The wife ran an errand in my '12 Citadel, 5.7L Sunday night, 85 year old man rear ended her. The Big D took it a lot better than the Escort he was driving and no one was hurt so now it's just a matter of putting it back together.

Couple of things that have come up: The drivers side exhaust tip is pushed very slightly inboard from where the bumper cover was pushed into the muffler at impact. There's no external damage to the muffler or the tip, not even a dent or a scratch, but the truck sounds different. I cannot perceive any difference in flow but I'm concerned that there's internal damage. The repair shop said they would try to re-bend the exhaust and if that didn't work, they would replace it.

Which brings me to my second issue: If they are going to replace the exhaust (and he said they would replace it from the cat back) my thought was to put on the RT exhaust but when I looked on line at pricing on factory parts, the RT exhaust from MOPAR is almost twice the price of the Citadel exhaust. What gives? I though they were the same other than the mufflers.

Obviously, the insurance company won't pay for the extra cost so does anyone know if there is a performance difference between the two exhaust systems or just a sound difference?

 

just get a Magnaflow system. Direct bolt on and all stainless steel.

 

What Newman said, and probably cheaper to boot!

 

Sounds almost exactly the same as what happened to my R/T https://dodgeforum.com/forum/3rd-gen...er-bender.html
The exhaust shop tried to bend mine back and it looked ok from the out side, but when I looked underneath the rubber hangers were stretched out, pulling hard on the frame hanger. It was one of those things that would have broken a few years from now from being to stressed. I told the dealer I wanted it replaced, $1,200.00 later I had a new exhaust. Too bad it was not the left side as it just unbolts! Seems most driver try to swerve to the right just before hitting you, only getting the right side. Good luck and make sure they fix it correctly. You can see the circle my exhaust cut into the mustangs bumper...lol

 

Went to pick up the D from the shop on Wednesday. Got there and inspected it before going into the office and immediately found too many issues. Went over it with the shop manager and he agreed they did a crappy job so they extended my rental and ordered a second round of all the unpainted trim pieces on the back of the truck. The ones they had reused had digs in them where they had used a screwdriver to pry them off the truck and the new ones looked like they had been drug across the shop floor.

Just got a call this morning that it's ready again so I'll run out there this afternoon and see what we have. They said they "realigned" the exhaust so we'll see what that looks like.

 

Crawl under there and check for pinched or cracked welds/pipe where they realigned (read that as bent) the exhaust back in place.

 

Ok, picked up the truck. Looks very good and actually sounds correct again. I do need to get under there and see what's going on and if anything has been bent or cracked.

Here's another odd chapter in this saga: I noticed every seat in the truck had been moved, the radio station was changed, and the kids seat in the back was disconnected. I'm thinking, what are they doing, going cruising in my truck? Then I opened the center console and my snake bite kit (pint of Jim Beam) was 1/2 empty. I actually refill it from a handle as needed and I'm 99% sure it was at least almost full.

Looks like they had a big time in the Big D!