I bought a new rear exhaust hanger kit (from Moss Motors) for the GT not long ago. I moved the car today to facilitate the unloading of my new used compressor (see below), and came outside afterward to find the muffler laying on the ground, the cause being the failed rubber mount that you can see in the photo. (In case you’re not familiar with how these hangers are constructed, there is supposed to be another piece of metal bonded to the rubber where you see the rusty stains…that piece of metal is still on the car!)
The hanger is less than six months old and the car has traveled less than 200 miles in the sun, and has been stored inside, too. The only moisture this car has seen has been from a couple of washes. I even took care to be sure there was no torsional stress on the mount when I installed it (on a bonded-rubber mount, you do not want to have any twisting stress if you want them to last). Thankfully this happened in the driveway.
If this was a once-in-a-blue-moon thing I wouldn’t care, but it’s quite common. It’s one of the reasons restorers go to great lengths to buy new old stock (ie, factory original) parts when they can. Mind, it’s all of $5. Maybe I’ll write Moss.
Moving on, I bought a used (but new to me!) compressor for the Mahal. The gentleman I bought it from loaded it into my truck with a forklift; I got home and spent some time scratching my head as to how I was going to get it out. The weight isn’t horrible but at 300 lbs, most of it at the top of the tank, it’s decidedly awkward. It was too tall to fit into the shop without tilting it against the truck’s toolbox, which a friend helped me do, but he had to run and so I was left to my own devices.
In the end, I stole the hand-winch off the car trailer and mounted it to a rafter in the shop:
I probably could have strapped it up in a fashion which would have kept it more upright, but a problem with vertical compressors is that everything at the top is potentially fragile and not something you want to put straps or cables around. In the end, I had just enough lift to get it out of the bed.
I temporarily placed the machine on another of my torsion-box carts…I must have half a dozen of these, now, most in storage, some 2′ x 4′, some 4′ x 4′. They’re very handy and will support all the weight you could possibly want without any deflection, up to the limit of the casters.
My exhaust hangers for the E-type did the same thing. I just drilled a hole through them and stuck a bolt in there. =\
The aftermarket exhaust hangers being sold by Moss and others nowadays are of truly awful quality. I had a brand new center hanger fail within minutes of installation recently, and I ended up putting the original, 45 year old hanger back on.
Mine was like yours, and showed evidence of surface rust on the mating surfaces. This is a huge no-no in the vulcanizing process, which requires fanatical levels of cleanliness. You should report this to Kelvin Dodd at Moss…the only way they can fix this crap is if they know about it.
I had a similar failure before my TD was even moved. Not sure of the origin of the hanger, it was part of a exhaust system I bought off ebay. Brand new though. I repaired it with Gorilla glue. Still together 3 years later.