About a year and a half ago I had a local exhaust shop do a cat-back for me. All in all, it was a pretty straight-forward job, nothing fancy at all. The short of the long of it turns out that 18 months later, I'm looking at 3 fairly consistent exhaust leaks, one of them due to a recurring gasket issue because of mal-fitting _TWO_ bolt flanges, one because of routing the tailpipe directly over the panhard bracket (thus my smashing the pipe each time I stuff the right rear), and one more from a horrible booger-weld on an install of a wideband bung.

I finally got sick of it...

Asking a local Toyota Master Tech for who he would use turned up a thread on Snort4x4 which continually mentions Randy's Custom Exhaust in Marysville, WA. I figured that if Daryl (the tech) was sold on the shop, and if so many folks on the Snort board were sold on him, who am I to think differently?

I called the shop and spoke to Randy this past Tuesday. I told him that I had some piping under my rig that would give him a chuckle, and I just wanted it done right.

The base job was that I wanted to keep the muffler I had, and I had bought a Magnaflow Hi-Flow Cat off of eBay. Past that, basically everything from the header downtubes to the tail pipe was his to do what he wanted.

We set up an appointment for 8am Friday (today); I'd leave my truck and pick it up that night. I was there around 7:45, Randy pulled in about 5 minutes later.

We talked for a couple of minutes, and he spent the next 15 minutes looking at the truck. I told him a bit of the back-story, but the work spoke for itself. We talked about a couple of options, and I basically gave him free license to do what he thought best. He had my phone number, and I headed off to work.

I called to check-in around 3:30, and he told me that he had went a different route with one section (my Y-pipe was... butt ugly). I initially heard that as "$$$", but I had told him he was free to make the right decision, so... I didn't gasp too hard.

I got stuck in traffic on the way up to the shop, and called to say I was running late. Randy usually closes at 6pm, he stayed until I got there at 6:15. He may have stayed because he had plenty of work to keep him busy, but the bottom line in my eyes was that he certainly didn't _have_ to.

I took a quick look at the truck as it sat it in his lot... Awesome. VERY sharp work. I went in to pay the bill and was shocked - $150. I was expecting $200-250 considering the amount of crap that he had to start with... We're talking 3 adapters on the muffler alone; a rear O2 sensor that was basically bonded to the pipe; a Y-pipe that was trashed due to a lousy install of the wideband; the headers on the right side had no collector; the tail pipe was just useless.

All new 2.5" pipe (the truck is S/C'd), GORGEOUS welds; a ball/socket joint at the cat; a rebuilt Y-pipe; awesomely clean installs of the O2 sensors (stock front, stock rear, wideband)... and a great personality to match.

I can't say enough good things about him and his work.

HIGHLY recommended.
If you go see him, tell him that "The guy with the S/C 96 4Runner says hi!".

Oh.. and say hi to Turbo - he's one very cool chocolate lab/pit bull mix.


ps... My performance got a nice boost! With the leaks plugged, adding the hiflow cat and moving to 2.5" pipe, I've got more torque on the bottom end, and a really cool new kick in the arse dropping to passing gear on the highway.

Downside? I'm not too sure of the new exhaust tone, but it's a LOT better than the weezing from the leaks.

 

Very Nice Mark . Always good to hear positive feedback .