Do you need a muffler replacement? Think it’s too hard to do yourself? It’s not! See how easy it is to replace your own muffler with this video from our YouTube channel. You don’t even need to have special equipment or welding skills. Try it yourself and comment below.

This video is from our YouTube channel: Big Red Media. Following is a transcript.

Introduction

Loud mufflers are embarrassing, and trying to drive your car with a broken muffler to the shop past your neighbor’s houses? Man that just brings shame on your head. But the question is, can you replace your muffler in your own garage? Well, most people don’t want to do that because it means, like in this car you actually have to cut the muffler off of the car to replace it. But I’m going to show you how you in your own tiny garage can replace your own muffler yourself.

 Opening

I’m Big Red, and I’m going to show you how you can do a tough job like replacing your own muffler in a tiny two-car garage. You can break this repair down into three basic steps: diagnosing the problem, locating the parts, and getting the right tools for the job.

Diagnosing the Problem

To diagnose the problem, you’re going to have to get down and dirty so I’m going to pull out the jack, put it under the car, jack this car up so we can see what’s going on under it. Before I jack this car up, I want to make sure I chop those wheels, make sure the car doesn’t roll forward. So give me just a second.

Jacking up the Car

Let’s go ahead and jack it up now. With the car all jacked up, I’m going to put some stands under it because I don’t really want to trust China freight with my life.
Okay. Now that we got it off the ground, let’s go take a look under and see what’s going on with that muffler. All right, so you see the muffler there, and oh, there’s our problem.
That right there this muffler is just split. It looks like um somebody might have tried to fix it here. They didn’t do a good job, but you can see the rest of the muffler here.

Examining the Muffler

The rest of the muffler pipe is good. Everything down here looks good all the way down. Way down there you can see that everything looks good. The rest of the muffler seems like it’s in good shape, but because of where this problem is the whole muffler is going to have to be replaced. So what I’ve got here is a spray bottle with soapy water. It says Windex and bleach but it’s soapy water just some Dawn and a little bit of water. Okay so we’re going to go back under the car. You got the tailpipe there. The muffler is hanging on this rubber piece right here. I don’t know the name of that thing, but the muffler hangs on this rubber piece. To get that out, what we’re going to do is spray some soapy water on that. Squirt it in there where the rubber and the hanging part meet. That’s so that we can slide this this piece right here out of the rubber piece there. And let’s go around to the other side.

Locating Parts

So for this repair finding a muffler was tricky, because this is a 2006 Pontiac Torrent and that was discontinued back in ’08. So parts to fix that car are hard to come by. Luckily, I was able to find a substitute which, is the Chevy Equinox, so I was in business. Back in ’08, a whole bunch of GM cars were discontinued. Do you own one of those cars? What do you do with a discontinued car? How do you repair it? How do you find parts for it? Let me know in the comments.

Tools

Also, in addition to the muffler you’re going to need a way to attach the muffler to the muffler pipe. I’m using this exhaust two and a half inch exhaust clamp. Two and a half inches I think, is about the size of most GM cars. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were about the same for other cars, but with this clamp you can attach the muffler without welding. So that’ll be a nice way to solve that problem. So when it comes to tools, changing a muffler surprisingly only needs a couple of tools: maybe a couple of wrenches, but you’re really going to need something to cut the exhaust pipe. What I found at AutoZone was something called a chain cutter. It cuts up to a four-inch pipe this pipe on the Pontiac Torrent. The Chevy Equinox is only two and a half inches, so it should work just great.

Day 2

It’s the next day and we had to stop yesterday because the tool that I rented from AutoZone that I told you about– the chain cutter? That thing was bad. Man this thing was not cutting. We kept working with it, and working with it, and finally we had to stop and come back the next day.

Cutting the Exhaust Pipe

So I got the right kind of tool here. This solves all cutting problems–a handy dandy Sawzall. So we’re going to go under the car and cut these pipes off using this Sawzall. I need eye protection. Ready for vertical. I’m going to be using a Sawzall for the first very first time ever in my life. I’ve never even held one of these things before today. I’ll try not to cut anything off of the car that we are going to need later.

Okay, I think that needs to go faster.

Wow, it does work, but it also throws hot metal on your hands. First time ever using a Sawzall. You don’t want to get rid of anything that you might need later for other things.

