Sunday I drove up to Herb's to take him some ink cartridges for the club printer. Along the way Homer started to develope an exhaust leak. It wasn't bad, but it was very slowly getting louder. It was much worse when left Herb's. I knew it needed attention as soon as I got home . . . but first I had to run by Kyles and pick up a gas gauge (I ran out of gas twice last week . . . enough is enough). When I left Kyles it was really bad . . . then about a mile down the road it blew out completely. Rusty metal and old insulation and exhaust started blowing through the defrost vents! Here's where an assumption got me in trouble.
I have a known to be questionable heater box on the driver's side. After a few days year before last of breathing exhaust and getting bad headaches, I disconnected it and have just been using one heater box ever since. Well, exhaust is blowing directly into the heater ducts . . . no doubt about that . . . the left box isn't hooked to the body, the right one is. Gotta be that the exhaust pipe inside the right box has rusted through somewhere right? Of course. So I closed off the heater box to the ductwork, rolled down the window and headed home. This morning I rode to work with the window half down . . . by now it's like there is no exhaust whatsoever on the engine.
I changed out the right box this evening after work . . . didn't see anything that really looked bad about it, but, well, it had to be bad. So, guess what happend when I fired up the engine. LOUD as ever! Hummm . . . have I got a hole in my fairly new muffler? It's dark, so I just run my hand across the back of the muffler feeling for a big hole, and YEP, there is one. A BIG one. Only problem is it's supposed to be there. The hole is where the LEFT HEATER BOX USED TO GO IN THE MUFFLER!!!! The darn thing is GONE. Had I not ASSUMED that it was the right heater box yesterday when I crawled under it to disconnect it from the ductwork, I could had tightened up the left box and saved myself a lot of trouble.
I just hope no one was following too close when it fell off! :O
