So yesterday I was about an hour away taking some of my students to a 'robot competition' (I think the word robot is stretching the truth a bit, but they make remote controlled machines that have to perform some task). Anyway, on the way back we pull into a Dunkin Donuts and my muffler falls off in the parking lot
(I was driving my Lincoln with all their stuff in the trunk, and the Bio teacher was driving all the students in her van.)
The main problem was that the pipe was flopping around loose and hitting up against the driveshaft, so I tied it up with some surplus metal from the students' robot spare parts kit and drove home. I would have rather just removed it and tossed it in a dumpster somewhere, but I didn't have the tools to detach the exhaust clamps holding it in on me (I really need to start keeping some tools in my trunk).
Unfortunately, in the Phoenix area any car newer that '66 has to pass a smog check, otherwise I would just replace the whole exhaust system with dual exhaust and no catalytic converters. (There's a loophole but it requires you get this classic car insurance which limits how much you drive the car usually to 5K miles per year. I eventually want to go this route with my Firebird - but it doesn't make sense with the Lincoln which I got for a daily driver).
It uses 2 catalytic converters (which are pretty rusty too), which feed into a single muffler. I'm thinking I should just replace everything (or maybe I could get away with just replacing the catalytic converters and everything behind them). I'm trying to find all the parts in one place and having no luck, I'm looking around online and I see catalytic converters, tailpipes, mufflers that might work, I don't see the pipes that join the cats to the muffler anywhere at all.