What the heck happened to my exhaust?

[Skeek]

As I’m driving down the highway I suddenly hear a rattle and eventually my typical exhaust note sounds a little deeper than usual. After work I climbed under to take a look.

Pipe appears to have corroded shortly past what I believe is the catalytic converter (only one pipe, facing the back end of the Explorer). I would assume someone tried to cut it and gave up, but the irregular wear and corrosion has be perplexed. Any ideas as to what could have caused this?

 

[2020FordRaptor]

Common problem unfortunately. Extremely crappy built stock exhaust.

 

[Skeek]

Common problem unfortunately. Extremely crappy built stock exhaust.

Yeah fair. I remember reading posts about the poor flex piping and catalytic converter, but this seems like such an odd failure point. Not even at the weld to the cat, but a few inches south?

Almost 2 years ago I had them do the fix for the catalytic converter weld recall - figured that would have helped avoid this (hence my thought about a thief with poor follow-through).

 

[2020FordRaptor]

Yeah unfortunately the whole exhaust is fail prone. Usually it breaks around the welds, but it is common for it to do it randomly in other places too. Just crappy build quality and materials, lovely Ford sometimes.

 

[Gadgtfreek]

Thats crazy.

 

[EDWYER]

Sucks. That one side looks a lot worse than the other.

 

[UNBROKEN]

It broke.

 

[UGADawg96]

Just put some duct tape on it. Just a flesh wound.

 

[Cdubya]

You might be able get away with a butt joint clamp if everything else looks good.

 

[cheetoduster]

Is that big chunk of whatever just bubbled/flakey rust, or is it what's left of a weld? Same question for where the pipe connects to the resonator? If that's rust, it's going to fail there too.

Also, FYI the catalytic converters, AKA down pipes (there's 2), are located at the front of the vehicle.

 

[Skeek]

Is that big chunk of whatever just bubbled/flakey rust, or is it what's left of a weld? Same question for where the pipe connects to the resonator? If that's rust, it's going to fail there too.

Also, FYI the catalytic converters, AKA down pipes (there's 2), are located at the front of the vehicle.

Good callouts, and it does look like it’s rusting where the pipe connects to the resonator. Weirdly those are the only rusty points in the whole system, so not sure why it’s happening there. I managed to find a photo from 2 years ago that I took of the same area - looks like it was a weld at one point. Maybe the first owner tried to patch it? (Bought it with 30k miles)

 

[Gadgtfreek]

That was my first thought, but I thought "shirley" not. But yeah, patch...

 

[UNBROKEN]

That’s 100% a muffler shop patch. It broke before and they sleeved it and rewelded it…poorly it appears.

 

[Gadgtfreek]

Yeah, when you see the second pic its a shit job.

 

[Mustang5L5]

I concur with the others. It's been repaired before and then rusted out and failed again. Does look like the weld at the resonator is in rough shape as well.