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Car was fine til today, i drove it and i noticed my muffler or exhaust was incredibly loud. There was nothing i really did to the car, but the exhaust now sounds i have an after market muffler or something its so much louder that the unbearable road noise is now replaced/added onto/drowned out by the unbearable exhaust sound. lol

Anything that might cause this? Hole in the muffler? ways to fix, or do i need a new muffler?

possibly exhaust leak, let exhaust shop check it out

muffler has a hole, or could be piping.

you can find the leak really easily. put a towel in your exhaust pipe while the car is running and if you have a leak, it shouldn't stall and you can follow back along the pipe until you find the leak. if your engine begins to stall, you either don't have a leak or the leak is VERY small. once you figure out if it's a leak in the exhaust, you can figure out where to go from there.

good luck.

Check where the hangars are welded on to the pipe, thats the first place they go.

If it's extremely loud like a muffler isn't even there, then it could have broken off right where it connects to the muffler like mine did. Had to replace the muffler and the pipe before it.

Quick concern... i may be a little short on cash, so i cant get it fixed right away... are there any risks in driving with an exhaust leak, as far as engine/car goes? I did hear that CO can enter the interior and all that, but i havent really seen anything about the actual mechanical issues associated with such an issue.

And also, i was planning on sooner or later getting a cat-back custom exhaust done with a magnaflow muffler. Would this basically fix my problem or could it be something before the cat, or something?

/me is embarrassed, i am a noobert. ^^

i might get corrected on this, but as far as i know there is no mechanical issues with having a leak. depending on where the leak is of course. if it's before the cat, you'll be killing the environment and have a really loud exhaust. if it happens to be after the pre-silencer, then all it could possibly do is maybe be loud and cause you to loose some back pressure affecting your torque output. the other thing is that you want to be careful that no gas is getting into the cabin cause that stuff will knock you out if you inhale too much and could cause a crash or worse.

i suggest you try what i said before with the towel in the muffler and see exactly where the leak is, then decide what's best. good luck.

There is one remote possible mechanical issue.. and the leak would need to be relatively close to the engine as well. But if you run with a bad leak close to the engine for an extended period of time.. you could burn one or more valves. The leak would have to be a big one though, big enough to all but eliminate back pressure.

Tunes67

<B>I had the same problem right when I bought my car... turns out it was a combo of the cat and muffler both being blown through... but it did pass emissions after i fixed them </b>

I drove mine for months with a big exhaust leak, Just make sure when your "parking" with a female not to leave it running....

i just got mine fixed, i had the same problem, two brakes in the exaust where the hangers are.
cost me $125 for all new pipes