Fibers out my exhaust pipe. Muffler material?

[FireFox31]

My 2000 V70 grew a tail! I pulled over during a long drive and found a massive strand of fibers hanging out my tail pipe. It's seven feet long and is silver with patches of black and brown.

IMG_5415.JPG (1.01 MiB) Viewed 6723 times

Is this sound dampening material from my muffler? The muffler is OEM from a dealership, probably only six years old, and looks perfect. The exhaust sounds a little loud due to a breach in the cat pipe which I'm constantly trying to fix.

Is this any cause for concern? Do you think the dealership will honor a warranty return? I expected this exhaust to last a long long time.

[abscate]

That is bizarre. I'm sure they will stuff it back in on warranty.

[KrazyKrusty]

I've seen that before actually at work.
Twice on a pair of Volvo S60's around 2005, and a couple of times again on Buicks.
On the Volvo's we just pulled it out, although within a year or two they ended up replacing the muffler due to the Tailpipe/hanger sections breaking off. Then on the Buick's we had to replace the resonators because of the excessive noise, as it pretty much blew all the material out.
I'm pretty sure its just glass matting for sound absorption, No need for immediate concern I would say, unless you keep fishing it all out, then it will get rather noisy.

[FireFox31]

The question is: What would cause my rear muffler to rot from the inside out, back to front?

Three months after this incident, my mechanic broke off the tailpipe where it connects to the rear muffler (happened when he put a vent hose on it to run the engine inside his garage). While replacing the rear muffler, I looked inside to learn it's basically a vented pipe with fiberglass matting all around it. On my old rear muffler, that venting screen had disintegrated, allowing the fiberglass to eject out the tailpipe.

I wonder if I could make a replacement screen to put in the rear muffler if/when the current one rots. Why replace the entire thing when it's just one little screen that fails.

Aside from my vent screen rusting, the back of the rear muffler (where it connected to the tailpipe) was the most rusted part of my exhaust. The metal and weld joints on the rest of the exhaust are fine. Thinking back, my tailpipe rusted off just three years ago. This OEM rear muffler only lasted three years!

Do you think there's something wrong with my exhaust gas which could be causing my rear muffler to fail? I'm running the original catalytic converter with 17 years and 268k miles. Three years ago, it gave me P0420 "catalyst underperforming", but I took some odd advice to add a gallon of lacquer thinner to a tank of gas to burn out any impurities. I never got the P0420 again, but my exhaust still smells a bit off.

[wizechatmgr]

Happens all the time to motorcycles - the fiberglass packing gets blown out. Nothing to worry about unless you don't like the additional noise.

[Skymongrel]

Old post,but this happened to me earlier this year on my 2006 XC70! Looked exactly like your picture. It actually clogged the end of my tail pipe. Haven't had any problems since. Fingers crossed. Oh, I did just loose my cat to resonator flange but had it welded back together.

[FireFox31]

The story continued by the rest of the exhaust rusting and rotting at the welds after only four years. The pipes and body of the mufflers looked great but each welded junction rusted. Maybe I didn't wash the underside enough in NH winters or maybe the engine was running wrong, producing more heat or corrupted exhaust which harmed the pipes.

I've attached a picture of what the rear muffler looked like in October 2017 after the tail pipe broke off. In the mass of fiberglass I'm pulling out, you can see bits of the rusty metal interior which had disintegrated. The perforated cylindrical metal pipe and a lot of what it touched were corroded to nothing.