Maybe
I think I now know why the pipe is under stress.
The cylinder on the drivers side sits closer to the driver by perhaps an inch or so.
the down pipe should of course be shortened by the same amount. However when rebuilding the system today I noted that; even with the silencer slipped over the the down pipe as far as possible; the whole silencer and down pipe assembly had to be compressed horizontally with some force to enable the silencer mounts to match up with the support brackets on the body. Flex in the braided section is now extremely limited; defeating the whole purpose of this section.
inspection of the near side indicates that the silencer here does not need to be butted up to the limit in order to fit.
The drivers side assembly is always stressed to some degree even at rest.
it would be interesting to note if silencer failures generally occur on the drivers side on UK models