Talking While I Work

“Nope, sorry can’t brush my teeth…” “Got some metal in my mouth and I certainly don’t want to be under this thing.’ “Left some hot metal there too. “All right, so we’re going to slide these off; get them out of the way. The next cut is a little bit more tricky. I got to cut this off here. Let me get my super wide soapy water. “Yeah, ear protection is probably not a bad idea. But yeah, my ears are old.” “Sure don’t want to break that blade I tell you what. But I want to cut down through it and just get it off so…”

(Offstage): You ok?

Removing the Old Muffler

Oh I’m fine. I’m really threatening to break this blade because I just bent it and I need to be able to make one more good cut after this. But I’m going to get this muffler out of here. I’m going to cut this loose and that’ll free up the whole muffler from the muffler pipe. And then that will allow me to remove this this whole muffler piece and let me make a nice straight even cut. come under that’s what i’m going to do

Now I just need something to pry this hanging thing off here and all the handy dandy tools you always use when you don’t know what to use like, well pliers and a screwdriver. One thing I didn’t grab was a hammer. Got that off. And this one’s coming off easy too.

Fitting the New Muffler

Okay, so we got the muffler out and with it out, it’ll be a whole lot easier to bring the new muffler in and see how it lines up with the exhaust pipe. So let’s go ahead and do that now.

I think I should hang this new muffler up, mark where it’s going to line up. Let’s get some more soapy water in there–way more than we need.

Let’s hang this guy up this side. Come on. Getting in there yeah. Oh yeah that slipped right here.

Marking the Pipe

“Don’t be hard to go on that would be nice. Answers that question.” “Let me mark it right here so that with some sweaty finger.” So what I use here is a white paint marker to mark where on the exhaust pipe I’m going to cut but I think you can use anything that will make a mark. Like a black marker or what have you. Anything that’ll make a mark should be fine. I’m just going to use this one because it’s a paint marker and it’s what I have available.

There, down between marks, I’ll have a little bit extra over here. I think the farthest possible I could cut and it’d be it’d be good to be right here. All right, so let’s go ahead and pull this down.

Cutting the Exhaust Pipe, Part 2

Now this is the tricky part of cutting the pipe. You want to cut it really straight. This pipe is pretty thick, so I’m going to cut it right through the middle there. Boy that hot metal started going down to my shoe.

“Yes indeedy, turning to a little sissy boy there for a little second.” All right so now that we got that cut that’s a nice even cut, let’s see if I can fit this on here I might need to cut just a little bit more off the end. Come on.

Installing the New Muffler

All right I bet this is going to be a tricky deal right here. Line up that hole and line up this rubber hanger. Come on. There we go, slide this back and forth looks like the cut was perfect. So I’m going to slide this over to get this pipe all the way up. There we go. There we go. There we go.
Slid on there just right. Man that was much easier than I thought.

Using Brackets Instead of Welding

So now we’ll go ahead and click on this u-bracket two and a half inch u-bracket screws on there This bracket doesn’t have any washers on it, so I’m just going to assume you don’t need any and I’m going to leave these hanging straight down. So now what size is that? It’s like a 10. I’m going to use trial and error to tighten these. I’ll try to make them just about the same length so it can even tighten. It looks like it might be okay. I’ll tighten it down really tight but something tells you to put some tape on that too just to make sure–I don’t know. Let’s just tighten this tight as I can get it without breaking something.

Finishing Up

Okay well:

It looked on; it’s hanging up. You might want to take this plastic off of here. That’d be good. Taking it all off would be really good because it is said that the exhaust can get to be as high as 800 degrees. 

Starting the Car

Now that we’ve got the muffler in and tightened down, we’ll go ahead and start the car up, see how it sounds.

Well. That’s pretty quiet.

So. Got the muffler right here: brand new runs quiet as a… really kind of loud kid.

Closing

So that’s going to be it for today. We got the Torrent a new muffler he’s running great he’s nice and quiet.

We’re going to go ahead and take off. Give us a like. Subscribe to us and ring the bell, and if you want to know more about how I swapped my engine out of my SUV, visit us on bigred.media. I’ve created an instructional video that has everything in it that you would need in order to swap your own engine in your own tiny two-car garage. That includes high-resolution video from multiple angles. Everything is indexed we’ve got a list of all the tools, we got a list of all the problems that we’ve had and solved, and everything is based on the GM service manual.

