Are there any tricks to separating the exhaust after the cat and before the resonator?

I found the flanges and bolts in this spot completely rusted (no surprise) and the resonator pipe broke off as soon as I started working on it, leaving the flange attached to the cat converter flange.

I am worried about damaging the cat converter if I use too much brute force, or try to saw the flange off the cat at this point. Wondering if removing the cat with what is left of the resonator pipe would be better?

 

if the actual exhaust snapped you probably have way to much rust on there and it's probably already started to rust through it's probably a good idea to replace whats rusted up.

 

grinder works pretty well, or even a dremel if you are patient.

 

I use a die grinder and a cutoff wheel and slice the side of the nut off just down to the threads. Then I use a pneumatic hammer/chisel to "unwrap"/peel off what's left of the nut from the stud. You usually end up boogering up some threads on the stud, but only for about 30-40 degrees around the stud. New nuts go right on and hold tight. Use quality, high-temp anti-sieze compound on the new nuts.

You can use a cutting torch, too.... any opportunity to use fire is a positive thing

If the threads on the stud are a total loss you can drill out the stud and replace it with a new one from Honda or just use a bolt. I've never screwed one up bad enough to have to replace it.

Oh, and remove the system from the header/A-pipe back and do the cutting off the car... it's a LOT easier to be precise when you have lots of room.

 

If you don't have the time or materials to do this you could always go to a muffler shop.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. The cat and the exhaust are off the car, partly broken off already, partly cut off. Hard to tell what a muffler shop may have done here, but the flanges on the exhaust side of the cat seem bolted AND welded. The cat itself is in good shape, although having to get a new one would not be a big deal at this point

I am scratching my head a little over the pipe from the manifold and before the cat though. My manual shows a two-piece configuration here, and mine is one-piece. What's more, even after cutting the bolts, the shafts seem welded in place... not what I expected at all from the diagrams

As for taking it to another muffler shop, I am concerned they would butcher it even more, seeing what was done before.

 

In the end I cut the nuts for the spring bolts off the exh. header/A-pipe, and drove the remains of the bolts out with a small punch, which only took minutes. Don't like using brute force, but it's an exhaust... the three studs on the exhaust side of the cat converter looked likely to be damaged by whatever I did to get the remains of the exhaust flange and nuts off. Since the cat was off the car already, I took it to a shop, where they removed the flange and nuts with a torch, and some hammering. Ten minutes and $25, and the flange was off. By then hanging an exhaust had expanded into two evenings , but it's done.

Thanks again to those who offered suggestions.

 

All I ended up doing when that happened to me was using a torch and taking the nuts off, but if it werent for tht it wouldent have been fun