Took Exhaust cat section to magic welding man, who put me a nice new flange on (old flange corroded badly, but rest of cat in reasonable shape) also weld on a better 'taper' on the end of the other Cat. (ie the bit that goes just inside the flared piece of pipe)
Went home, the plan being to smooth off the welds, climb under the V6, remove the heat shields, give them a paint up, pop them back, fit the exhaust.
so....
Angle-grinded too much off the weld, thus making a neat little slit in the exhaust pipe.
Sheared a thread when trying to remove the heat shields. Got one shield off ok in the end, then got another - which on closer inspection was so badly corroded it's in no way worth painting. There's a bit of a mish-mash of studs and nuts n bolts holding the shields on, so clearly they've been off and on before, with the same sheared thread problem.
So net worth of tonight-
-Flange fitted to 1 exhaust pipe
-Hole repaired in other exhaust pipe - I then get flap-wheel happy and make the hole again

-Remove 1 heat shield, snapping a thread
-Removed 2nd heat shield - it's had it. Need another.
a bit of a 1 step forward, 2 steps back sort of day