So we’ll see you next time.

This is one of our YouTube videos. Leave a comment after you watch it. Following is a full transcript.

Intro

Last time I introduced you to my tiny two-car garage. This is where I swapped a new engine into my SUV. I told you that the engine failed because of a timing chain problem, but I didn’t tell you much of anything about the swap itself. If you missed my last video you have to check it out. Today I’m going to talk about the SUV engine swap.

The Problem

I’m Big Red and I’m going to show you how you can do tough jobs in your tiny two-car garage. This is my tiny two-car garage. Don’t let the size fool you. I swapped a whole SUV engine right here. You can too. When my SUV died I took her to the mechanic thinking that now, you know, she needed a boost or I don’t know, an oil change? I know, it sounds weird, but some of these engines have died. They’ve stopped working just because they needed an oil change. I hoped that that was the problem. But no, he told me she needed a new engine. I was shocked.

The Price

He quoted me $7500 to replace it. Now the way that breaks down is $2500 for the engine and $5000 for the labor. The (new) engine had 120,000 miles on it and I thought, nah that’s too many that’s too much. 120,000 miles on an engine that I’m gonna spend $7500 on? I thought, I think I’m gonna give it a try and do this myself. I just didn’t think it was worth it to spend that much money on an engine that was halfway gone.

Labor Fees

Mechanics’ fees can be a big factor in whether you decide to swap an engine on your own. When you break it down, we’re talking anywhere from $50-$110 an hour for mechanics’ fees, and anywhere from well what they told me it could be as much as 20 hours to do it or to do the engine swap.

Pricing an Engine

There’s one expense you can’t avoid at all whether you go to the mechanic or swap the engine yourself. That’s the cost of a replacement engine. Depending on what type of engine you buy, you could spend anywhere from $400 to $4,000 or you could spend a $100,000 if you buy a brand new engine for a very high performance car.

Three Types of Engines

You have three options basically for deciding what kind of engine you’re gonna put in your car. Whether you’re putting in a used one a remanufactured one or going with a new engine here’s some details to help you make your decision.

Used Engines

A used engine is going to be your cheapest option. You’ll find them at a salvage yard and that’s pretty much it. You’ll swap a used engine into your car without having to do anything extra. When you’re considering a used engine you’ll want to look at mileage, a warranty, and the condition of the parts that comes with it. The thing is with the used engine, the warranty may be only 30 days, 90 days. You could end up needing major repairs depending on the condition of the engine very soon after you buy it.

New Engines

A new engine, also called crate engines, are usually available from the dealership. These engines can cost more than the car itself. Though they can be very expensive, the main reason you’d want to look at a new engine versus say a remanufactured engine is because of availability. New cars might not have remanufactured engines available, or very high performance cars the engines may be rare, hard to come by. Then there’s antique cars, where you might need to have the engine built from scratch or custom-made.

Reman Engines

Which brings us to the one I chose: the remanufactured engine. In the case of a remanufactured engine, everything is replaced except for the engine block. They’re more or less new engines. As far as I can tell, that’s the only difference. It’s funny how that makes such a difference in the price of the engine. The remanufactured engine costs a whole lot less but all of the parts, all of the specifications are the same as a new engine. The people that know say that the main difference is that the engine block is seasoned. I guess that means that it’s settled. It’s been through several heat cycles so I guess that makes a big difference, and remanufactured engines are tested for stability and reliability and durability.

Why Swap it Yourself?

So why did I decide to swap the engine myself? To save money. So when faced with big numbers like this there’s always the option of just replacing the car outright buying another car. But I spent $40,000 on this car. So I decided to swap the engine myself to save some money. But over say having someone else swap the engine versus buying another car, well I wanted to look at the numbers.

The Numbers

So let’s look at them together. So as a mechanic told me, it would cost $7,500 to replace the engine. With tax, we’re getting close to $8,000. Now multiply that by five, and you’re in the ballpark for buying a new car like the SUV. Throwing out that old car and buying a brand new one would waste all that money that you invested in your old car. We bought that car new, so it was still a good car as far as we were concerned. It was a great car. It just had a dead engine. So, when I added up spending $40,000 on an SUV then buying another $40,000 SUV five, six years later, that’s $80,000. That’s way too much money. If you put this kind of money into a car you don’t wanna throw it away, and if you’re able to fix it yourself, well why would you get rid of it?

