The pipe heading into the muffler has rusted through. Muffler seems OK, though.

 

Looking underneath the rotted pipe section seems to extend from the muffler to a point just under the rear seat. The next section forward, running to the cat. converter, still seems solid so I would like to just replace the rusted section if possible.

 

A rep at my local FAP office sez pipe sections are not available and an entire cat. converter pipe is needed. $380. AAAAUUUGGGHHHHH!!!!

 

Does this sound right to the community?

Any decent muffler shop will mig weld you a replacement piece of pipe for much much less.

Good luck.

There's a joint right under the rear seat of the car. Undo that, and you can separate the two sections.

 

If that is the original muffler, and you have a fair amount of mileage on the car, you might as well just get a new muffler section that is prebent, and all you'd have to do is bolt it up. It's something you could do yourself in an hour, or an exhaust shop to be able to bolt up in 30 min or less.

Well, I did it; replaced the pipe and the muffler as well. The entire section was so rusted it pretty much disintegrated in my hands as I was removing it. The "PB Blaster" recommended in another thread worked wonders for getting the bolts off the flange.

 

Now my next question. This is my second muffler/pipe replacement for this car. The first was about 3.5 years ago after I crunched it against a curb. The original equipment had some rust on it but was basically sound (bad pun, sorry), aside from being "torn a new one". Replacement was done by a local Midas shop (this was before being bold enough for DIY work). So, the original exhaust lasted 8 years before being destroyed by trauma whereas the replacement self-destructed in less than half that time. Indeed, the intermediate pipe leading forward to the cat. converter is still as solid as new. Is Subaru doing something special with its exhaust components to keep them going longer? Will I be redoing this work in another 3.5 years (assuming I still have the car then)?

The muffler shop that I went to for our '93 had the "we don't recommend, but we will put it in if you insist option" of standard cheap non-aluminized/galvanized pipe that they could weld on if I wanted to be real cheap. I'm sure that would have rusted out in no time especially after a couple snow days with lots of salt on the roads. I had them weld in the galvanized stuff and it has been doing fine for 6 years now. We don't have as many snow days with salt on the roads though. Maybe the replacement pipe wasn't aluminized?