General Advice sought for running repair on Panda Selecta exhaust

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General Advice sought for running repair on Panda Selecta exhaust

barney_mcgrew

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Hi all - new member here...

We've got a 93(?) Panda Selecta, which unfortunately is on its last legs because of rust. (That's it carrying our bikes in my Avatar). The engine is still fine (still less than 40k on the clock), but the rear passenger (UK) side of the body work is in a fairly bad way.

We don't think it's going to get through its next MOT in January without a lot of money spent on welding etc.., but we'd quite like to squeeze a few more months out of it if possible.

The problem it has at the moment is the exhaust, which has developed a hole where the main pipe/shaft joins the silencer/cat near the rear passenger (UK) wheel. (I'm not sure of the terminology I'm afraid - not much of an expert on cars!)

It also seems to have lost a bracket/fixing near the center of the car - there is a right-angled bracket nearer the front of the car which holds the exhaust, but we can see marks on the exhaust where it looks like something was holding it in place nearer the rear.

The exhaust seems to be hanging down quite low, and I'm pretty sure something has fallen off which was holding the exhaust in place. It could well be that the bracket fell off, and this is what's caused the hole to develop - which ever way round it happened, we need to fix it.

A friend advised us to get some putty from Halfords to fill in the hole - and we've found the right stuff. However, I think that the angle that the pipe meets the silencer unit will be a bit different if we put a new bracket/fixing in place, so we've not used the putty just yet.

So - it's taken me a while to get there, but here's my question: does anyone know what sort of bracket/fixing we need to get? Halfords were quite low on stock when we went in yesterday, and they didn't seem to have anything that looked like it would fit. We also had a flick through the Haynes manual, but couldn't see what we were looking for.

A part number (from Halfords?), or a photo of the bracket/fixing would be ideal, but if not, if someone could describe the missing part for us, that would be great.

Also, any general advice about this repair would be appreciated - you may have gathered that we're no experts on cars! The exhaust is very noisy at the moment, and I'm a bit worried that it's going to fall off as it's hanging low!

Thanks in advance for your help,
barney_mcgrew.

P.S. I'll post a pic if that would help, but I'll need to borrow a friend's camera.
 
Forget the putty, I tried to repair an exhaust last year with it, and no matter how much I applied or how long I left the car it lasted about 10mins max.

It's not all bad news though, the small green tub is ideal for storing nuts.

If it's a straight piece of pipe I have heard good things about the repair bandages that can be applied. However at parts where the pipe meets a box there is no chance of getting a repair kit to bond successfully, despite what makers may claim.

On the bright side if it is just the pipe corroded it should not cost that much, I think I paid about £40 last time. The catalyst though is another matter, but a scrapyard should be able to provide one.

As for the car - if the rust is really that bad to fail an MOT, should you be driving it? Bear in mind rust will only fail an MOT if it structural (ie the sills), or a danger to pedestrians. The doors can be bodged with a grinder and some fibreglass, sills can welded. The rear wheel arch is an easy fix with some fibreglass.

I had my sills welded up this year for £100.
 
There are two different exhaust fittings for catalysed exhausts - and the change was during '93 AFAIK.
But the rear box and its support and fitting is similar - I think only the pipe from the catalyser to the rear box is different.

The early one has the cat in the down pipe, and a dog-leg of tube to the rear (and only) box.
It is supported at the back on two rubber bungees:
one either side of the silencer box.
The front has a bracket near the gearbox (on the manual one - not sure about your Selecta).

The important bit is where the join is:
the dog-leg of tube has a clamped joint where is joins the rear box,
if your failure is behind this point your looking at a rear box.
It sounds like the hangers for the rubbers have already rusted off anyway...

Unfortunately the parts CD doesn't give any accurate pix of these bits...

I'd guess you're looking at a rear box - if you're anywhere near Birmingham UK I'm fairly sure I still have the exhaust from the old CL, which you can have to take away.
 
Thanks for messages, but unfortunately we had to get it fixed in a hurry as it got quite dangerous when the exhaust pretty much fell apart, so we had to buy a new centre section. (About £120 worth with labour etc.. - ouch!)

cheers anyway.

barney_mcgrew.
 
Ouch!

I found the exhaust, so here are some pix anyway -

both-hangers.jpg


joint-hanger1.jpg


rusty-box.jpg


If it was the centre pipe this wouldn't have helped as it's from a non-cat Panda.
 
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