Melting Exhaust shrouds
 

My car is a 2004 MT bone stock, and the exhaust shrouds are melting. I never let it sit and idle for more than two minutes. Has anyone else had this happen to them? I have no idea what could be causing this. :confused:
Thanks in advance.

Do you have a stock or aftermarket exhaust?

Some aftermarket exhausts will melt the shrouds, and need to be extended or tweaked a bit to avoid this (ex TurboXS)

Have any pictures showing the damage/exhaust location & type?

If your car is a stock 04, then it has been around for almost 5 yrs w/o melting the shrouds. Either the mounts have broken on the exhaust hangers (2/side) or like he said, you have an aftermarket catback. Cut them back with a dremel tool so there is more gap between the exhaust tips and the shrouds.

my RB melted a small portion of my exhaust shroud. Only on the right side though... :scratchhe

The exhaust is stock and the mounts are fine the exhaust doesn't move at all. It just started about a month ago. Here are some pics.

http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/w...exhaust003.jpg

http://i733.photobucket.com/albums/w...exhaust001.jpg

Hah, that's weird. Perhaps they were painted with cheap stuff at one point??

Now I'm going to go look at mine, don't think they look like that but I've never checked.

It appears you are in Dallas. Why don't you have one of the experienced people from there take a look at it.

Very odd... mine looked the same, but I had the TurboXS exhaust which is known to do that. +1 on what Al said

I'm in Hobbs NM there isn't a Mazda dealer here. The only guess I have so far is I started using Mothers Back-To-Black Bumper & Trim Care on it, and maybe it caused it to get to hot. :(

If you replace the molten shrouds, get the exhaust finishers, they may prevent that from happening again.

^ While they look nice, they are very expensive.

My OBX exhaust melted my exhaust shrouds ... But I have a rear lip that makes my tips even closer to the shrouds. Your tips must be getting really hot to melt them that far away.

i can tell you that it didnt start happening 1 month ago.

its been happening slowly over time, you just didnt notice. i took my exhaust finishers off at 30k some miles. there are white spots on the tops of both. you cant see them if they are on the car.

i guarantee that half the people in this thread with stock exhausts have discolored exhaust shrouds. all they need is a flashlight too check. enough heat abuse, and eventually the plastic will break down.

go buy some replacements off a parts car. its the cheapest.

bad cat?

You joined in Dec 2008. I'll assume that you purchased the car used. I'd suggest that the previous owner probably had an aftermarket exhaust. The plastic probably was breaking down when you bought the car. But now it is fully coming to light. Another possible way to diagnosis this would be to. While the car is in neutral. Go out and put your hand above the exhaust tip. (DO NOT TOUCH IT) See how hot it feels. My diagnosis would be a previous owner.

The will run you 60 bucks each. Might as well get a new exhaust while you are at it.

First thing that popped into my mind. How is your Catalytic Converter? Is it the original ?

guys, my stock exhaust discolored my exhaust shrouds. i have no problem believing that with enough time, the stock exhaust can melt the shrouds.

It did start a month ago, that's when I put the Back-To-Black on it and it was fine then. The car only has 41K miles on it can the cat already be bad? Would it throw a code if the cat was bad? My check engine light came on about 3 months ago, but two days later it went off, and it doesn't have any stored codes.

its not the cat.

and your exhaust has been melting, however minutely so you didnt notice, the shrouds for quite some time. we have really high EGT, nothing new.