Please bear with me as I try to relate this problem. I volunteered my '93 960 for an EPA study on emissions. Well I had been ignoring the tut-tut sound indicative of an exhaust leak. So I crawled underneath and when i hooked my shop-vac (set to blower) up to the tailpipe I noticed a hairline crack in front of the cat on the driver's side downpipe and another crack where the exhaust pipe meets the catalytic converter.

So I figured to try to slap a quick band aid on it before dropping the car off at the testing site. I used some high heat exhaust tape and it certainly quieted the noise/leak. The EPA folks must not have inspected the exhaust sytem, because they didn't mention anything when I picked it up from the initial testing. So I got it home and noticed the noise was much louder.

Back underneath I went and now I see that the "crack" where the exhaust pipe and cat meet is actually now a complete disconnect and was able to move both the cat and the pipe freely.

So here's my problem, not having a welder or wanting to purchase one,

1. Can I just pick up a connector from the auto parts store along with exhaust clamps to complete the connection?

2. Do I have to saw off the flare/flange at the back of the cat in order to match them up?

3. What is the ID and OD of the Exhaust pipe? The auto parts store is saying 2 1/2" but that seems big?

Now on to the good news, when I picked up the car from the 2nd round of tests (on a dyno)(sp?) I was told that my car tested out at 25 mpg and was one of the best cars that they had seen during their testing. One of the scientists couldn't believe that it has 197,000 miles on it. I am going to get the rest of the test results this weekend and will post them next week.
--
1993 960 194K