Hey gang,
My 2007 ES has taken on a bit of a Volkswagon Beetle sound in the last week or so. I have not had an opportunity to lift the car and really get under there, but quickly poked my head underneath while it was running the other night. Its hard to tell if its coming from mid-car, or further back.
I'm curious if there is a common location for exhaust problems on this car? Might help to narrow my search
I appreciate any thoughts!
Craig

 

Check the flex pipe.

 

Yep. Had to do mine last year

 

1. The flexible section under the engine called the flex pipe.

2. Any flange where two pipes are bolted together. There is one under the center console area where the front section is attached with the middle pipe right behind the large catalytic converter. There is also two flanges in the rear that bolt up to the two mufflers.

 

Thanks for the tips guys. Finally got around to crawling under there. So, my leak is located on the main pipe, right before the split to the two mufflers. There is a hanger, and in front of that, there is some round rubber (damper of some type?) attached by a welded mount. The weld has pulled away from the pipe causing a leak. Any idea what the purpose of this item is?


You can just see the hole where the mount for that rubber disk is pulling away from the top of the pipe.

 

It's a damper for NVH purposes (Noise Vibration and Harshness). Engineers use them to tune out certain unpleasant frequencies such as droning or something else. Go to an exhaust shop and see if they can cut out the rusty section and weld a stainless steel sleeve/coupler over it. You could see if they could reattach the damper by cleaning off the rust and welding it back on to the new sleeve.

 

Got this taken care of today. I was able to remove the damper and grind off the old mount. I used a stainless sleeve coupler lined with Permatex Copper RTV gasket maker to cover the hole. The damper was remounted using the bolts for the coupler. Nice and quiet again..