One thing I would do is get rid of the rubber mounts on the muffler. They didn't work for VW. All the Waterboxer have the muffler firmly attached and moving directly with the engine. One sold assembly. 

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of Neil N
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2014 3:54 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Exhaust Bushing Inner Weave Premature Failure

No doubt. I can see that movement even after one tack onto two plates.

I aligned and mounted the muffler-cat assembly first then built the join between downpipe and J pipe. On the muffler brackets I made, some of the holes were enlarged to allow adjustment. This certainly helped the recent repair done in the muffler shop in Florence.

The challenging part in making the exhaust, was making accurate marks and keeping them aligned during fabrication. I would make marks, then remove cat and downpipe, tack the parts in basement, mount and check fit, repeat as needed. A real PITA. Welding parts in situ is best but not really feasible in my case.

Part of what I attempted to do was use parts that might be found in the junk yard. (eg total downpipe-cat assembly). This was done to help others as my WAG is that these parts can be found in good shape and had for a good price. IIRC, I paid $50 for this near new part:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Q8RL7ZfES7A/Tt1_miL9h3I/AAAAAAAAFb4/SrFznBdv3wg/s1000/Jetta%25202002-2003%2520Downpipe%253Acat.jpg

assembly before bushing install

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-2tXy_bqA1SQ/UPYtUkEbT2I/AAAAAAAAGlY/2JwxaYgZm-8/s720/ABA%2520Downpipe%2520To%2520Cat.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-xEuPuiwGAWY/UboIAjZB2cI/AAAAAAAAHuI/13iua_Y1m2s/s600/flex%2520pipe%2520install.jpg

On 2/7/14, Don Hanson <dhanson928@gmail.com> wrote:

> Welding something can induce stress and misalignment.  I was shown
> this....pretty large movements were apparent as the welder worked.   On
> something as long and obviously vulnerable to stress as the exhaust 
> systems on in lines seem to be, I'm guessing that it is common to 
> screw up the exhaust with careless welding and leave it with welded-in 
> stresses that lead to fairly quick cracking in a lot of cases.
--
Neil n

Blog: tubaneil.blogspot.ca

'88 Westy http://tinyurl.com/c8rlw6p

'81 VanaJetta 2.0 "Jaco"  http://tubaneil.googlepages.com/

Vanagon VAG *Gas* inline-VR Engine Swap Group:

http://tinyurl.com/d7gd5ej