tbg22

Has anyone seen or experienced this? I posted yesterday that I heard a loud bang then the car got really loud. Suffice it to say it was a bit scary!

Well it turns out that the muffler just exploded. I was all over the car trying to find what the problem was but noticed it immediately when the car was pulled up onto the tow truck and then on the lift at the shop.

It looks like the muffler is full of steel wool which obviously came from the cat.

So should I assume that the cat was clogged and the gunk was pushed through to the muffler causing it to explode?

chichas01

That is pretty wild. Must have scared the crap out of you when that thing blew.

Butters944

That's EPIC! ;D

pettybird

you almost certainly flooded the car out, or were dumping HUGE amounts of gas into the exhaust. if you didn't flood out the car, check stuff like your FPR for a ruptured diaphragm.

you load a big canister full of fuel, apply some heat, and it's a bomb. it IS ungodly loud...I've seen it happen to a couple cars.

tbg22

What do you mean when you say i flooded the car out? Also, the water temp gauge showed high after the bang as well, still waiting to hear from the shop. The car did not overheat so it could be that the explosion knocked something loose.

The good news is I had already got a good deal on a 3" exhaust that was sitting in my basement waiting to be installed

VirginiaF1

Glad you lived.. thanks for posting the pix.
Unless I missed it, your signature and home page don't list your car's vitals:
Year, model variant, miles, rebuilds, etc...

Please tell so that others may learn..

PS: Any increase in horsepower from it?

seafeye

Flooded meaning.....too much gas. Then it went into your muffler and kaboom.

Or someone stuck an apple in your exhaust pipe and the exhaust took the easiest route out.

Time for a cool magna flow muffler.

Will Feather

Cat may have broken apart, backed up in the muffler causing a clog. Clog got worse built up pressure, add some unspent fuel and you have a bomb.

Crimson Nape Racing

I'm no expert but I don't think the "steel wool" is from the cat, many mufflers use it as the sound deadening source. Cats us a fancy honeycomb metal or ceramic substance. One of the cats job is to get rid of unburnt fuel, so I bet it 's not doing its job anymore, unburnt fuel got into the muffler, mixed with some O2, and boom. That is what a backfire is, but it usually happens right at at the tailpipe not in the muffler itself.

xsbank

Thoughts? I'm glad I wasn't staring at it when it blew!

fortysixandtwo

The "steel wool" is likely the sound deadening material of a glass pack muffler. It looks like a cheap muffler with rolled, not welded, seams. I bet the inside rusted out, allowing the glass pack material to clog the muffler's outlet.

The catalytic converter uses a rigid, ceramic like, material that has a grid of small holes.

Fara

Happened to a friend's FJ45 ute. Ran hell rich and we just kept running it.
One day, driving down a paddock, the muffler blew, just like your picture.
Sounded like a shotgun

Needless to say, the guys riding in the tray and cab bailed very quickly.
That said, she ran better with a dump pipe instead of exhaust/muffler anyway :P

flashx

In the old days (probably befpre most of you were born) We use to scare people by turning off the ignition before we passed someone we knew or someone unsuspecting. Then wait a few seconds and turn the key back on and Kaboom out the exhaust. Accationally it would blow up the muffler

renaissance.man

^ Yeah.. what he said.

tbg22

I don't think I flooded the car as it was going 75mph and running great when this happened? Flooding could have happened if it were at start up