What Would You do?

So in this situation, what would you do? Let me know in the comments.

The Cost of Tools

So while I’m talking about the cost of swapping your engine I want to talk about the cost of tools. Now you can get basic tools or you can go for more high-end stuff like this Milwaukee. I like high-end tools, but they do cost a lot. You could spend to swap your engine if you don’t have any tools, you could spend $300. Now if you do have some tools or you want to go into say higher end tools, then you could spend as much as $1,500. This little baby right here cost me about $400 all by itself, but it’s great.

The Perfect Engine Replacement Tools List

Every tool that I used to swap the engine in my SUV I put in a list and I put that list up on my website. The list contains every tool that I used plus the prices and where I got them. So I think you’ll love it. 

Removing the Engine

Now for the hard part of swapping your engine, the first obstacle you’re going to run into is getting that old engine out of the car. With some cars you need a lift to raise the entire car up over your head in order to get the engine out. Of course I don’t have anything like that. Other cars you might just need a crane to pull it out. With this car, my SUV I found a way to get the engine out from the front just by taking the whole bumper off the car. I reverse engineered the car’s design to figure out that I didn’t need a full service garage in order to take the engine out.

Lambda Platform

GM Crossover SUVs are built on the lambda platform. One of the features of the lambda platform is that the car is designed so that you take the engine out through the bottom of the car rather than having to lift it up out of the top with a crane.

Fix Everything

I’m not gonna lie to you. Swapping your own engine is not easy but there are some advantages. I found other things wrong with my car during the engine swap. The transmission needed repair, so I replaced the wave plate. This is a common problem with these cars. I also had to replace both cv joints and tie rod ends in this car, a repair that would have cost over $2,000 on each side. $4,000 to replace parts that had worn out in the car. I just needed to replace them. There’s usually more than one thing wrong with your car at a time, so while you’re swapping your engine you can fix other things that might be wrong with the car.

The Mechanic Won’t Fix Everything at Once

On the other hand, if the mechanic is doing the engine swap let’s say you’ve got a part that’s wearing out, or like in my case I needed to replace cv joints and tie rod ends. They won’t fix that, they’ll just swap the engine, and if you can’t afford the extra repair cost right now well you’re driving on borrowed time. But if you find something wrong with the car you can fix it yourself. That’s one of the advantages of doing a big job like an engine swap. It’s also a lot easier to fix other things when you’ve got the whole engine out of the car. In my case, the whole engine cradle had to come out of the car, which included the whole front end the cv joints the tie rod ends a whole bunch of stuff. So while the cradle was already out of the car, I could fix all of that. And since I had the service manual, anything that was wrong with the car I could look it up in the service manual and see how to fix it and fix it myself. When swapping your own engine, it’s not all peaches and gravy. You can run into problems. I did. I broke bolts:

Fixing Mistakes

I just broke this because of, well, pound feet is different than pound inches, but we’ll talk about that later. Also if you if you need a part, well sometimes you have to wait for it to come in the mail and that can, well it can leave you waiting for a long time. Recovering from mistakes is key when replacing your own engine. It’s not as hard as you might think but sometimes things go wrong and you’d want to be resilient. For some mistakes I had to consult the service manual. Others, I had to go to YouTube where you are right now.

Having Confidence

And you’ll have the confidence, I think, of knowing what’s going on with your car in case anything goes wrong. And you won’t have to take it to a mechanic so often. Learning to swap your own engine, well that’s a big job and so you won’t have to worry about big problems with your car ever again mostly. As you can see, she’s all working now. Engine is swapped, running like a dream. There’s nothing like swapping your own engine and hearing that car start up for the first time and time and time again.

Conclusion

So now what do you think about swapping your own engine? Let me know in the comments. If you’d like to know how to swap your engine yourself because, hey, I think if you can change your own oil you can swap your own engine. Come to our website. I recorded everything in beautiful high definition video. I’ve recorded it from a camera on my head, from a camera over my shoulder. Got great sound, and if you’d like to support me in my tiny two-car garage visit my website at bigred.media. And if you haven’t yet, please subscribe to my channel and do the thing with the bell. Also come to my website at bigred.media. Also come to our TikTok. Those are fun. And leave a comment. Otherwise, thanks for watching. We’ll see you next time.