Rally Casualty

At the past Rally-X on March 19th, I had a couple issues. One was I pooped out my muffler on one of my early runs.  No big deal, open pipe baby! Quite rude. Second issue was the car conked out on another run. Got pushed off course and quick look revealed AFM electrical connector had popped loose. It is missing a spring clip wire. Well, nothing some judicious use of duct tape won’t cure! The muffler was a clamp on deal, but two hangers broke/corroded loose and the last one was precariously bent. After the event was done, I McGuyvered a battery cable, bicycle spoke, and some safety wire to hang the muffler back on in an attempt to quiet it down for the drive home. It was still pretty loud. I took a peek and I could see a crack in the pipe, oh well, nothing I could do about that for now, so I drove home brapping all the way.

So today, I finally decided to take a close look and see if maybe I could temporarily patch it for the next event. Got the car up on the lift for a clear look. Oh my, it’s quite a gaping crack. I disconnect the piping and fully remove it. Yeah, this is beyond patching. I run over to the parts FX, hm, the exhaust piping looks to be in decent shape, someone went in with larger piping and put in a Magnaflow muffler. This’ll do, and the carcass is so stripped that it doesn’t take too many bolts and tugging to get it out. Getting it in is going to be another case though. The muffler and piping have been welded in one piece up to the catalytic flange. The two 90 degree bends won’t allow it to thread through the suspension arms and brake lines without disconnecting them. I contemplate what to do. Hey now, I have a welder, I need practice, that’s how it was done in the first place, the pieces of pipe were put in place and welded together in place. So I break out my biggie pipe cutter and cut the pipe on a nice straight section. Thread the muffler section through and line up the pipes. I think I might just be able to do this, thank goodness for the lift! Without having the car up on a lift, I think this would have been close to impossible. There’s just enough room as it is for me to get in there and weld it.  OMG, I think I actually welded it back together OK! I got about a 3/4″ length of a beautiful bead. The rest is a bit of a gloppy mess, the top of the pipe there wasn’t enough room to fit the gun in and get a good angle, and welding the bottom requires inverted welding, which is challenging. But I got er done, we shall see how it does next event!

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