Exhaust Pipe Repair Hack - DIY GF Video

Here's an exhaust pipe repair hack I learned how to do a while back. It is a simple DIY muffler repair that will last long enough until you have time to take your car to the repair shop. This is not meant to be a permanent repair, this is simply a emergency stop gap measure. Maybe you don't have the money quite yet to go to the muffler shop, this will knock down the noise. Heads up, this won't help your car pass an emissions test but it is a neat little DIY hack to fix an exhaust pipe leak temporarily.

The flexible metal that I used is called roof flashing, but you could also use a metal can, like those that contain tomato paste or chopped up tomatoes for making spaghetti sauce. You can also use a soda can, but soda cans are made out of aluminum, so the hack will not last nearly as long. Aluminum has a lower melting point. Any kind of flexible metal that you may have laying around, something from a gutter repair or maybe your neighbor has some sheet-metal laying around that would work. You basically want to curl the metal around the exhaust pipe and then tighten it with pipe clamps.

You can also use this hack to do a muffler pipe repair. You would have to find a really long pipe clamps or connect together several pipe clamps. You can you can usually get clamps about 4 inches in diameter, if you buy a bunch of those you could connect them end to end and then wrap a big piece of metal around the muffler. This kind of muffler repair is not going to last really long but it would reduce the noise but your car is making - fewer people would stare at you at the red light intersection!

Video Transcript:

One of our cars has a hole in the tailpipe. I'm gonna show you how to do a quick exhaust pipe repair, until you have time to fix it properly, all right? So, you could be stuck somewhere, you can run to the hardware store, buy two clamps, borrow some tin snips, and get some roofing flashing. You could also just use, like, a tin can. Like a soda can, or a tomato can, or something like that. something that has flexible sheet metal stuff. All right?

Get under the car, let's go. So first I've got to cut the old pipe. I'm gonna cut the clamps off and see what's left there. We're gonna use what's called a right angle grinder with a metal-cutting disk on it. And be sure to have eye protection and ear protection. Be careful, all right? A lot of times you can just pull this out. Just put some pliers on here and you work it back and forth and it'll come out.

Slide two pipe clamps that are slightly bigger, one on each side of the gap, of the hole. And then put your flashing up here and you're gonna curl the flashing around the break in the pipe. This has sharp edges so careful not to cut yourself. And then slide these clamps over the metal and slide that on like that, there we go. There we go. All right, so you've got two clamps on, this is, you wanna center this in the break, and then we're gonna screw these on. By the way, if you have one of these four in one or six in one screwdrivers, if you take the screwdriver part out, You have a nut driver here. So as the clamp tightens down, it wraps the sheet metal around the gap and it tightens it up. Tighten these up.

All right, there you go. Just a quick muffler exhaust pipe repair. If you've got this hole, and you drive down the highway, you could stop at a hardware store and buy those parts and fix it up, until you can get home and order the right parts or take it to the shop. It's just one of those things that's helped me out a couple of times so I just wanted to show you about it.