UKC

My car is just coming to the end of its warranty so looking to get a stainless steel exhaust system just for sake of reliability and long life.

I would have thought getting a full system would be better than just a cat-back but I dont know enough about them to decide yet.

Any info regarding full/ mani-back/ cat-back etc please good folks.

My experience was nothing but bad when I fitted one to my Land Rover. It was made by a firm in Devon and I don't think they had sorted out the right grade of stainless steel or the right shape for the bracket that attached the main box to the chassis because it kept snapping, either clean across or at the weld where it was attached to the end of the box. Every time I packed it up and sent it back and every time they replaced it with a new box with a slightly different design of bracket and every time it snapped again. The different metal gave the exhaust a rather tinny sound, compared to the deep more muted sound with a mild steel system. My sad conclusion was that stainless steel isn't suitable for an application where there's lots of vibration and not worth the money. 

If you run your car for long enough and fast enough that the exhaust gases heat the system right though, condensation will be dried out, same as with a wood stove and a cold flue. But if you only ever do short slow trips a mild steel exhaust will rot out in a few years.

Any particular reason you need to change the exhaust? if the current exhaust is working fine then leave it! and if it is faulty get a warranty repair. 

Stainless systems do last longer but they are not indestructible and do wear out so best to get as much as possible out of your current system before spending money.

Don't worry about an exhaust affecting reliability in its simplest form its just a pipe with some baffles in it, you'll know if the exhaust is coming to end of life as they love to pick up on that in MOT's.

I'm with Paul. No point changing your current exhaust unless it needs changing. 

You really need to say what car you have before asking for advice on this. Both my classic's (Lotus) have full Stainless Systems but on day to day use on standard cars no.   My VRS Skoda  has 90K over 5 years on it and the exhaust has not even got rusty yet & you could probably buy 3 standard exhaust's for the cost off 1 S/S

What Paul said, if your exhaust goes you wont be stranded and they're cheap to replace so there aren't huge benefits to replacing it prematurely. If you're looking to burn some cash for the sake of longevity then a good steam clean underneath and a quality underseal might be a better use of money depending on what car you have and what it left the factory with.

By the same token the cheap systems you get fitted at high street exhaust places are not of the same quality as the originals. 

good replies there everyone thanks, general consensus is nay.

Ta.

I wouldn't replace a factory exhaust preemptively and on all but a performance/collector's vehicle I'd just replace the section that failed with a cheap plated pattern part when needed, you get generally 5-10 trouble free years out of them. Stainless can still crack, the flexi sections and hangers still fail, the cat' still has a finite lifespan.

jk

Don't waste your money replacing a good exhaust.  Replace it section by section if and when it starts to show holes, you can make the decision on whether to go for stainless or not based on the price at the time of replacement.

As others have said, no point changing the exhaust just for the sake of it because the car is coming out of warranty. Only reason to change the exhaust is if you are modifying the car and need a bigger exhaust as you are increasing the power or you want to change the noise the exhaust makes. Otherwise, leave it till it needs replacing due to damage. 

If you do want to change the exhaust, again, unless you are trying to boost performance I certainly wouldn't change the cats as one, a decent set of cats is going to be in the high hundreds of pounds and two, with high performance cats or cheap cats you run the risk of failing the MOT emissions test.

As said above don't bother, on my 15 year old ford the exhaust was one of the only original parts.

If for some reason your exhaust does fail and you feel like splashing the cash then you could go to Longlife exhausts, they have a few places North wales. The one in Cardiff makes and fits exhausts bespoke to whatever spec you ask for, which is useful not only for chavs who want to wake up the neighbourhood with their corsas but also for people with odd vehicles like campervans that don't use a standard exhaust.