408 exhaust questions

[PEU186F]

Take a look at the resources on this same site and you will see that the 408, 409 and 410 shared the same system with three mounting points each side, the front being suspended from the chassis cross member at the rear of the engine bay, a second behind the silencer and the third under the boot floor close to the rear of the car. The trouble with this arrangement is that engine deflection under toque gets applied to the down pipes via the manifolds and can result in fractured exhaust manifolds. I believe that the arrangement was improved on the 411s with the front mountings being carried on a fairly simple A frame mounted on the gearbox which allowed the front of the exhaust run to move with the engine. I believe this might be preferable to having no front mounting and asking the manifolds to take the load, which from what you say sounds to be the current arrangement on your car.

You are right the tailpipes behind the silencers are not straight, they splay outwards and upwards, you can probably get the outward splay right by reference to the rearmost mounting point. You’ll need to get the exhaust exit point as close to the boot floor as you can, even then it’s all to easy to hit obstacles when reversing and to scrape them on the ground on car park exit ramps etc. Neither of which are likely to improve the manifolds or the exhaust system as a whole.

As you probably already know the final touch was a short stainless steel deflector

The original hangers were not rigid, but neither were they particularly sophisticated.

Roger