2004 XC 70 Exhaust Hair + Reduced engine perf - related?

[mikeamondo]

Hi all... my son's 04 XC 70, Auto, AWD has been purring along just fine. He's now in Cambridge and driving the car only a few miles a week... to the grocery store each Sunday, and not much more. Mileage is a around 110k. Today, he drove the store, and it ran great. Came out and it would barely run, check engine light on, and the dash saying 'reduced engine performance'. Car would barely stay lit, and so he had it towed home.
Once parked, he noticed greyish hair coming out of the exhaust. Thought he ran down a geriatric hooker for bit, until we found the info on the failure of exhaust packing online. It looks exactly like the many, many pics on the web showing the failed exhaust packing.
So the question.... do you think these two events are related? Most of the postings about exhaust packing failure also say it doesn't hurt anything. Any ideas here?
Thanks!
Mike

[jimmy57]

The fault codes stored when reduced engine performance message cam up can tell you.

If the fault codes are for low boost then plugged exhaust is indicated. If the codes are for throttle sensor potentiometers then the resonator fiberglass is not the problem.