I was taking off my chrome tips on the exhaust last nite for its first cleaning in two years and noticed that the bolts under the right tip was completely rusted. We don't have much snow here in Vancouver, Canada and thus not much salt exposure but I guess a couple of winters was enough to do them in. I couldn't get one of the nuts off and one of the bolts snapped on the other one. The bolt appears to be welded to a bracket that's part of the muffler so I'm SOL on fixing that short of removing it and replacing the nut. So if you have a stock muffler still (I know there gotta be a few of us out there, even on this board) I suggest checking them out and cleaning them. Better yet, replace the nut and/or bolt with stainless ones. Or if you've got money to blow... get a new stainless exhaust.

 

I'm in Vancouver area and replaced my OEM with a Stillen Cat-back. I too was surprised after a year how much rust had accumulated on the stock one.

 

Get yourself a can of RustCheck from CTC. It works wonders on that kind of thing where a quick shot a couple time a year prevents rust.

 

Colin,
From my experience, it is very normal to get some rust in the exhaust pipes, they should be glad it's just bolts, LOL, remember how it was before they used stainless steel? Even here in dry NM, the pipes would rust quickly!