Is changing a muffler really expensive? That depends on what kind of car you have of course. In my case I have a 96 Altima. Yup, 14 years old at this point.

So my wife comes back from grocery shoping and tells me that there is a loud sound coming from the car. I'm like, great. Anyway, it turns out to be the muffler, actually, when I looked at it more closely, the extension pipe that goes from the muffler to the catalytic converter had a hole in it caused by rust. I wanted to just patch the hole to stop the sound, but there was alot rust everywhere on the pipe, and I knew it had to be changed entirely.

So I bring it in to my regular garage to have the extension pipe fixed, and the mechanic tells me that it's better to change both that piece and the muffler at the same time because the muffler is pretty rusted as well.

Well, it turns out that I had a guarantee on the mufler itself because it was last fixed at a Mr. Muffler franchise. So, the next day, I bring it in to a Mr. Muffler, and they fix it all.

So, they charged me $210 for the pipe, plus one hour labor at $70. The muffler which was guaranteed would have cost me $280, plus taxes of course. So the entire thing cost me a little bit over $300 to change the pipe and the muffler.

These prices are in Canada, so they are higher than in the U.S. I honestly think that these prices are very high. Considering that I didn't have to pay for the muffler itself. I also think that a Mr. Muffler will charge you more because it is a franchised garage. I say this because my mechanic said that he would have charged me $190 for the pipe, instead of $210.