Most of the tool list people assemble for an exhaust job is wrong in the same direction: too many spanners, not enough things that hold the car up or hold the pipe still. The work is mostly releasing corroded fasteners, supporting a long unsupported length of tubing, and then making a joint that does not pull itself apart when the system gets hot.
Sort the tools by what they touch rather than by drawer. Fastener tools, cutting tools, support tools and sealing tools. If one of those groups is empty, that is the part of the job that will stop you, and it will usually stop you halfway through with the car immobile.
Exhaust nuts sit in places where a ring spanner cannot swing and an open spanner rounds the flats. A deep socket in the correct size, on a short extension and a jointed bar, reaches most of them. The jointed bar matters more than the socket: it lets you keep the socket square on a nut you cannot see.
Flange bolts often have a captive square or a welded tab on the far side, so one tool holds and the other turns. Carrying a second socket for the far side is cheaper than discovering that the tab has rusted through and the whole bolt spins with the nut.
Any cut you make has a second tool behind it. A saw produces a burr that has to come off before a slip joint on an exhaust pipe will slide, and a pipe cutter leaves a rolled lip that has to be dressed back before the end will enter a sleeve. Put the file and the deburring tool on the bench at the same time as the saw, not after.
If the plan involves shortening a section, measure the joint overlap on the car rather than on the bench. The overlap you can actually achieve is set by how far the pipe can move on its hangers, which is a different thing from the length of the sleeve you are sliding into.
A long section of tube with both ends released will drop at the heavy end and swing at the light end. Axle stands, a trolley jack under a block of wood, and a strap around the tube to a rafter do more useful work than any spanner. The strap also stops the system pulling on the flex section while you lever a joint apart.
Rubber hangers are consumables. Have new ones on the bench before you start, because the old ones stretch and tear when a cold system is levered sideways, and a torn hanger will let the system sit against the body long after the new section is in place.
The one thing no shop sells on a Sunday evening is information. Before the first bolt moves, open the vehicle listing for your chassis and read what the section is meant to connect to, which end carries the flange and where the hangers land. That tells you whether the part in the box is the part the job needs.
Check the bore and the joint type against the car rather than against the advertisement. A section listed for your model can still be a different joint style, and the difference only shows up once the old part is on the ground and cannot go back on.
Spray the fasteners and leave them to work while you lay out everything else. Put every tool you expect to use on a tray, then walk the length of the system and ask what each joint needs. Any joint you cannot answer for is a tool you have not got.
Finish by checking that the car can stay where it is for longer than you planned, and that you have a route to a replacement fastener. A job that starts with a full tray and a plan rarely ends with the car stranded on stands over a nut nobody stocks locally.
