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my favorite new substance
Monday, September 11 2006
Happy 9Eleven day! Did you have a barbecue and get really drunk? I didn't. I spent more time than I would have preferred under the red Honda Civic trying to fix the intermediate pipe that connects the engine to the catalytic converter. Yesterday evening, on the drive back from somewhere, this pipe (which had evidently rotted through with rust) broke completely in half, meaning the engine exhaust was belching from beneath the center of the car without going through either a catylitic converter or a muffler. The predictable results: a vehicle behaving like the kind one sees in Heavy Metal Parking Lot.
To get the car off the ground and give myself space to work hillbilly style, I placed four by four blocks with their ends cut at a 45 degree angle (scraps from the solar deck and laboratory deck projects) behind each wheel and then drove it up onto the blocks. Chug chug chug! That motherfucker was loud once the engine was put under any sort of load.
My repair consisted of wire screen, a fiberglass maxipad from a tailpipe repair kit, and my favorite new substance: furnace cement. It worked, but not as well as I'd hoped, something I ascertained on a shakedown cruise into town to get treated two by fours. I would have also bought an additional sixteen foot two by eight (to be used as the support beam for the new collector), but that's a task best left to the versatility of the hatchback. (So far I've yet to miss my old Toyota pickup when going on materials errands.)
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