Yet Another Exhaust Thread

[Nomake Wan]

Kaaaaay. Here's my predicament.

My exhaust resonates, and is rusty, and is kinda welded together. Sure, it works. But it sounds terrible and always has me wondering if it's leaking. I've been meaning to replace the whole thing for a long time, and now that I'm in California I figured it'd be easy (since there are so many shops here).

Wrong. I took it around, and they said that they didn't want to touch it. For one, the bolts (flanges? Hrm) between the headers and front cats are nearly shot, so they don't want to risk breaking the whole thing. And for another, they didn't want to mess around with three cats (especially didn't like the 2-into-1 secondary cat) and a 1-to-2 muffler. Awesome. There goes the custom job I was hoping for.

However, most of the shops said that if I were to get the parts myself, they would install 'em. Figures.

Now under any other circumstance, I'd just drive over to Tom's place and have him go at it. But I'm in California now so that isn't a valid option anymore. So I'm kinda stuck. Shops don't want to touch it and I don't know any places around that'd sell this sorta stuff...

Suggestions, anyone? I'm looking to replace from the headers back, hopefully with something that doesn't rattle/resonate and has more presence than stock.