ideas for wrestling an exhaust back into position?

Something weird happened the other day. Its as if someone hit my exhaust with a large hammer.. or another car. The whole rear assembly has been shunted back so that part of it is now touching the rear axle and the rest is hanging down. nothing has become detached just that the rubber linkage that connects the actual exhaust to the chassis seems to have all got twisted along with the metal support bracket. The rubber link is OK but a little brittle looking. I wonder the best way of getting this whole thing back into place without breaking anything. THe metal all looks fairly thick so I think something more than a light tap with a mallet is required..
any suggestions?

 

di u happen to bottom out somewhere ? broken motor mount ?

 

not that I know.. it is only on one side though. havent hit any big pot holes that I know of.. certainly hope its not a broken engine mount!

 

you may have backed into a steep ditch etc.and caught it on something.You'll have to get the car up on a hoist and look for the bend in the pipe.It will probably have some rust flaked off.Then you'll have to take a big bar and wedge it to put pressure on the pipe while heating the bent area.If you take your time you will "feel" the pipe start to "give".Once in place,stop and let cool,reattach hanger etc.
Scott

 

got it figured out...
a week or so ago there was a loud crash at around 2am.. my neighbours came running out bless them but just saw a car drive off like crazy....
Next morning I found the remains of a headlight just by my car. It seemed someone had a little accident yet there was no damage to my car.. maybe it was someone else...
Then I noticed the exhaust thing, but yet no othewr damager. How could something just damage the exhaust? Weird
Then the other day I was washing the car and noticed some new black paint scrapes on the rear fender the side of the dodgy exhaust. There was a tiny bit of paint that was scraped off on the body too where the fender..

So PI Gabriel concluded that a car did hit mine, hopefully smashed his car to bits and smashed his headlight. He must have just clipped my rear finder doing so. The fender was pushed towards the body of the car (is it mounted on rubber or something?) and in doing so just scraped a little paint off the body. The offending car must have been very low or had some low protuberance to hit the exhaust too.

Anyway I managed to just reattach the clip to the exhaust tip and it seems to be fine. However the mounting bracket for the clip is bolted to the chassis. I wanted to replace the whole clip but was not sure if the bolt had a nut on the other side (which appears to be completely inaccessible or whether the whole in the frame was threaded so I could just unscrew the bolt and put in a new one...

 

This is how my exhaust tip is bolted to the frame. It seems a bit crappy considering that all that is holding it in place is that one place, nothing to stop it slowly twisting with the weight of the exhaust. Is there a better way of doing this? How is that bolt connected to the frame. Is there a nut the other side which would seem to be almost impossible to gain access to or is the hole threaded?