Exhausts and Silencers in South Africa

Exhaust problems announce themselves. A blowing joint gets louder under acceleration, a rattling heat shield chatters at idle, and a failed silencer turns a quiet car into a noisy one. Most exhaust centres can weld a section rather than replace the entire system, which is a legitimate and much cheaper repair when the surrounding pipe is still sound. Catalytic converters are expensive because of the metals inside, and they usually fail because something upstream is wrong, such as a misfire or an oil burning engine, so replacing the converter without fixing the cause will destroy the new one. Diesel particulate filters block when the car does only short trips and never reaches temperature to regenerate, and many can be cleaned rather than replaced. Removing a converter or a particulate filter is illegal and will fail emissions checks. Ask whether the repair is a weld, a section replacement or a full system, and ask what warranty covers the welds.