Exhausting repairs!
Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:14 pm
As some of you know, I took a 10 day break in Ireland in an old 96 carina/corona. The car is a fairly average thing to drive, but if you thrash it hard enough, it moves "OK" :-)
Linds my partner chopped second hard out of one corner to pass a tractor and suddenly the car emitted a deafening roar! the flange from the front part of the exhaust to the back half had cracked it's weld and the rear half was hanging down doing very little muffling.
Being a kiwi, I used 5 chunks of wood and 2 rocks found on the side of the road along with a small kitchen knife to fix it :-)
The first phase of the fix can be seen here :
The flange had broken off with about 2" of tube hanging past it, so I managed to wiggle it back in so that it just kinda sat together. The first hard shift would have ripped it out again, so I had to chock the engine from moving, and the exhaust too. One whittled piece of wood between the engine and mount at the front, and two with a cable tie that I had just thrown in my suitcase in NZ 10m before leaving for the airport randomly, and again, much the same just before leaving the house to ireland as it appeared on the floor by my desk. I also pulled the rubbers off a bit to hold it forward as well. We covered over 500 miles like that :-) well, mostly like that...
Young Linds came out of a corner hard on the gas in third somewhere in some mountains south of Dublin and didn't see a rather vicious bump which caused us to get some small air and bottom out the car on the road pretty badly. That ripped the piece of wood out and broke the cable tie... Luckily, I managed to wedge it back in behind the bumper then, and it stayed put all the way from there to the middle of the UK. Not a bad effort for a couple of bits of wood and no tools :-)
OK, that wasn't much of a story really, but I have a sad and boring life, so forgive me :-)
Linds my partner chopped second hard out of one corner to pass a tractor and suddenly the car emitted a deafening roar! the flange from the front part of the exhaust to the back half had cracked it's weld and the rear half was hanging down doing very little muffling.
Being a kiwi, I used 5 chunks of wood and 2 rocks found on the side of the road along with a small kitchen knife to fix it :-)
The first phase of the fix can be seen here :
The flange had broken off with about 2" of tube hanging past it, so I managed to wiggle it back in so that it just kinda sat together. The first hard shift would have ripped it out again, so I had to chock the engine from moving, and the exhaust too. One whittled piece of wood between the engine and mount at the front, and two with a cable tie that I had just thrown in my suitcase in NZ 10m before leaving for the airport randomly, and again, much the same just before leaving the house to ireland as it appeared on the floor by my desk. I also pulled the rubbers off a bit to hold it forward as well. We covered over 500 miles like that :-) well, mostly like that...
Young Linds came out of a corner hard on the gas in third somewhere in some mountains south of Dublin and didn't see a rather vicious bump which caused us to get some small air and bottom out the car on the road pretty badly. That ripped the piece of wood out and broke the cable tie... Luckily, I managed to wedge it back in behind the bumper then, and it stayed put all the way from there to the middle of the UK. Not a bad effort for a couple of bits of wood and no tools :-)
OK, that wasn't much of a story really, but I have a sad and boring life, so forgive me :-)