load as a second home. Still I paid off the loan as fast as possible, in just a year from my recollection.

She was my true intimate experience of a Westfalia. It was love at first sight and in the ensuring years she bought me so much pleasure and memory.

Fast forward to 2014 she is now 26 years old. She is nearly as pristine as the day I took procession of her. All her mechanical are factory stock with very low mileage, mainly as a weekend getaway windsurfing camper.

She still have the original exhaust system. The muffler had corroded and there are leaks in few places. A few days ago I finally get around to replaced it. I had dreaded tackling this project thinking it would involve knuckle busting work to remove the corroded fasteners. Because of the tight confine of the waterboxer flat four engine packaging many bolts of the exhaust system appears to be inaccessible with regular box wrench or socket ratchet. One can only reason that after 26 years the chance is the nuts and bolts are so corroded that removing them would involve cutting them off with oxy acetylene torch or pneumatic chisel.

I picked a cool day to tackle the grisly task.

Examining the exhaust system and the conditions of the fasteners I decided to begin by removing the catalystic converter even though it is in excellent service condition. Doing so allow me to gain better  assess to the more corroded bolts securing the converter to the muffler. I started by soaking all the fasteners with plenty of WD40. Typically working on very old exhaust one can expect top encounter badly corroded nuts and bolt head in which so much steel had rusted that the wrench (13mm in this case) will simple be too big. While all the nuts and bolts certain appear to be quite corroded, none had any problem for a 24 point box wrench to bite it securely.

Very long ago I was concern with the availability of parts that I have purchased a muffler for this eventual inevitability.

 At the time the German OEM was very expensive so I settled on one from South Africa

putting them side by side now it is very obvious you get what you paid for; the South African one (in grey paint) is no match compared to the German factory one; it is quite rough in the sizes of the fastener holes as well as the flanges on both ends; fortunately at least the construction is quite beefy

 i examined the SA muffler fitting to the adjacent parts

 the SA muffler has heat shield which the factory one does not and this can be a big problem

it is obvious from this you see VW and Audi are affiliated; this same muffler may be also used on one or more Audi models

i recently bought this stainless steel tail pipe from GoWesty; problem is the three holes of the flange do not align with those on the muffler; it was unclear to me at this point who's fault this is

 here you can see the cracks on the stock muffler - not bad for a 26 year muffler

 need a good meal

 steak and salmon

i went and check the spare parts that I bought long time ago and I surprised myself of my foresight; i bought a tail pipe and the two gaskets for the muffler too (at least 15 years ago)!

i went to gather up my metric fasteners and i also have enough metric nuts and bolts to do the job without the need to run to the store

 here you can see how badly align the holes on the flange of the stainless steel tail pipe

the flanges of the South African muffler is pretty rough; i used my trusty 4" angle grinder to clean up the mating surfaces

 the after market market tailpipe also need some grinding to remove the protruded weld bead

 i am the redneck shade tree mechanic of the otherwise respectable neighborhood

a bit of struggle the new muffler is in!

It was getting hot from the direct afternoon sun. I used the Danish after market tail pipe instead of trying to tackle the stainless steel one. I really like the look of the stainless steel tail pipe but I would have to figure out the best way to align the misaligned flange holes.

caught the spy photo car sent by evil Eric Snitch invading my privacy; it drove though the neighborhood street in a rapid pace as it want to avoid people like me to pull a moon when it drive by; knowing it has to come back to cover my street i waited with my iPhone and snapped this photo

 i waited for this fire extinguisher to go on sale at Costco - patience paid and I saved a whopping $8; the piece of plywood is temporary as I still undecided on the orientation of the handle

eager for a test drive i went shopping at h-mart; Isolde ran nicely and quietly; she purred like the day she rolled of the dealship 26 years ago

 i had to exercise a lot of self restraint to not purchase this scallion slicer ($39.99)

 what-do-u-know, h-mart has this nice throw that is made in Korea that make a perfect bed covering

 seeing it also fit nicely in Brunnhilde i made it an excuse for another trip in Isolde

 made this salmon for dinner with spinach

seeing the cooked spinach was not watery i put them into the same plate - a much batter presentation this way

The next morning I set out to tackle the misalignment holes of the stainless steel tailpipe flange. I was expecting a very challenging task. It turned out the steel of the flange was quite soft and I could easily modify the holes with a rat tail file by hand.
the stainless steel tailpipe looks great against the jet black bumper and the white body paint