Onto the next things then. The underside & a blowing exhaust. By 'feel' the 'blow' was on top of the silencer. Very little room between it and the floor pan to attempt any repair. That said the rest of the exhaust was very rusty indeed. They last about 15 - 18yrs on these, so I suspected this to be the original system. It was certainly a Volvo unit with the classic single 'clam' silencer.
I looked at a Volvo replacement, but 2 things put me off.
1) The price 600 quid or so.
2) Fitting - they are a single piece from the cat-back a go over the rear axle. The car needs to be on a lift high up to get the angle to feed it over said axle.
The saying goe's that Volvo fitted the exhaust pipe then built the car around it!
So I settled for one of these:

A Jetex (Simons - same thing I gather) Stainless Chromium (whatever that is) .
Beauty of these is an 'extra' join, so getting over the axle is a doddle
To get the old one off over the axle I took my angle grinder to it & chopped it!

Here you can see the holes in the top of the 'clam'.
Once it was off. I went over everywhere I could get to with a wire brush on my 24v drill. Attacking as much of the rust as I could. Then used various hand wire brushes where I couldn't get to with the 24v. The good news was, that it was just surface rust. No holes to worry about.
Then I sealed the end of the cat & jet washed the underside. I then let it dry in the summer heat for 2 days. Then painted rust killer everywhere possible. Once that had dried, I hit it with 3 rattle cans of a waxoyl type product I found in a local motorfactor store.
Once that had dried I set about fitting the Jetex. That was a doddle &, I found a perfect fit.
Out for a spin & it sounded lovely

if a little 'boomy' when accelerating compared to the OE' unit.
But as this was 370 quid delivered I can live with that
