Nearly lost the muffler
A few months ago, I took the Z for a drive and started to hear a knocking noise coming from the rear passenger side of the car. I feared that it might have been the rear struts coming loose or something, as that’s what it sounded like!
Upon inspection, I found that it was actually the rear muffler knocking against the body of the car. It looked like the brackets holding the muffler up were giving way.
I took the car to a local exhaust specialist, Rowville Exhaust Centre (also known as Kreative Exhaust Fabrication) to see if they could fix it up for me. Richard put the Z on the hoist and saw the problem straight away. The rear bracket had only 1mm left before it would have completely failed.
The mount points on the car and the exhaust don’t line up exactly and there are basic brackets to allow the drop-downs to be vertical. These brackets were doing a lot of flexing and the metal fatigued at the flex point. Richard did a great job of replacing the front mount with a rubber piece that allowed for the offset in the mount points and the rear with a nice solid bracket and rubber strap.
The exhaust is nice and solid now and has no give. There are no more knocks and bumps at all. And with the great weather that we had in Melbourne today, Penny and I just had to take her for a drive in the hills to test it out.